Similarities:
Both occurred in beautiful bodies of water famed for their commercial fisheries and tourism industries.

Before both spills, it was generally assumed that the oil industry was operating safely and that a catastrophic spill was extremely unlikely.

After both spills, it became clear that industry and government had not prepared in advance to be able to clean up a spill of the magnitude confronting them. The response had to be improvised on the fly, resulting in precious lost time in the crucial first days of the cleanup effort. In particular, local fishermen-the mariners most knowledgeable about operating near shore and dealing with local weather, currents, and navigational hazards-were not recruited, trained, and organized in advance to immediately swing into action after the spill, either in Alaska in 1989 or the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

In the Gulf, as in Prince William Sound, communities and businesses facing the spill were left largely on their own to devise coping strategies. What little advance planning had been done for the spills had left virtually unaddressed how to deal with the impacts on the human environment in the area of the spill.

Differences:
The Exxon Valdez spill was an essentially instantaneous release of about 11 million gallons of crude oil, whereas the BP spill in the Gulf is an ongoing release that may take months to stop but could, in that time, far exceed the size of the Exxon spill.

A few thousand people live around Prince William Sound, while millions live around the Gulf of Mexico. Hence, the social and economic impacts are likely to be much greater in the Gulf if oil from the BP spill fouls shorelines, damages fisheries, and discourages tourism.

Prince William Sound is a cool, northern water body, while the Gulf of Mexico is much father south and much warmer. Thus, they are two dissimilar ecosystems with dissimilar climates. It is to be expected that crude oil will behave differently in the Gulf environment than it did in Prince William Sound, and that its effects on marine life and waterfowl will be different than in Alaska.

The Gulf of Mexico is bordered by five states-Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas-whereas Prince William Sound is bordered by only one: Alaska. Thus, there were no interstate jurisdictional issues when it came to developing new state laws and regulations after the Exxon Valdez spill. In the Gulf, jurisdictional issues could pose a greater challenge to states crafting appropriate responses to the regulatory and legislative needs brought to light by the BP spill.

The bottom line:
The BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico reinforces some important lessons that Alaskans learned in the Exxon Valdez spill and explained so vividly in "The Spill." Among those lessons: Everything possible must be done to prevent oil spills. Everything possible must be done to prepare for cleaning them up in case prevention fails. And citizen oversight is indispensable in making sure that strong prevention and response measures remain in place. Without the citizen voice in the decision-making process, it is all too easy for the oil industry and its regulators to fall into the trap of complacency that Congress identified as a cause of the Exxon Valdez spill and that appears to have played a role in the BP Gulf spill.

--written by Stan Jones, co-author of THE SPILL: Personal Stories from the Exxon Valdez Disaster, is director of external affairs for the Prince William Sound Citizens Advisory Council.

Note: The Prince William Sound Citizens Advisory Council was formed after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 to provide a voice for communities affected by oil industry decisions in Prince William Sound, the Gulf of Alaska, and Cook Inlet. The council is an independent non-profit organization whose mission is to promote environmentally safe operation of the trans-Alaska pipeline's Valdez terminal and associated oil tankers. More information can be found at www.pwsrcac.org.