The Observer, September 2003
Council is once again honored by U.S.-Canadian oil spill group for work in Sound
For the second time in its history, the citizens’ council has received the Legacy Award bestowed annually by the Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force.
In conferring the 2003 Legacy Award at a July ceremony in Hawaii, the task force cited the council’s work on establishing an iceberg-detection radar system in Prince William Sound. Legacy Award winners, said Jean Cameron, executive coordinator of the task force, are “models for others in industry, government, and the public to emulate.”
Legacy awards go to people or organizations that demonstrate innovation, management commitment, and improvements in oil spill prevention, preparedness, or response. Efforts to promote partnerships and involve the public are favored, according to a task force news release.
Executive Director John Devens accepted the Legacy Award from Laurence Lau, Hawaii's Deputy Director for Environmental health and chair of this summer's BC/States Task Force conference in Hawaii.
The council received a double nomination for the award. One came from the US Coast Guard Marine Safety Office in Valdez, and the other from the Alaska Tanker Company, which carries oil for BP.
In his nomination letter, Commander Mark Swanson of the Valdez Coast Guard office told the task force that the council’s coordination of the multi-stakeholder project “helped ensure the ice radar was built years earlier and at hundreds of thousands of dollars less than if any one organization tried to complete the project alone.”
The council’s “extraordinary efforts to enhance navigational safety and protect the environment of Prince William Sound are in keeping with the highest ideals of excellence in public service and are highly deserving of wider recognition,” Swanson wrote.
Captain John Lawrence of Alaska Tanker Company said in his nomination letter that the oil trade and other users of Prince William Sound are already benefiting from information provided by the ice radar system on Reef Island. “The project was exemplary in leadership, innovation and commitment to improvement of oil spill prevention,” Lawrence wrote.
The citizens’ council won its first Legacy Award in 2000, for developing a guidebook to aid communities facing man-made disasters such as oil spills.
“The success of our ice radar project illustrates once again what can be achieved when all the stakeholders in Prince William Sound -- citizens, regulators and industry -- cooperate for the common good,” said John Devens, executive director of the citizens’ council. “We’re greatly honored to receive this award.”
Other recipients of the Legacy Award this year included Titan Maritime of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; Sause Brothers Ocean Towing Company of Coos Bay, Oregon; and Margot Brown of Alameda, California.
The Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force has worked since 1989 to coordinate oil-spill prevention and response policies affecting thousands of miles of coastline from the Beaufort Sea to the Baja Peninsula and the islands of Hawaii. Its members are directors of the oil spill prevention and response agencies in Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska.