Board of Directors: Meeting materials now available

The Council’s May 1-2, 2025 Board of Directors meeting will be held in-person at the Valdez Convention & Civic Center in Valdez, Alaska. The meeting will also be available virtually and telephonically for those unable to travel.

Join the meeting: Meeting audio and video, including presentations, will be available streaming online via Zoom (available starting May 1 by 8:15 a.m.) or by calling 1-888-788-0099, reference meeting ID 891 9616 4358.

A complete meeting packet will be available for download HERE, on or before April 25, 2025.

Meeting Documents (files open in new tab)
1 00 Final Agenda May 1 2, 2025 PWSRCAC Board Meeting
1 01 Draft January minutes of January 23 24, 2024
1 02 Draft minutes of March 19, 2025
2 01 List of Commonly Used Acronyms
2 02 March 25, 2025 Budget Status Report
2 03 Director Attendance Record
2 04 Committee Member Attendance Record
2 05 List of Board Committee Members
2 06 One Page Strategic Plan
2 07 List of Recent Board and Exeuctive Committee Actions
2 08 PWSRCAC Organizational Chart
3 01 Approval of Resolution Designating PWSRCAC Check Signers
3 02 Approval of FY2026 Contingency Plan Contractor Pool
3 03 FY2026 LTEMP Contract Authorization
3 04 FY2026 Marine Bird Fall and Early Winter Surveys Contract Authorization
3 05 Annual Technical Committee Member Appointments
3 06 Approval of Amendments to Council’s Document Retention Procedure
3 07 Approval of Federal Government Affairs Monitor Retainer
3 08 Approval of FY2025 Budget Modifications
4 01 PWSRCAC Director Appointments
4 02 Report Acceptance Maintaining the Secondary Containment Liner
4 02 Secondary Containment Liner PRESENTATION
4 03 Report Acceptance Marine Bird Fall and Early Winter Survey PRESENTATION
4 03 Report Acceptance Marine Bird Fall and Early Winter Survey
4 04 Report Acceptance Vessel Biofouling
4 04 Report Acceptance Vessel Biofouling PRESENTATION
4 05 Report Acceptance 2022 VMT Crude Oil Storage Tank Vent Incident PRESENTATION
4 05 Report Acceptance 2022 VMT Crude Oil Storage Tank Vent Incident
4 06 Federal and State Government Affairs Update
4 07 Community Outreach Annual Report
4 07 Community Outreach Annual Report PRESENTATION
4 08 Addressing Risks and Safety Culture at the VMT
4 08 Addressing Risks and Safety Culture at the VMT PRESENTATION
4 09 Report Acceptance Peer Listener Manual Distribution Plan PRESENTATION
4 09 Report Acceptance Peer Listener Manual Distribution Plan
4 10 Report Acceptance 2024 Annual Drill Monitoring Report PRESENTATION
4 10 Report Acceptance 2024 Annual Drill Monitoring Report
4 11 Annual Board Committee Appointments
4 12 Request for Adjudicatory Hearing on the VMT C Plan.pdf
4 12 Update on Adjudicatory Hearing Request on the Secondary Containment Liner PRESENTATION
5 01 Program and Project Status Report
Alyeska:SERVS Activity Report 2025 May RCAC Board Meeting Presentation
CompleteMeetingPacketMay2025

Board meetings are open to the public, and an opportunity for the public to provide comments is provided at the beginning of each meeting.

 

Funds available for educational projects related to our mission

The Council works to educate Exxon Valdez region youth about the environmentally safe operation of the Alyeska terminal and associated tankers. Working with area youth is vital to fight complacency that can arise if new generations of citizens are not continually reminded of the need for ongoing oil spill prevention.

To support this effort, the Council invites proposals for facilitating learning experiences with Exxon Valdez oil spill region youth. Youth in this case can include students from K-12 formal education, homeschool students, informal education programs, and either formal or informal college-level education. In the past, the PWSRCAC has also sponsored projects for teachers that benefit area youth.

