|
Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council
The Prince William Sound Regional Citizens' Advisory Council is an independent non-profit organization based in Anchorage and Valdez, Alaska, whose mission is to promote the environmentally-safe operation of the Alyeska Pipeline's Valdez Marine Terminal and associated oil tankers, and to inform the public of those activities. Background and formation In the years leading up to the ''Exxon Valdez'' disaster, safeguards against a spill were gradually decreased and emergency responses not adequately prepared. Nor was there any mechanism, other than public hearings by regulatory agencies, for citizens to advise the oil industry or otherwise speak directly on operations affecting their communities and livelihoods. Earlier attempts by Prince William Sound residents to give input to oil industry representatives were generally met with negative responses. The Council was formed after the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 by citizens of the region to provide a voice for communities affect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nonprofit Organization
A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or social benefit, as opposed to an entity that operates as a business aiming to generate a Profit (accounting), profit for its owners. A nonprofit organization is subject to the non-distribution constraint: any revenues that exceed expenses must be committed to the organization's purpose, not taken by private parties. Depending on the local laws, charities are regularly organized as non-profits. A host of organizations may be non-profit, including some political organizations, schools, hospitals, business associations, churches, foundations, social clubs, and consumer cooperatives. Nonprofit entities may seek approval from governments to be Tax exemption, tax-exempt, and some may also qualify to receive tax-deductible contributions, but an enti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cook Inlet
Cook Inlet (; Sugpiaq language, Sugpiaq: ''Cungaaciq'') stretches from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage, Alaska, Anchorage in south-central Alaska. Cook Inlet branches into the Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm at its northern end, almost surrounding Anchorage. On its southern end, it merges with Shelikof Strait, Stevenson Entrance, Kennedy Entrance and Chugach Passage. The Cook Inlet and both its arms are bodies of brackish water, containing a turbid mix of ocean salt-water and freshwater runoff from the various rivers and streams. The narrow channel of the inlet funnels the tides creating very fast-moving currents, rip tides, and occasional bore tides. Cook Inlet watershed is the most populated watershed in Alaska. The drainage basin, watershed covers about of southern Alaska, east of the Aleutian Range, south and east of the Alaska Range, receiving water from its tributaries, which include the Knik River, the Little Susitna River, the Susitna River, Susitna and Matanuska River, Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deepwater Horizon
''Deepwater Horizon'' was an ultra-deepwater, Dynamic positioning, dynamically positioned, Semi-submersible platform, semi-submersible offshore drilling Oil platform, rig owned by Transocean and operated by the BP company. On 20 April 2010, while drilling in the Gulf of Mexico at the Macondo Prospect, a Blowout (well drilling), blowout caused an explosion on the rig that killed 11 crewmen and ignited a fireball visible from away. The fire was inextinguishable and, two days later, on 22 April, the ''Horizon'' collapsed, leaving the well gushing at the seabed and becoming Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest marine oil spill in history. Built in 2001 in South Korea by Hyundai Heavy Industries, the rig was commissioned by R&B Falcon (a later asset of Transocean), registered in Majuro, and leased to BP from 2001 until September 2013. In September 2009, the rig drilled the deepest oil well in history at a vertical depth of and measured depth of in the Tiber Oil Field at Kea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invasive Species
An invasive species is an introduced species that harms its new environment. Invasive species adversely affect habitats and bioregions, causing ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage. The term can also be used for native species that become harmful to their native environment after human alterations to its food web. Since the 20th century, invasive species have become serious economic, social, and environmental threats worldwide. Invasion of long-established ecosystems by organisms is a natural phenomenon, but human-facilitated introductions have greatly increased the rate, scale, and geographic range of invasion. For millennia, humans have served as both accidental and deliberate dispersal agents, beginning with their earliest migrations, accelerating in the Age of Discovery, and accelerating again with the spread of international trade. Notable invasive plant species include the kudzu vine, giant hogweed (''Heracleum mantegazzianum''), Japanese knotw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia Glacier (Alaska)
__NOTOC__ The Columbia Glacier, a glacier in Prince William Sound on the south coast of the U.S. state of Alaska, is one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world, and has been retreating since the early 1980s. It was named after Columbia University, one of several glaciers in the area named for elite U.S. colleges by the Harriman Alaska Expedition in 1899. The head of the main branch of the glacier originates at the saddle between Mount Witherspoon and Mount Einstein. The Alaska Marine Highway System, Alaska Marine Highway vessel M/V Columbia, M/V ''Columbia'' is named after the Columbia Glacier. Size The glacier twists its way through western Alaska's Chugach Mountains. The bald streak at the bottom of the mountains, called the trimline, shows this glacier has lost of thickness. It has also retreated since that measurement was taken. Retreat The glacier's speed of retreat at the terminus reached a maximum of nearly per day in 2001, when it was discharging icebergs at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oil Tankers
An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk transport of oil or its products. There are two basic types of oil tankers: crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries. Product tankers, generally much smaller, are designed to move refined products from refineries to points near consuming markets. Oil tankers are often classified by their size as well as their occupation. The size classes range from inland or coastal tankers of a few thousand metric tons of deadweight (DWT) to ultra-large crude carriers (ULCCs) of . Tankers move approximately of oil every year.UNCTAD 2006, p. 4. Second only to pipelines in terms of efficiency,Huber, 2001: 211. the average cost of transport of crude oil by tanker amounts to only US. Some specialized types of oil tankers have evolved. One of these is the naval replenishment oiler, a tanker which can fuel a moving vessel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oil Pollution Act Of 1990
