Volunteer Spotlight

Tom Kuckertz: Retired staff member still contributes engineering expertise to council’s mission

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Tom and Sue Kuckertz

The council has benefited from Chicago-born Tom Kuckertz’ broad experience in engineering for 16 years and counting. After his retirement from the council in 2014, Kuckertz continued on as a volunteer for the committee he worked with most closely, the Terminal Operations and Environmental Monitoring Committee.

A young Kuckertz earned degrees in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois and the University of Idaho, followed by two years in the U.S. Army as a Signal Corps officer, where he was involved in the design and implementation of large communications systems.

“Basically, it involved how to move information from one place to another, and in most cases, deny access to adversaries,” explained Kuckertz.

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Kate Morse: Volunteer helps connect new generations with council’s mission

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Morse and her husband Andy will soon be welcoming twin girls into their little Cordova family. Photo courtesy of Kate Morse.

Kate Morse was nine years old and living in Pennsylvania when the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef in 1989. Although she didn’t directly experience the spill personally, she now works to bring the spill to life for a new generation.

Morse has been the Program Director for Cordova’s Copper River Watershed Project since 2008. The organization is based in Cordova but does work throughout the Copper River watershed drainage area, which includes not only Cordova, but Glennallen, Kenny Lake, Mentasta Lake, and Paxson. Morse says the area is about the size of West Virginia, and the population of the region depends on healthy salmon runs.

“It takes an entire watershed to support healthy salmon populations due to their complex life cycle from salt to fresh water and back to salt water again,” says Morse. “Our education programs really aim at getting people to see themselves as part of a watershed community, rather than just the stream in their backyard.”

She says her organization tracks the council’s projects closely because the Trans-Alaska pipeline runs through the Copper River basin.

“There are major river systems in the area,” Morse says. “The prospect of removing oil from a glacial river, how the oil would contaminate the entire water column and the glacial sediments, it would be impossible to clean it up.”

“Prevention is definitely the key.”

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Colin Daugherty: An unlikely Alaskan helps protect Prince William Sound

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Colin Daugherty’s accent quickly gives him away as a native Chicagoan.

“It’s unlikely that I ended up here in Alaska, working on boats,” says Daugherty, a recent addition to the council’s Oil Spill Prevention and Response Committee. “I grew up in inner city Chicago. There was a program there that taught kids about boating skills and seamanship. I was part of that growing up, and it kept me out of trouble.”

Daugherty has been on and around boats ever since.

After school, he moved to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he first got involved with spill prevention and response. He was hired at the Hovensa refinery, at the time the largest fuel refinery in the western hemisphere.
“I felt good about what we could do if bad things happen.”

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Jeremy Talbott: A life on the water inspires stewardship of the sea

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Volunteer Spotlight:

Jeremy Talbott

Jeremy Talbott, member of the council’s Port Operations and Vessel Traffic System Committee, is enthusiastic about his new hometown. He moved to Valdez with his wife Keri and their two daughters in May of 2014 to become the new harbormaster for the city.

“I didn’t even know where Valdez was,” Talbot said. “But it was in Alaska.”

Talbott had dreamed of moving to Alaska for a while. He applied for the Homer Harbormasters job several years ago, and later almost got a position in Juneau as Harbormaster. Talbott was disappointed, but Juneau’s port director told him about the opening in Valdez.

“In hindsight, I’m really glad I got Valdez instead of Juneau,” he says. “I love it. I hit the lottery.”

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