Summary
The Gulf of Alaska and the Southern Gulf Coast have been the sites of the two worst oil spills in U.S. history, Exxon Valdez (1989) and Deepwater Horizon (2010), respectively. These spills had devastating impacts on the environment, human health, the local economy, the seafood industry, and local communities’ way of life. While the incidents differed in many ways, the response and recovery efforts both worked to restore the environment and help communities move on from their losses. Much can be learned from the experiences of the response workers, industry personnel, community members, and scientific researchers who worked on these efforts. By understanding the best practices and lessons learned from these oil spills, society can be better prepared to deal with future technological disasters.
To help facilitate the sharing of these ideas, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Gulf Research Program launched a three-part workshop series to bring together people with connections to the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon oil spills to discuss the challenges, successes, and areas where improvements could be made. The first workshop was held in Anchorage, Alaska, in October 2024; the second workshop was held in Thibodaux, Louisiana, in December 2024; and the final workshop was held in Washington, D.C., in March of 2025. Efforts were made to include speakers and workshop participants from both Alaska and the Gulf region, as well as participants who represent a range of experiences (community members, responders, government, industry, researchers, etc.) and disciplines (physical oceanography, marine biology, chemistry, sociology,
economics, public health, etc.). This breadth of knowledge and experience resulted in lively discussion and idea sharing throughout the workshop series.
The first workshop in Anchorage, Alaska, in October 2024 focused on three primary themes: (1) understanding the socioeconomic impacts of oil spills on the fishing industry and subsistence fishing, (2) ways to incorporate community engagement in science and response efforts, and (3) building community capacity to ensure proactive preparedness for future oil spills. The workshop was structured to include a panel discussion on each theme and then a long breakout discussion session for all participants to voice their thoughts. During this workshop, many participants talked about the need for better communication between all parties involved in oil spill response but specifically called out the need for improved engagement with communities. Further, the development of trust was cited several times as critical in aiding better communication during a crisis. Some participants called out areas where additional investment was needed for education, workforce development, and training. Another resounding theme that emerged was the lack of existing structure and need for development of processes to address human health, especially the mental and behavioral health toll taken by a disaster of this nature. It was regularly acknowledged by multiple participants that much of this work for improvements to the response and recovery systems needs to happen before a spill occurs.
The second workshop in Thibodaux, Louisiana, in December 2024 centered on a similar set of three themes: (1) prioritizing community needs during the response process, (2) improvements and future research needs for the science and technology required for transformative recovery, and (3) ensuring that communities and responders are better prepared to deal with the physical, mental, and emotional health impacts of an oil spill. This workshop followed a similar structure to the one in Anchorage with three panels and long breakout discussions to follow each; however, this workshop also included an interactive World Café session for participants to further dialogue and share their ideas on topics previously discussed or not included in the agenda. This workshop featured participants sharing many of the same issues as the first workshop around ways to improve communication by sharing research and stories, building trusted relationships in advance of an oil spill, and centering community participation throughout the planning and response process by breaking down barriers and institutionalizing the role of local fishers, tribes, and community members. The panelists and participants further addressed the issues surrounding health
during this workshop and cited many ways for improving access to public health resources, long-term resilience of systems built on recovery funds, and ways to build up mental health infrastructure in communities ahead of a disaster. Several participants stressed the importance of investing in other sustained capacity building activities, including ongoing funding for environmental and health baseline and sustained monitoring data collection and career training for researchers, responders, and local community members.
The final workshop in Washington, D.C., in March 2025 concentrated on effective strategies for better communication; ensuring the prioritization of community needs during all facets of the oil spill timeline; and ways to improve technology, policy, and structures to better prevent oil spills in the United States. The structure of this workshop included several panels, keynote speakers, and expert presentations, as well as one breakout activity. While structured differently with less breakout discussion, similar themes emerged through comments from multiple speakers and audience members around strengthening relationships in the time between oil spills to help build trust, and a need to center people and human health (including mental health) throughout the response and recovery process. Similar themes also emerged around investing in capacity building activities around data collection and training the next generation of oil spill researchers and responders. Several speakers in this workshop also delved into ways our policies and systems (i.e., the Incident Command System, the National Contingency Plan, Area Contingency Plans, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, etc.) could be improved to include community engagement, social science, and local knowledge. Panelists also repeatedly commented on the need for transparency in sharing data and information and for enhanced collaboration between researchers, industry, government, and communities. The final day’s presenters and panelists emphasized the importance of a strong safety culture in industry to help prevent spills from happening.
As is evident given the workshop summaries, several points were repeatedly made by panelists, speakers, and workshop participants across all three workshops regarding lessons learned and areas for improvement. These issues that were raised repeatedly throughout the workshop series can be found in Table S-1 below and provide only a brief overview of some key discussions that were had at the events.
TABLE S-1 Summary Issues That Arose Throughout the Workshop Series
| Summary Point |
|---|
| Long-term funding (potentially from reallocation of the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund) for research and planning, especially around prevention, ecosystem monitoring, preparedness, resilience, community health, and communications. |
| Establishing and maintaining relationships between government representatives, responders, and researchers with local, trusted community leaders to actively engage communities in decision-making before, during, and after a spill. |
| Communicating research and response information transparently and accessibly (i.e., language, medium, uncertainty, jargon, etc.) for community members and other interested parties. |
| Incorporation of human health concerns, including acute, chronic, and generational mental health, as well as the additional long-standing stressors experienced while navigating post-spill processes into the oil spill response, recovery, and preparedness processes. |
| Including community engagement and human health concerns as part of the Incident Command System, the National Response System, and the National Contingency Plan. |
| Inclusion of local community members (especially Indigenous groups), state and local agencies, academics, and industry representatives in preparedness, training, and response planning. |
| Investing in training the next generation of oil spill scientists and responders to help minimize institutional knowledge loss. |
| Co-creating research objectives with communities and collaborating with other researchers to improve research relevance and efficacy. |
| Embedding cultural responsiveness in assessment and compensation practices for better community outcomes. |
| Overcoming structural barriers to local engagement (e.g., meeting times, locations, compensation, etc.) by allocating funds to community members and organizations. |
| Structured mechanisms of local community engagement in the Southern Gulf and elsewhere, similar to the Regional Citizens’ Advisory Councils in Alaska. |
| Company culture in industry that embraces safety to reduce human failure, oversights, and mistakes that could lead to an oil spill. |
