Clean Bill of Health

U.S. Department of the Interior study shows no increase in contaminants in Cook Inlet since the start of the oil and gas industry in the 1960s

Kay Cashman

PNA Editor-in-Chief/Land & Leasing Reporter

As a result of pressure from Greenpeace and other environmental and Cook Inlet watchdog groups, the U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service in Anchorage ordered the most costly Cook Inlet water quality study in its history. Conducted this past year by Arthur D. Little, a Cambridge, Mass.-based internationally known research firm, the results of the first half of the study show that there have been no increases in sediment contaminants since oil operations began in the Cook Inlet in the early 1960s.

“We expected to see some shifts, some increases in contaminants in the sediment from Cook Inlet after the 1960s ... but the results showed a flat line. ... There's just not been any change over time,” Susan Saupe told PNA in a mid-June interview. Saupe is science research coordinator with Cook Inlet Regional Citizens Advisory Council, the most active of the Cook Inlet water quality watchdog groups.

Earlier studies conducted within the actual boundaries of Cook Inlet by MMS and others had come up with, at the most, “insignificant levels of contaminants in the water and sediment from industry,” said Saupe, “as compared to background levels of the same compounds naturally found in the inlet.

The rest of this story is available from Petroleum News • Alaska by calling the circulation manager Dan Wilcox at 522-9469 for back issue copies. (June 1998)