With passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, Congress recognized the enormous environmental, social and economic risks associated with the marine transport of crude oil. OPA 90 was designed to address many of these risks and created the Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Councils (RCACs) as mechanisms to combat the industry, regulatory and public complacency which was believed to be a contributing factor leading up to the spill. Through the RCACs, the citizens with the most to lose and the most to contribute are represented and engaged as active participants in problem-solving and decision-making to prevent future disasters.

In 1991, CIRCAC was first certified as Cook Inlet’s official Regional Citizens Advisory Council. The certification was presented to Board President James E. Carter, Sr., by U.S. Senator Frank Murkowski. CIRCAC has received U.S. Coast Guard recertification without exception every year since then.
Pictured left to right: Don Gilman, Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor; Bill Stillings, CISPRI General Manager; Senator Frank Murkowski; John Beitia, Unocal; Joe Sautner, ADEC; James E. Carter
Through OPA 90, Congress directed CIRCAC to “review and assess measures designed to prevent oil spills and the planning and preparedness for responding to, containing, cleaning up, and mitigating of oil spills” and “devise and manage a comprehensive program of monitoring the environmental impacts of the operations of terminal facilities and of crude oil tankers.”
The project and program highlights described in this report will serve to illustrate CIRCAC’s strategy to fulfill these broad OPA 90 mandates through risk identification, assessment and mitigation.