Alaska Oil Spill Response and Cultural Resources
The 1989 EXXON VALDEZ oil spill and response activities that followed necessitated the development of emergency and long-term measures to protect cultural resources along Alaska’s affected coastline. The Alaska State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) played a key role in developing and monitoring these efforts, along with other government and industry cultural resource specialists. In many ways, the response to cultural resources and quick development of an infrastructure to address the challenges were unprecedented. There were lessons learned as protocols, guidelines, and organizational structure evolved over the course of several field seasons. One of the important accomplishments in the aftermath of the EXXON VALDEZ oil spill was the development of a “National Programmatic Agreement on Protection of Historic Properties During Emergency Response Under the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan” and the complimentary “Alaska Implementation Guidelines for Federal On-Scene Coordinators …”
Our colleagues in the Gulf of Mexico region are now struggling with many of the same cultural resource issues in the aftermath of the recent oil platform tragedy there. Chris Wooley (Chumis Cultural Resource Services), who has played a key role as an industry contractor for the EXXON VALDEZ spill response and for subsequent spill responses and spill drills, offers this advice for cultural resource professionals responding to a major multi-state oil release:
“[Response] … will likely require the organization of a joint Cultural Technical Advisory Group from a number of SHPOs across the spill area. The first thing that typically is done is implement a cleanup-wide cultural resource policy… (customized to the event) that shows the unified command supports the historic properties issues… If there are cultural resource issues (sites in the spill area), get archaeologists on the SCAT (shoreline assessment) teams to document site condition prior to response if at all possible. Keeping site confidentiality is a challenge, so using shoreline segment numbers – not site names or locations when dealing with the documentation – help protect locations. Get monitors into the cleanup. As you know, this takes coordination with all the Unified Command elements, and most importantly, good communications with the Operations element. The folks involved in laying boom, collecting oil, doing cleanup need to understand we’re not some pinhead “ologists” doing research and standing in the way of cleanup. Rather we’re there to help them work around these sensitive areas – just like a nesting site or spawning area of biological concern. That’s a message that needs to be understood early in the response.”
The Alaska Office of History and Archaeology, working with other Alaska agencies and contractors, has compiled digital documents of procedures instituted and lessons learned during the Exxon Valdez spill response (follow linked title above to access).
