The Alaska Coastal Communities Cooperative: The concept and feasibility

A new initiative is described which further prepares Alaska to deal with oil spills in the future by focusing on the needs of shoreline protection and nearshore response. The Alaskan Coastal Communities Cooperative (ACCC) has been formed to organize local resources and provide appropriate training, equipment, and coordination to deal with both small spills, local product spills, and catastrophic spills. Advantages of the ACCC to industry and governments include a significant enhancement of oil spill response capability in Alaska. For example, the ACCC will ensure that the response equipment it acquires is compatible with existing resources, thus creating maximum response capability at minimum cost. Other advantages include greater public trust, low costs, ability to provide a combination of local knowledge and technical knowledge, provision of a pooling of spill response resources, and the ability of the ACCC to handle contracting of local fishing and other vessels used in oil spill response. The ACCC organizational structure and vessel contracting program are described along with its equipment and operating format. 1 fig