SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATIONS

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill, as is the case with other large spills, the federal and state trustees for natural resources and the spiller designed and initiated studies to collect data to support their pre-conceived positions. The governments’ position was that resources were injured and retribution required, while Exxon’s position was that resources may have been injured, but recovery was rapid, and liability was minimal.

Understandably, this resulted in two sets of data which portrayed virtually opposite findings on the status of injury to and recovery of Prince William Sound. While limited information sharing between government and industry scientists is not atypical of "spill science," (because of liability and confidentiality), completely duplicative sets of studies, with no basis for comparison, can increase both research and litigation costs, and confuse public understanding of spill impacts.

Part of the problem is that the scientific community is not prepared to peer-review studies that are premised on preconceptions, i.e., "spill science." Another part of the problem is that federal laws governing spill research simply do not work for catastrophic spills with minimal baseline data, because of the disproportionately large number of NRDA (natural resource damage assessment) studies needed for litigation and classified as confidential. In situations such as the Exxon Valdez, effort becomes focused on "legal questions of whether data should or will be released, not on the more important issue of restoration of the environment. Once the focus on restoration is lost, things rapidly progress from bad to worse, as discussed earlier in this paper.

It is imperative that the scientific community, Congress, and the state and federal governments, and take steps to improve the quality of science that becomes part of the public domain, particularly studies undertaken in the aftermath of an oil spill.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1) Oil spill response, damage, and restoration research conducted with public funds should be peer-reviewed during design and prior to publication, and should be competitively bid to ensure high quality, cost-effective research.

2) Congress should require cooperative research during spill response and restoration. The laws governing oil spill response should include, in regulation, provisions for

a mandatory agreement by all parties on a comprehensive research plan and cooperative studies, including procedures for peer review during design and prior to publication, a quality control program, splitting samples, chain of custody, and data reporting; and

a mandatory agreement by all parties that public presentation and/or publication of the cooperative studies, and admissibility of the studies and data in court, are contingent upon adhering to the procedures established for these studies.

3) Federal and state agencies should work cooperatively with the public (as required by OPA ’90) to develop comprehensive baseline monitoring programs that incorporate the latest fates and effects research and includes subsistence harvest information. To fund this research, Congress should require each agency listed in OPA ’90 to commit a percentage of its budget for oil spill effects research as defined in the Act. A comprehensive baseline monitoring program should be completed prior to approval of state and federal oil and gas lease sales.

4) An Alaska State Trustee for Natural Resources should be appointed immediately: given the magnitude of both oil development and the natural resources at risk, this should be a dedicated position within the Department of Fish and Game, funded through the general operating budget.

5) The Exxon Valdez oil spill Trustee internal review process should be restructured so that senior authors send their papers out to the scientific community for peer review before submission either as a Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) final report or to a journal for publication.

In conclusion, in any oil spill, the interests of governments, industry, and private plaintiffs must not be allowed to supercede the responsibility of governments to uphold the public trust in stewardship of natural resources. The public trust can only be upheld through maximizing public access to spill response, damage, and restoration research. The public has a right-to-know the full environmental impacts of industrial accidents that damage public resources: without this information, received in a timely manner, the public is ill-prepared to press for social changes needed to prevent oil spills in the first place.

Private corporations, governments, and the scientific community must not be allowed to subvert the public’s understanding of the environmental impacts of industrial activities.