Lopez Island’s Julie Knight and the Islands Oil Spill Association (IOSA) were honored with the 2008 Legacy Award at the annual meeting of the Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force.
The 2008 Legacy Awards, presented in Victoria, British Columbia on Sept. 18, acknowledged five individuals, including Knight, for their accomplishments and leadership in oil spill prevention, preparedness, and response activities resulting in enhanced environmental protection.
The Task Force is a regional forum for coordinating and collaborating oil spill prevention and response policies that protect more than 56,660 miles of coastline, from the Beaufort Sea to the Baja Peninsula and out through the island chain of Hawaii. This includes all of Washington’s outer coast and Puget Sound.
Knight heads the Islands Oil Spill Association (IOSA), which originated in the San Juan Islands in 1985, when she and a small group of concerned citizens organized to provide a local response capability until full federal and state response resources could arrive.
According to the international oil spill task force spokesperson, Knight was not only instrumental in the start-up of IOSA but integral to its continued growth.
“IOSA’s grass-roots volunteer efforts have evolved into a sophisticated oil and hazardous material spill response network protecting an ecologically sensitive archipelago that is home to a resident orca population, among other endangered and threatened species.”
When contacted back home on Lopez, Knight said, “We’re very thankful for this award from the Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force. Since most of the time we’re focused on the work before us in the next days and weeks, this Legacy Award inspires us to look back and see how the work of IOSA’s responders has added up during the last 20 years and created an organization that is a long-term, established response and prevention resource for our region.
“Over the years, IOSA’s capability has grown because of the knowledge and skill of IOSA responders as well as their dedication and many contributions.
“This includes:
• All of the times responders worked out in wet, cold, messy conditions, taking time away from their regular jobs to do this work;
• The many volunteer hours contributed to working on response equipment projects or to complete training required for responder certification;
• All the times responders worked at the least popular times … on holidays, including Christmas eve in a rainstorm, or through the night, or in January when the sorbent pads froze solid and you could throw them like Frisbees;
• And the 100s of hours of working quietly behind the scenes, to do a job that doesn’t contain much glamour or monetary reward, just for the sake of getting the job done as soon as possible, and to take care of the shoreline and the waters we all love so much.”
IOSA now has more than 200 trained responders, and is fully recognized by the U.S. Coast Guard as a federal Oil Spill Response Organization, and by the Washington State Department of Ecology as an approved Primary Response Contractor.
IOSA has field-tested and developed 54 geographic response plans to protect the most sensitive resources in the Island’s region. Still volunteer-based, IOSA is on-call 24 hours a day throughout the year. By the end of 2007, IOSA had been called for 465 spill reports in the San Juan Islands, as well as for wildlife rescue services in three major spills elsewhere in Washington. Knight comments that of the 465 calls received, “100 of them required a further response… [including] containment, cleanup of shoreline and/or water, removal of oil/hazmat from a vessel before it was able to spill from that vessel, or oiled wildlife search and collection, and oiled wildlife care.”
In a press release issued with the award notice, the oil spill task force stated, “Knight has enhanced the response and wildlife rescue capability in the region and is a regular contributor to policy discussions in various forums including the Northwest Area Committee workgroup, the Straits and Northern Puget Sound regional marine safety committee, and the Early Action Oil Spill Task Force. Knight has brokered donations of resources for response equipment and pre-staged caches of equipment in sensitive areas to facilitate rapid deployment in an emergency. Additional information about IOSA and its mission may be obtained at iosaonline.org/index.htm.. oilspilltaskforce.org
The other two 2008 Legacy Award winners from Washington are David Sawicki, of BP Cherry Point Refinery and Harriet Spanel, retiring Washington State Senator.
