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Legacy Award Honor Roll
Legacy Awards 1999-2008 |
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| 2009 Legacy Award Winners | |
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The Members of the Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force presented their 2009 Legacy Awards at the Clean Pacific Conference in Portland, OR on September 15th. Awards were presented by Dick Pedersen, the Director of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, who hosted the Conference.
Each of our 2009 winners has demonstrated their dedication to improving oil spill prevention, preparedness, and response on the West Coast and beyond. CONGRATULATIONS to the following 2009 Legacy Award winners:
 From left to right: Scott Knutson, Richard Wright, Alan Allen, and Joseph Mullin * * * * * 
Richard Wright, retired Pacific NW Regional Vice President of the Marine Spill Response Cooperative:Richard Wright recently retired as the Regional Vice President of the Marine Spill Response Corporation (MSRC) Pacific/Northwest Region, which encompasses Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii. Prior to the merger of the Clean Sound Cooperative, Inc. with MSRC in April of 2005, he was the President of Clean Sound. He is also a retired U. S. Coast Guard Captain. In April of 2005, Mr. Wright expertly guided the MSRC merger with Clean Sound. This merger has enhanced the readiness and response capabilities in Washington (as well as Oregon and Hawaii) by making a larger inventory of resources available and by allowing access to the MSRC's resource base on the West Coast and nationally. Mr. Wright was instrumental in maintaining the combined response inventory that resulted when both companies joined forces. He also ensured that the merged organization provides access for both the U. S. Coast Guard and the State of Washington to call-out and manage all of the combined resources with a single phone call. "It cannot be overlooked that at the time of the merger, great uncertainly existed within both organizations, which could have resulted in operational chaos were it not for the calming influence and guidance that Mr. Wright exhibited," noted one of the two persons who nominated Mr. Wright. "In all his interactions, whether working with his customers or with regulators, Mr. Richard Wright is known to be an unbiased trust broker. He prides himself on finding ways to address challenges that leave stakeholders feeling they were dealt with fairly." "Mr. Richard Wright...has always felt his role was to be a significant liaison and honest broker between the oil/gas industry, agencies, tribes, other contractors and the interested public. He has certainly been successful in achieving his goal by contributing to the improved understanding of issues and communication of potential common goals between all of these entities. In doing so he earned the trust and respect of those with whom he worked, whether or not everyone was in agreement on the final outcome," noted the other person nominating him. Among Mr. Wright's many significant contributions to improving oil spill preparedness and response are:
* * * * *  Joseph Mullin, Manager of the Minerals Management Service's National Oil Spill Response Research Program:Joe Mullin has been the Program Manager for the U.S. Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service's (MMS) Nationwide Oil Spill Response Research (OSRR) Program for more than 18 years. He is responsible for development of research priorities for oil spill response, and for the management of contractual research. He conducts analysis of Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas operations to ensure their use of congressionally-mandated "Best and Safest Technologies," and he advises the OSRR program on appropriate oil spill response equipment and techniques. Mr. Mullin's research has focused on the study of crude oil's chemical and physical properties, remote sensing, mechanical oil recovery, in-situ burning, chemical treating agents and dispersants, and arctic spill response. He is directly involved in the evaluation of many different types of oil spill response equipment and techniques as well as the development and testing of numerous oil spill countermeasures including fire-resistant booms, skimmers for broken ice conditions, in-situ burning in various environments, and cold water dispersant effectiveness. With a practical background in equipment development and testing, Mr. Mullin participates in numerous laboratory, small-scale or meso-scale experiments, as well as at-sea field trials involving scientists from international agencies and organizations. His experience with in-situ burning of oil as an oil spill response tools derives from participation in more than 200 research burns in the U.S., Canada, and overseas. Under Mr. Mullin's direction, MMS's OSRR program has successfully developed, coordinated and managed more than 150 research projects and technical assessment studies. All reports from the OSSR program are available at www.mms.gov/tarphome. His collaborative efforts are extensive and he has worked with all major North American and European R&D Programs. Joe often serves as the key broker bringing together government and industry programs for cooperative research; more than 40% of the projects initiated by the MMS in the past 10 years were jointly funded with state, federal and foreign government agencies, academia and private industry. Mr. Mullin has authored or co-authored 134 scientific papers, technical articles and peer-reviewed publications. He has conducted scientific presentations at numerous national and international oceanographic, hydrographic and oil spill conferences, workshops, technical seminars and meetings including the United Nations Conference on the Environment and the U.S.-Indonesia Joint Oil Spill Response Seminar in Jakarta. Mr. Mullin represents the MMS on the Executive Board of the International Oil Spill Conference (IOSC) and has chaired the conference's popular Film Festival since 1999. He has lectured at the U.S. Naval Post Graduate School, the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, and at NOAA's Atlantic and Pacific Marine Centers. Mr. Mullin serves as a member of several national and international committees, which include:
