Alaska seems to unveil an amazing sight around every corner like the thousands of salmon returning after two years at sea to the very sight they were born. The Solomon Gulch Hatchery to spawn.
“Right here you’re looking at about 150,000 but we’ll have uh, the return this year was approximately 19 million.”
In the distance an oil tanker heads into the Valdez Marine Terminal for a load of crews from the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Watching over oil spill prevention efforts is Roy Robertson’s job.
When asked how much safer is the area now then it was at the time of Exxon Valdez, “Umm, hugely safer,” said Robertson.
Robertson is the drill monitoring project manager for the Prince Williams Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council. Since the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 this citizens group has been a safety watchdog.
“So within the first 24 hours there has been lots of equipment and the standards to have the ability to pick up 300,000 barrels in the first 72 hours which is just phenomenal,” says Robertson.
One of the projects Robertson monitors is the oil spill response program nine barges and 11 tugboats stationed across the Valdez port, fully loaded and manned around the clock.
“You need to do preplanning, if you wait till the time of the spill and don’t have everything set up, you’re kind of screwed,” said Robertson.
For a week the Louisiana delegation has been studying the Exxon Valdez oil spill recovering and they learned sobering lessons to take back home.
“We are here in Valdez where we see the oil spill happened and we finding oil from 21 years so how can 100 days ago they say they had oil and they just capped this well, ten days later or less there’s no oil, come on now who you talking too? Who you trying to bull?” said Iris Brown Carter of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade.
“I was shocked by a lot of the stories.” Father Vien Nguyen, of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
They learned many things they hope will assist Louisiana in the BP disaster recovery.
“Shrimp in the gulf is the main staple, and if it takes 20 years what are we going to do? So we need to look at long term development,” said Nguyen.
“We need a health unit down there to take blood and make sure that people are safe, we need a mental health unit,” said Lafitte Mayor Tim Kerner.
“The things that impressed me the most is the way in which the people here, so much like the folks along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, are exceedingly resilient,” said Kris Peterson of the UNO CHART Center.
But many things they learned left them unsettled and concerned about what it will take for Louisiana too recover.
“It’s that the fisherman need to be aware, it’s possible the fish won’t be there next year or that they’ll be less of them then there have been, you know that we really won’t find out the implications of this on our fisheries for one, two, maybe three years,” said Cynthia Sarthou of the Gulf Restoration Network
“The trick here is too kind of preventing that I think so that twenty years later, that’s not our story, we don’t have twenty years of working and struggling dealing with this so we’re looking to shorten our recovery time,” said Rosina Phillipe, a Grand Bayou resident.
“I’m more nervous now from what I heard because of the situation they went through over here,” said Russell Dardar, of Pointe Aux Chenes.
So they returned to their friends, neighbors and communities in Louisiana, some of them more worried than when they left but thanks to what they learned here in Alaska, better prepared for the road to recovery.
“It’s going to be an almost impossible battle, but we are going to just have to pull together. If we don’t all pull together than it’s going to be a losing battle,”said Dardar.
