The Observer, September 2007
Volunteer Profile: Busy Alaskan says goodbye to council committee
By Susan Sommer
Linda Lee has a lot on her plate right now. The Valdez resident works full-time for Alyeska as a berth operator at the tanker terminal, helps run the family’s charter and commercial fishing business, and, until recently, volunteered on the council’s Port Operations and Vessel Traffic Systems Committee.
This committee, known as POVTS, focuses on monitoring improvements to port and vessel traffic navigation systems, iceberg detection, weather considerations, and tanker movement through the Sound.
Linda Lee long-lines for halibut near Knight Island aboard the Vixen, the boat she operates with her husband, Dave Rentel. Photo by Dave Rentel.
Lee says it wasn’t easy to call it quits after 12 years on POVTS. With a change in Alyeska’s policy on leave time for volunteering, Lee said she would be able to attend only about three meetings a year, and it hardly seems fair to the committee to participate so infrequently. Members meet 10 or more times annually.
Despite leaving, Lee cares deeply about POVTS’s cooperative work and the council’s success in working with oil industry representatives and other groups to help create and maintain a safer, more efficient system for the marine community.
Examples of improvements include vapor recovery at the Valdez tanker terminal; ice detection radar and weather buoys, used by many vessel operators in Prince William Sound; arrival of the enhanced tractor tugs and the prevention and response tugs; and three marine firefighting symposia, each of which provided training for about 60 firefighters from rural Alaska coastal communities.
Lee’s training in marine and industrial firefighting, coupled with her knowledge of the tankers that ply the Sound, helped support a professional, coordinated response when a fire started in the generator room of the tanker Kenai alongside Berth 4 at the terminal a few years ago. From Berth 3, Lee could see black smoke billowing from the ship’s stern. Lee says it didn’t seem dangerous to head toward the vessel. She says, “It was an amazing feeling to want to go onboard as one of the fire brigade responders.” While others doused the flames, Lee worked with a crew to drain and disconnect the “arms,” the devices on the berths that feed oil to the tankers.
A different stricken tanker came unbidden into Lee’s life in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez ran aground.
As a fisherman, Lee’s livelihood came to an abrupt halt that day. She quickly switched gears and hired on to help with the clean-up for the next two summers, time that otherwise would have been spent shrimping, kelping, and fishing. Lee had pursued the latter since moving to Alaska in 1976.
Oil spill work kept Lee and her husband, Dave Rentel, busier than ever. One stint on the water lasted 61 days. Rentel was one of the first divers to see the underwater devastation the single hull of the Exxon Valdez suffered after hitting Bligh Reef.
In 1991, when the clean-up ended, Lee started work at Alyeska, following her original plan of coming to Alaska to find a coveted pipeline job. She joined POVTS a few years later.
One of the things Lee loves about her job is the bird’s-eye view she gets. She has been onboard all the trans-Alaska pipeline system tankers, has gotten to know a wide variety of people in the industry, and can see how policies, procedures, and regulatory changes affect the entire system of loading and transporting crude oil.
Once, she got to ride a tanker from Valdez to Long Beach, California. Lee was listed as being a “supernumerary,” or an extra person along for the ride, and though she knew a few of the people onboard, others remained reserved at first.
Once they discovered she wasn’t a safety risk, they warmed to her presence on the ship. By the end of the trip, she was free to go wherever she pleased—the engine room, the bridge, inside a clean ballast tank— observing the crew and learning all she could about their jobs.
As someone who works both inside industry and outside it in private enterprises that rely on a healthy Prince William Sound, Lee has a unique perspective.
“I’ve been asked if there was a conflict between my job at Alyeska and my involvement with the citizens’ council. Not for me,” she says. “Alyeska’s mission is to safely and efficiently transport crude oil from the North Slope to the Gulf of Alaska. The council’s mission is to promote environmentally safe operation of Alyeska’s marine terminal and associated tankers. My perspective has always been that while there may be differing opinions as to the best way to accomplish either mission, they are so closely aligned that it has never been a conflict.”