Joe oversaw the expansion of the facility to allow testing of in-situ burn strategies and equipment, new types of sorbents and solidifiers, and remote sensing equipment to detect oil under various conditions. To respond to the challenges of testing and evaluating equipment for oil spill response in ice-infested water, Joe was the driving factor to upgrade Ohmsett for cold water testing and training (with or without ice); Ohmsett is now able to simulate realistic broken ice conditions. Thanks to Joe's efforts, Ohmsett is also a key resource for spill response training. Personnel from state and federal government agencies, private industry, and foreign countries can actually work with oil on water as they operate various pieces of response equipment. Joe also oversaw the expansion of Ohmsett to allow researchers to test the effectiveness of chemical dispersants, new dispersant formulations and application equipment on a wide variety of oil types under a range of realistic environmental conditions. Ohmsett has become a world leader in realistic dispersant effectiveness testing through the design and development of a calibrated, referenced and realistic test protocol, plus subsequent testing under cold and temperate conditions. * * * * *  Alan Allen, an oil spill consultant working as "Spiltec":Throughout his career, Al Allen has contributed a body of work that has benefited both individual organizations and the response community as a whole. Mr. Allen has over 40 years experience as a technical advisor and field supervisor involving hundreds of oil spills around the world. After graduate training in oceanography, petroleum engineering and arctic engineering, he spent several years of mapping natural oil seeps off California in the 60's. After assessing the impacts of spilled oil from the Santa Barbara blowout in 1969, he pioneered some of the first underwater investigations of oil impact on benthic communities. He is recognized as one of the first 50 aquanauts in the U.S., having lived for weeks on the ocean floor in a Hydro-Lab. Mr. Allen has also conducted research, developed strategies, and developed equipment involving the physical removal, chemical treatment, and controlled burning of spilled oil under a broad range of conditions, while providing operational guidance for government and industry organizations involving critical on-scene decisions during response. During the Exxon Valdez spill, Mr. Allen conducted the first offshore controlled burn of oil contained within a fire boom during an actual spill event; he also directed the initial application of chemical dispersants. During these past 40 years, Mr. Allen served as manager of four oil spill response organizations, one of which was the Alaskan Beaufort Sea Oil Spill Response Body, now known as Alaska Clean Seas. With projects spanning 65 countries, he has developed specialized strategies and equipment for the prevention, surveillance and control of oil spills, while conducting many hundreds of oil spill training courses under arctic, temperate and tropic conditions. As an example of his work, Mr. Allen recently worked with the Clean Islands Council (a Hawaii response coop) by contributing to and reviewing the curriculum for their "Practical Observation for Oil Spill Response" course. Noted Kim Beasley, General Manager of the Clean Islands Council, "the input and contributions of Mr. Allen were essential to the accuracy and value of our efforts to create an observation program and expand the number of trained observers so necessary for effective response. His efforts on our behalf were without financial remuneration and have directly benefited not only our community but other communities as well. This year alone we will be teaching this course in Anchorage, Honolulu, San Ramon, Houston, and Anacortes." A fundamental contribution to this oil spill observation program was the standardization of spilled oil descriptors that reflect meaningful values for volume estimation, with fewer (reducing the number of descriptors from approximately 18 down to 5) and more intuitive terms to communicate the incident situation to the command post and Unified Command. An indication of the value of his contribution, noted Mr. Beasley, is that NOAA revised their Open Water Oil Observation Job Aid to match many of the aerial observation standards proposed by Mr. Allen. Mr. Beasley further noted that "Al Allen has been a contributor to Hawaii's dispersant application program, starting in 1994, and was a primary observer /evaluator at our comprehensive 2007 dispersant exercise off of Oahu. His work to create Hydro-Fire Boom, one of three of his patented ideas, took in-situ burning to the next generation by developing a cooling technology that increases the survivability of the boom to enhance the effectiveness of this response option. In Hawaii our response capability has benefited greatly because of his participation and contributions." * * * * *  Scott Knutson, U.S. Coast Guard District 13 Response Advisory Team Supervisor:Scott Knutson is a civilian staffer at the U.S. Coast Guard District 13. As a behind-the-scenes staffer, he gets little visibility; yet he is highly respected because he does his job to the highest standards, provides for continuity in community relationships, makes an effort to solicit information, and helps build consensus. For many years, Mr. Knutson has provided exceptional leadership, mentoring, planning and sweat-effort on numerous projects in the US and Canada. His work ethic, without regard for personal recognition, has directly led to significant positive results in the areas of response planning, training, cross-border communications, equipment testing, and drill facilitation/evaluation. His personal style has allowed him to be successful with the interested public, contingency plan holders, tribal members, contractors, and Canadian governmental officials, all for the benefit of spill prevention and response. Among Mr. Knutson's many significant contributions to improving oil spill preparedness and response, he:
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Legacy Awards 1999-2008 |
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