The Council's Long-Term Environmental Monitoring Program (LTEMP) was begun in 1993 with the goal of monitoring for environmental impacts from oil transportation activities.
The program samples Port Valdez sediments near the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company’s Valdez Marine Terminal and at the Gold Creek reference station, as well as intertidal mussel tissues at selected sites in Prince William Sound (PWS) and across the northwest Gulf of Alaska (GOA) region for petroleum hydrocarbon analyses.
Within Port Valdez, three stations, Saw Island (AMT) and Jackson Point (JAP) near the terminal, and the Gold Creek (GOC) reference site (6 km across the Port) are sampled annually. Every five years, the Port Valdez stations are augmented by additional mussel sampling along the path of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS) in Prince William Sound at five stations: Knowles Head (KNH), Sheep Bay (SHB), Disk island (DII), Zaikof Bay (ZAB), and Sleepy Bay (SLB); and along the extended EVOS track at three Gulf of Alaska stations: Aialik Bay (AIB), Windy Bay (WIB), and Shuyak Harbor (SHH).