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BY LINDA ROBINSON
Outreach Coordinator for the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens' Advisory Council

This was a very busy fall season. Following the September board meeting, Pat Duffy, who represents the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce on our board of directors, and I took the council booth to the Chamber's annual tradeshow in Juneau. Alan Sorum, staff member, represented the council at the Alaska Association of Harbormasters and Port Administrators annual meeting in Wrangell in October.

October went by quickly, starting with attendance at the Clean Gulf conference in Tampa, Florida. Director John French, along with staff members Mark Swanson, Roy Robertson and I, participated. This is the first time the council has participated in the Clean Gulf, a large oil spill training event and exhibition which focuses on the Gulf of Mexico area.

The focus this year was on the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We have been contacted numerous times by people affected by this incident, and so decided this would be a good venue for outreach. The booth saw a lot of activity at this conference with many people stopping by to ask advice on how to start a citizens' oversight group(s) in their region. There were also many presentations on various topics related to the incident by ExxonMobil, BP UK, National Resource Damage Assessment, and the U.S. Coast Guard as well as scientists working on the Gulf spill. For more information on this conference, visit www.cleangulf.org.

The next week the council hosted a group of nine guests from the Gulf of Mexico. This group included members of University of New Orleans Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology, community spokespersons from Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe and the Chief of Isle de Jean Charles, representatives from the Jean Lafitte and Grand Bayou communities, the Zion Travelers Cooperative Center in Plaquemines Parish, and the Vietnamese fishing community, and the director of the Jean Lafitte Senior Resource Center.

We took the ferry to Cordova where we met with people that had been involved in the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Board member Patience Andersen Faulkner organized the Cordova agenda and kept us quite busy. We visited Shoreside Petroleum to see the spill response equipment stored there, and the Prince William Sound Science Center to hear about the development of the science center and their science and education programs. From Cordova we ferried to Valdez where we saw presentations by Alyeska and the U.S. Coast Guard, and visited the Salomon Creek Hatchery. A highlight of the Valdez portion of the trip was taking an evening break to watch the New Orleans Saints beat the Pittsburgh Stealers with genuine Saints fans!

The final two days were spent in Anchorage. We met with two former council board members, Bill Walker and Marilyn Leland, and with Rick Steiner, Chaplain Bert McQueen and representatives from the World Wildlife Fund.

Great personal and professional contacts have been created through hosting these three groups from the Gulf. The visitors and the Alaskans had many questions for each other, and everyone involved gained knowledge from the comparisons and lessons learned about oil spill response in 1989 and the current lessons in 2010.

The final two conferences of the year were the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in Portland, Oregon, attended by director John French and the Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle, Washington, attended by directors Jane Eisemann and Blake Johnson.

At the council's annual Science Night on December 3, one of the presentations was given by Anchorage high school student Drew Walker, who participated in one of the Prince William Sound Expeditions. On December 4, the council held a long range planning meeting and annual volunteer appreciation party.

The following week, directors Blake Johnson and John French accompanied Executive Director Mark Swanson and me to host a reception at the Soldotna Assembly meeting.

Prior to the reception we visited with Dr. Paula Martin of the Kenai Peninsula College and KSRM radio station where Mark and Trent Dodson, Public Outreach Director for CIRCAC were interviewed about citizen oversight. We toured Cook Inlet Spill Prevention and Response, Inc., and the Cook Inlet Regional Citizens' Advisory Council's new office. Following the reception, we presented the Kenai Assembly with an appreciation plaque thanking them for their support on the dual escort system.

From all of us at the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens' Advisory Council, we wish you a peaceful and rewarding New Year.