Coast Guard recertifies CIRCAC

The U.S. Coast Guard has recertified a Cook Inlet advisory group for another year.

The certification allows the Cook Inlet Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council to continue monitoring terminal facilities and crude oil tankers in the region through August 2015.

The CIRCAC was created through the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which the U.S. Congress passed in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Since 2002, these advisory committees have been required to provide the Coast Guard with comprehensive information every three years and smaller updates in each of the two intervening years.

The Coast Guard received 54 comments about the recertification, which was released for public notice in May 2014. “All 54 comments were positive and in support of recertification,” Seventeenth Coast Guard District Acting Captain Charles L. Cashin, wrote in a finding last August and released in the Federal Register on Feb. 17. “These letters in support of the recertification consistently cited CIRCAC’s broad representation of the respective community’s interests, appropriate actions to keep the public informed, improvements to both spill response preparation and spill prevention, and oil spill industry monitoring efforts that combat complacency - as intended by the Act.”

- Eric Lidji