The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA) was passed by the 101st United States Congress and signed by President George H. W. Bush. It works to avoid oil spills from vessels and facilities by enforcing removal of spilled oil and assigning liability for the cost of cleanup and damage; requires specific operating procedures; defines responsible parties and financial liability; implements processes for measuring damages; specifies damages for which violators are liable; and establishes a fund for damages, cleanup, and removal costs. This statute has resulted in instrumental changes in the oil production, transportation, and distribution industries. Background Laws governing oil spills in the United States began in 1851 with the Limitation of Liability Act. This statue, in an attempt to protect the shipping industry, stated that vessel owners were liable for incident-related costs up to the post-incident value of their vessel. The shortcomings of this law were revealed in 1967 with the r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alyeska Pipeline Service Company
The Alyeska consortium refers to the major oil companies that own and operate the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) through the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company. History The Alaska corporation commonly known as Alyeska Pipeline Company was founded in 1970 to design, construct, operate and maintain a pipeline to transport oil from the fields on the North Slope of Alaska where oil was discovered in 1968 to an ice-free deep-water port in Valdez, Alaska. The pipeline was built between March 1975 and June 1977, running from the North Slope fields at Prudhoe Bay to the Marine Terminal at Valdez on Prince William Sound. Alyeska then went on to operate and maintain TAPS. The first oil flowed into the pipeline on June 20, 1977, and the first tanker load departed from Valdez on August 1, 1977. ''Totem Marine Tug & Barge, Inc. v. Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.'' was argued before the Alaska Supreme Court in 1978. The Alyeska Pipeline Service Company was partially responsible for helping ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gulf Of Alaska
The Gulf of Alaska ( Tlingit: ''Yéil T'ooch’'') is an arm of the Pacific Ocean defined by the curve of the southern coast of Alaska, stretching from the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island in the west to the Alexander Archipelago in the east, where Glacier Bay and the Inside Passage are found. The Gulf shoreline is a combination of forest, mountain and a number of tidewater glaciers. Alaska's largest glaciers, the Malaspina Glacier and Bering Glacier, spill out onto the coastal line along the Gulf of Alaska. The coast is heavily indented with Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound, the two largest connected bodies of water. It includes Yakutat Bay and Cross Sound. Lituya Bay (a fjord north of Cross Sound, and south of Mount Fairweather) is the site of the largest recorded tsunami in history. It serves as a sheltered anchorage for fishing boats. The Gulf of Alaska is considered a Class I, productive ecosystem with more than 300 grams of carbon per square meter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
501(c)(3)
A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, Trust (business), trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 501(c) organization, 501(c) nonprofit organizations in the US. 501(c)(3) tax-exemptions apply to entities that are organized and operated exclusively for religion, religious, Charitable organization, charitable, science, scientific, literature, literary or educational purposes, for Public security#Organizations, testing for public safety, to foster national or international amateur sports competition, or for the prevention of Child abuse, cruelty to children or Cruelty to animals, animals. 501(c)(3) exemption applies also for any non-incorporated Community Chest (organization), community chest, fund, Cooperating Associations, cooperating association or foundation organized and operated exclusively for those purposes. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prince William Sound
Prince William Sound ( Sugpiaq: ''Suungaaciq'') is a sound off the Gulf of Alaska on the south coast of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is located on the east side of the Kenai Peninsula. Its largest port is Valdez, at the southern terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. Other settlements on the sound, which contains numerous small islands, include Cordova and Whittier plus the Alaska native villages of Chenega and Tatitlek. History James Cook entered Prince William Sound in 1778 and initially named it Sandwich Sound, after his patron the Earl of Sandwich. Later that year, the Sound was named to honour George III's third son Prince William Henry, then aged 13 and serving as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. In 1790, the Spanish explorer Salvador Fidalgo entered the sound, naming many of its features. Some places in the sound still bear the names given by Fidalgo, as Port Valdez, Port Gravina or Cordova. The explorer landed on the actual site of Cordova and took possess ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
The ''Exxon Valdez'' oil spill was a major environmental disaster that occurred in Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. The spill occurred when ''Exxon Valdez'', an oil supertanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, bound for Long Beach, California, Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 a.m. The tanker oil spill, spilled more than (or 37,000 tonnes) of Petroleum, crude oil over the next few days. The ''Exxon Valdez'' spill is the second largest in U.S. waters, after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, ''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill, in terms of volume of oil released. It is the List of disasters by cost, costliest disaster ever with no direct human fatalities. Prince William Sound's remote location, accessible only by helicopter, plane, or boat, made government and industry response efforts difficult and made existing response plans especially hard to implement. The region is a habitat for salmon, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
