From supranational to intertribal - Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities - page 57

and wildlife biologists convened at the beaches in an attempt to clean the grounded
birds and the surrounding environment (Larsen and Richardson, 1990).
The international scale of the spill - coupled with the lack of plans to deal with
such a disaster - prompted officials in Washington and British Columbia to put in
motion a series of actions to coordinate transboundary water issues. The Director
of the Washington State Department of Ecology at the time, Christine Gregoire,
considered the Grays Harbor spill a key event for the development of regional
governance of shared resources. At a keynote address to participants of the Georgia
Basin-Puget Sound conference in Seattle, Washington (2005), Gregoire (who then
held the post of Governor of Washington) reflected:
As the oil spread from the Washington coast into the waters of British
Columbia, I thought to myself . . . 'OK. What next? Who do I call? What
actions do I take? This is now bigger than the State of Washington.' This
frightening experience led me to think critically about how we coordinate
these types of issues. Ultimately, it led us to develop new systems for managing
binational resources.
In response to the Grays Harbor spill, state and provincial officials created the
British Columbia-Washington Oil Spill Task Force to investigate the prevention
of future oil spills, to coordinate emergency responses to future spills, and assess
methods for expediting compensation claims. However, an even bigger spill
led to the creation of a more expansive binational governance system in the Pacific
region.
On 24 March 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound,
Alaska. Ironically, the British Columbia-Washington Oil Spill Task Force held
its first meeting just one day before the Valdez spill. The timing of this event,
and the high-profile media coverage of the Valdez spill, helped create a swell of
momentum for the creation of a more comprehensive governance mechanism
to address multijurisdictional governance issues surrounding oil spills and water
quality. The original task force grew to include Oregon, California, Alaska, and
later Hawaii in what is now called the British Columbia/States Oil Spill Task Force
(Jolly, 1998) - a mechanism that remains active today.
Environmental Cooperation Agreement/Environmental Cooperation Council
The success of the Oil Spill Task Force and the momentum gained through the
concern for future environmental crises helped provide the impetus for British
Columbia and Washington to expand their efforts into general environmental areas
of shared concern (Jolly, 1998). The political climate and leadership of British
Columbia and Washington also aided the expansion at the time.
Governor Booth Gardner and Premier Michael Harcourt formalized this
relationship in May 1992 with the signing of the British Columbia-Washington
Environmental Cooperation Agreement (ECA). This agreement committed
the two jurisdictions to “promote and coordinate mutual efforts to ensure the