Now accepting proposals

We are currently accepting proposals for projects taking place during the 2025-2026 school year.

Submittal Deadline: 11:59 p.m. on May 9, 2025
Award Announcement on or before July 31, 2025

Projects should result in better understanding of such topics as: citizens’ oversight, environmental impacts of the operation of the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company oil terminal in Valdez and the oil tankers that call there, oil spill prevention and response planning and operation, and/or other topics related to the Council’s mission.

Past and ongoing projects have included:

  • youth stewardship expeditions into the marine environment via sea kayak and other vessels
  • youth monitoring for aquatic invasive species
  • public oil spill science discovery labs
  • oil spill science and technology outreach
  • oil spill education website development
  • K-12 oil spill curriculum writing and testing
  • travel funding for youth presenting oil spill projects at conferences
  • oral history projects related to the Exxon Valdez oil spill
  • other marine stewardship programs for students with an oil spill connection
  • more information about past projects

Download RFP: Youth Involvement 2025-2026 School Year

Questions?

Please contact Outreach Coordinator Maia Draper-Reich at education@pwsrcac.org.


More about the Council:

Future funding opportunities

There are two deadlines each year to submit proposals for educational project funding. You may subscribe to our email list for new Requests for Proposals to receive notifications when these are issued by the Council.

Council’s archives hold valuable lessons

Donna Schantz

Since its inception, the Council has placed a high value on keeping a historical record of documents related to the transportation of oil through Prince William Sound. This includes information that documents the background and rational for implementing many of the safeguards put in place based on lessons learned from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Our archive today is home to over 36,000 files containing a wealth of information.

Many of these documents are scientific studies and technical reports sponsored by the Council, dating back to the early days of our existence. A great example are two studies conducted by Dr. Richard Fineberg in the early 2000s, one on the profits from the oil industry and another on how the industry plans to clean up its facilities after oil no longer flows through the pipeline.

Dr. Fineberg, who died in 2024, conducted studies for other organizations, and our internal document archives contain a record of many of them. A look through some of these is enlightening, such as his 1996 report titled “Pipeline in Peril – A Status Report on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.” This report was sponsored by the Alaska Forum for Environmental Responsibility, which is no longer in business, to look into reports from “concerned employees” that Alyeska had been cutting corners, putting employees and the environment at risk.

These sentiments echo statements made by concerned employees starting in 2022, as documented in our 2023 report by Billie Pirner Garde titled “Assessment of Risks and Safety Culture at Alyeska’s Valdez Marine Terminal.”

Who is paying attention to these details?

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the U.S. Congress found that complacency on the part of industry and government was a contributing factor to the incident. The writers of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 included a call for the creation of citizen councils to give citizens a voice in the decisions that can put their livelihoods, resources, and communities at risk.

Our organization is one of those councils. Our 2023 Garde report is a reminder that our mission and purpose are not only still relevant, but needed just as much if not more today. Fortunately, upon receiving the Garde report, Alyeska initiated a hard look at their safety culture, technical capacity, process and policy, as well as the safety concerns brought forward, and has taken actions to address many of the concerns.

Why is oversight important?

Walt Parker, former member of our Board, had a long history of involvement with the oil industry in Alaska. Among the many roles he served during his career, Parker was appointed chairman of the Alaska Oil Spill Commission that was created to investigate the causes of the Exxon Valdez spill. The Commission issued 52 recommendations to improve national, state, and oil industry policies, including one recommendation that called for the creation of our Council. In the forward to their final report, “Spill: The Wreck of the Exxon Valdez – Implications for Safe Transportation of Oil,” Parker described their efforts in the 1970s to design a system that would prevent spills from the soon-to-be oil transportation facility.

Parker wrote that the 1989 spill “could have been prevented if the vigilance that accompanied construction of the pipeline in the 1970s had been continued in the 1980s.”

Instead, as the commission discovered, by 1989, complacency and cost-cutting had returned, leading to disaster.

