The Observer, December 2003
Volunteer Profile: Cliff Chambers builds life around Prince William Sound and volunteer work
The newest member of the council’s Port Operations and Vessel Traffic Systems Committee is also one of the most active.
Since joining in March, Cliff Chambers has not only faithfully attended meetings of the committee, but has also become a regular visitor to the council office in Valdez to keep up with events.
Cliff Chambers caught this 125-pound, 64 inch halibut near Naked Island in Prince William Sound last May. Photo by Dave Cropp, Nothing Fancy Charters.
And that’s in addition to being a full-time student at Prince William Sound Community College – where he’s vice president of the academic honor society Phi Theta Kappa – and donating his time to a cancer fund-raiser called the Relay for Life.
Plus, of course, spending as much time as possible on the Sound itself. Chambers has been in Alaska for ten years, but says he still doesn’t know if he likes it, because he’s never seen most of it. “I love Prince William Sound because it’s the only place I’ve spent a lot of time,” he said.
Chambers, 57, was born in San Antonio, Texas, and lived in Colorado and Montana before coming north in 1993. That happened after his son told him of a boring job: driving trucks between the Petrostar refinery and tank farm in Valdez. “A boring job sounded fine to me,” Chambers said. “Four days working, three days fishing and exploring the Sound.”
The job ended in 1996, when Chambers sustained serious injuries to his back and legs in a fall while on vacation. After a series of surgeries, he’s much improved but will never return to the active life of a truck driver.
Instead, he’s working on degrees in marine oil spill technology and industrial safety at the community college, enjoying the Sound, and volunteering for the citizens’ council and the cancer drive. After he graduates, Chambers has hopes of becoming a project manager for the council, or perhaps an instructor at the community college.
Chambers’ involvement with the council began by happenstance. He used to tie up his boat – since sold – in the slot next to a boat owned by Tom Kuckertz, a project manager for the citizens’ council. The two got to talking and as Chambers heard about what the council does, he asked Kuckertz how to become involved. Kuckertz suggested joining the Port Operations and Vessel Traffic Systems Committee – known as “POVTS” – and that’s what Chambers did.
That committee’s focus is the safe loading, travel and escort of North Slope crude oil tankers in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska.
Chambers is a member of a POVTS subcommittee on places of refuge, which he expects to become a controversial issue.
The places of refuge concept requires the citizens, industry and regulators of an area traversed by oil tankers to squarely confront a painful trade-off that may arise in marine accidents.
Suppose a tanker begins leaking oil in the middle of Prince William Sound. The tanker, though damaged, is sound enough to be moved at least a few miles.
The dilemma: Is it better to leave it in the middle of the Sound to continue leaking and possibly pollute hundreds of miles of shoreline, or to move it into a protected bay – a place of refuge – where the spill can be contained, the remaining oil can be removed from the vessel, and the leak can be stopped?
The place of refuge will be drenched in oil, but is that a reasonable price to pay to avoid lighter contamination of hundreds of miles of beaches elsewhere?
That was the dilemma facing Europeans in November of last year in the Prestige spill. Because no port would take the damaged vessel, it was towed to open water, where it sank and continued to leak its cargo of heavy fuel oil, causing widespread damage along the Spanish and French coasts.
If Europe had a places-of-refuge program, “the Prestige would have been towed in and they would have had a small geographic area oiled,” Chambers said. “But they would not have oil washing up for the next five years from a sunken tanker.”
The places of refuge subcommittee is identifying potential places of refuge in Prince William Sound – bays large enough to accommodate a tanker and the vessels that would come to work around it. The next step will be to evaluate the resources that would be damaged if a given bay became a place of refuge.
The end product will be a list of potential places of refuge identifying the resources at risk for each. It will be used by Coast Guard officials who will have to make the decision if the awful day ever comes.
The problem is, any bay suitable as a place of refuge is almost inevitably going to be one much beloved by fishermen, kayakers and other users in Prince William Sound.
One example is Jack Bay. It’s the site of a marine park near Valdez – and a possible haven for a disabled tanker. It’s big and deep with a good holding bottom and no rocks.
“This is going to be a political hot potato,” Chambers predicted. “Jack Bay is one of the favorite places in the Sound. That really hits home right here.”