The States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force presented its first Legacy Awards for Oil Spill Prevention at its 1999 Annual Meeting, in Valdez, Alaska. The winners included: ARCO Marine, Inc.; Alyeska SERVS; Captain Herbert S. "Chip" Sharpe, USCG; The Cook Inlet Regional
Citizens Advisory Council; The High Velocity Current Study Project Team, sponsored by the California State Lands Commission, David Pearce and John Kloman, recipients; Stan Stephens of the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council; David Usher of the Marine
Pollution Control Association.
The new Legacy Awards Program advances the Task Force's spill prevention objective "to develop and support implementation of model spill prevention programs," by recognizing individuals and organizations that successfully implement such exemplary programs.
Although it is the intent of the Task Force Members to expand the scope of the Legacy Awards program in future years to include oil spill response and mitigation efforts as well, for now the emphasis is on oil spill prevention, which they define as efforts that go beyond regulatory requirements to prevent oil spills from occurring. These include successful, complete projects, accomplishments, milestones, events or leadership which demonstrate innovation, management commitment and improvements in oil spill prevention resulting in greater environmental protection. Efforts to provide leadership, promote partnerships and involve the public were considered during review of the nominations, as well as project transferability and the award recipient's willingness to share results/models.