Fighting complacency

The Council was created, in part, in anticipation of a time when memories of the Exxon Valdez oil spill begin to fade. When there is no one left who can recall the smell of the oil, the sight of suffering wildlife, the feel of anger and despair because livelihoods may have been destroyed, it is more likely that protections may begin to appear stale, burdensome, and unnecessary.

The fact that there has not been another major oil spill in our region since 1989 is a testament to the safeguards put in place following that disaster. These safeguards are built on many lessons learned over time; historical knowledge that is key to maintaining our present system of prevention and preparedness. It is critical that industry, government, and citizen leaders remain cognizant of that history. The Council will always advocate for maintaining and improving our current systems, as well as staying vigilant against measures that could allow complacency to weaken existing protections.

Approval for oil spill contingency plan for terminal comes with conditions

This past November, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, or ADEC, approved the renewal of the oil spill contingency plan for the Valdez Marine Terminal. The approval came with conditions.

The plan, created and managed by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, describes how the company plans to prevent spills from the terminal in Valdez, and how they would contain and clean up oil in case prevention measures fail. The approval followed several rounds of public comment, which began in 2023, and is subject to several conditions. This means the plan is tentatively approved, but there are required steps that must be taken for the approval to be valid.

Secondary containment liners must be evaluated

This image shows the giant crude oil storage tanks at the Valdez Marine Terminal. The walls of the massive asphalt-lined cells can be seen surrounding the tanks in this photo.
The Council has been concerned about these nearly 50-year-old liners for years. In 2023, the Council funded a project to evaluate methods that could be used to inspect the underground liners without excavating them.

As one of the conditions, ADEC is requiring that Alyeska conduct further analysis of the secondary containment liners underneath the crude oil storage tanks at the terminal’s East Tank Farm. These liners, made up of catalytically-blown asphalt, are part of a system that is intended to contain oil in the event of a spill, preventing contamination of surface and groundwater.

The liners are hard to inspect because they are covered with five feet of ground material.

Credit for a solid liner

Alyeska receives a 60% “prevention credit” from ADEC based on the integrity of these liners. This credit allows Alyeska to plan for a smaller spill, thus reducing the amount of equipment and responders that are listed in the plan to begin a quick response.

The credit is contingent upon the asphalt liner meeting ADEC’s “sufficiently impermeable” standard. This standard is based on a formula that determines whether the liner is solid enough that it can contain spilled oil until it is detected and cleaned up. Cracks and damage have previously been discovered in some areas when the liner has been exposed.

Request for public review of test results

In a November letter to the department, the Council requested that ADEC allow a public review of any changes that result from Alyeska’s analysis of the liner. The Council also requested the addition of a deadline for the analysis and corrective actions if the analysis finds that the liner is not sufficiently impermeable to meet ADEC’s standard. ADEC issued a decision that imposed deadlines for completion of the liner evaluation by 2028. The department did not include a public review or corrective actions.

Future updates

These plans are required to be updated every five years by industry and submitted for public review. This update to the terminal plan expires in 2029.

How and why do contingency plans change over time? Read a 2021 Council-sponsored report on how the plan for a spill from tankers developed over the years:

The image is a graphic showing the cycle for renewal of oil spill contingency plans. The cycle begins with industry drafting updated plans, which is submitted to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation or ADEC. Sometimes ADEC requests clarifications or more information. Once they are satisfied, ADEC opens a public comment period. The Council and other members of the public submit comments, and ADEC reviews the input. Sometimes complicated issues require an extra public review period. Once ADEC is satisfied, they issue a final approval. Over the next five years, the plans are tested during drills and exercises. Then the cycle begins again when the industry takes the lessons from drills and drafts a new proposed plan.
Every five years, this oil spill contingency plan is renewed. The process starts with Alyeska, who updates the plan to include new technology or lessons learned during drills.
A renewed plan is effective for five years, when the cycle will be repeated. This process ensures that the preparations for preventing and responding to oil spills will continue to improve.
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