Oral History Project

The council is preparing a comprehensive oral history of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, to be published on the 20th anniversary, March 24, 2009.

The working title is “The Spill: An Oral History of the Exxon Valdez Disaster.”

This book, about 350 pages in length, will feature interviews with 70 or so people who experienced the spill first-hand. They include Alaska citizens; government agency personnel involved with the spill and cleanup; elected officials who dealt with the spill; and oil industry personnel involved in the spill and cleanup.

It will be followed in approximately a year by a second volume analyzing the lessons in oil spill impacts, prevention, and response to be drawn from this wealth of personal experience.

The interviews were conducted by Homer-based writer Sharon Bushell, a long-time Alaskan perhaps best known for her profiles of the state's pioneers and other residents in the "We Alaskans" series.