Worst oil spill in US has lingering effects for Alaska, industries
By Scott Allen, Globe Staff, 03/07/99
PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND, Alaska - Captain Joseph Hazelwood's voice crackled over the radio at the Coast Guard station in the tiny port of Valdez just after midnight on March 24, 1989.
''We've fetched up, uh, hard aground, north of Goose Island off Bligh Reef,'' said the skipper of the Exxon Valdez, who had been drinking and now struggled to understand what had happened to his tanker. ''And evidently, uh, leaking some oil.''
With that breathtaking understatement, Hazelwood announced the worst oil spill in US history. Pierced by the rocks at Bligh Reef, the Exxon Valdez dumped 10.8 million gallons of thick, crude oil into the water, creating a slick big enough to reach from Cape Cod to North Carolina, and killing animals by the tens of thousands as it spread.
Ten years later, Prince William Sound looks as beautiful as ever from the air, its glacier-fed blue waters broken only by breaching whales or sea otters floating lazily on their backs. Painful as the spill was, life goes on in this vast place, and many animal species are rebounding.
But the deep scars, and the unfinished business, of the Exxon Valdez disaster become clearer down on the water, where only two of the 23 most damaged species have fully recovered and an estimated 40 percent of the fishermen suffer depression over their decimated livelihoods.
''Superficially, this looks healthy ... but you poke around and you still find oil,'' said National Marine Fisheries Service biologist Bruce Wright as he picks his way along the cobblestone beach of Sleepy Bay, where oil piled up 3 feet deep during the spill.
Then, Wright turns over a boulder to reveal the black oil tar, the toxic ''bathtub ring'' left by the spill. ''I don't know of any way you could clean this beach up,'' he said.
If Prince William Sound isn't the same since the spill, neither is the rest of America. The grim spectacle of one of North America's most pristine places turned into an industrial waste site spawned tough new laws that have made oil spills five times more costly to companies, and, as a result, less frequent.
Today, the US coast bristles with billions of dollars worth of boats, booms, and other equipment from Portland, Maine, to San Francisco, awaiting the next big spill, while schools such as the Massachusetts Maritime Academy train hundreds of mariners in cleanup strategies.
Yet, as a recent freighter spill on the Oregon coast demonstrates, oil spills haven't gone away, and as the horror of the Exxon Valdez spill fades, some fear cleanup preparedness may slide, too. Already, the biggest cleanup company has seen its operating budget cut in half as oil producers and transporters reduce support, and regulators fear smaller firms could fail.
Now, as the oil industry grapples with low energy prices, layoffs, and a wave of consolidations, officials in the spill cleanup industry have begun warning of hard times.
''It's inevitable that there has to be consolidation in our industry,'' warns Steve Benz, president of the Virginia-based Marine Spill Response Corporation, which maintains ships and equipment around the country to fight a Valdez-scale spill.
In Alaska, the spill's legacy hangs in the balance as well. Exxon's $1 billion settlement with the state and federal governments has protected 650,000 acres of land, made Prince William Sound the world's most-studied spill site, and afforded a new aquarium in Seward.
But the company is still contesting the larger $5 billion punitive damages award to thousands of native villagers, fishermen, and property owners who were harmed by the spill, leaving many of them feeling embittered and impoverished.
''I have had thousands of clients that have gone bankrupt, got divorced, died, or been down on their financial luck'' while awaiting a settlement, said Brian O'Neill, the Minneapolis lawyer who represents 60,000 plaintiffs in the suit against Exxon. ''When we get the money, if we're disbursing it to estates and divorce settlements, I'm going to feel like it was a little late.''
For now, Alaskans angry at Exxon will have to settle for the spectacle of Captain Hazelwood picking up trash on Alaska state lands this summer. Acquitted of criminal drunkenness but convicted of negligence, Hazelwood must serve 1,000 hours of community service over the next five years.
Compounded disaster
Looking back, the Exxon Valdez accident seems like a case study in how to create a disaster. The 987-foot tanker had no tugboat escort as the crew maneuvered around ice floes, and Hazelwood, after a day of drinking, had left a lowly third mate in charge of the bridge. The Coast Guard couldn't even track the ship's progress because of range limits on its radar.
After the tanker ran aground - on a clear night on a well marked reef - officials at the oil facilities in Valdez took 10 crucial hours figuring out which emergency response equipment to send to the spill, allowing the slick to spread unchecked.
Later, when a virtual army was deployed to fight the spill - up to 10,000 workers, 1,000 boats, and 100 aircraft at a cost of $2.1 billion to Exxon, disorganization, along with potent tides and winds, repeatedly undermined containment. Ultimately, they recovered only a fraction of the oil, leaving tides and evaporation to do most of the work.
In the end, oil reached 1,300 miles of coastline and killed staggering numbers: 250,000 birds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 seals, 250 bald eagles, perhaps billions of salmon and herring larvae, according to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, which manages Exxon settlement money.
The spill also devastated coastal communities such as Cordova, which saw its vital herring fishery closed after the spill, and New Chenega, a native village that had been destroyed before, by a 1964 earthquake. The oil that covered Sleepy Bay poisoned the Chenegans' clam beds.
Terrible as the immediate costs were, the bigger controversy centered on the longterm damage, if any, from the disaster. Exxon paid about $300 million in damage claims in the first few years after the spill, but lawyers for people who had been harmed called that a mere down payment on losses that averaged more than $200,000 per fisherman from 1990 to 1994.
Ten years later, the two sides are still arguing. In 1994, a federal jury in Anchorage awarded thousands of fishermen, natives, and property owners $5 billion in punitive damages for the spill, which Exxon has appealed, arguing that they were wrongly blamed for problems far beyond their accident.
Wildlife still suffers
Almost as soon as the official cleanup ended in 1992, Exxon researchers began declaring ''the remarkable recovery'' of Prince William Sound. ''Resources in the spill-affected area are essentially recovered and... wildlife is present at levels within historic range,'' concluded Exxon's shareholder magazine in 1993.
True, some animals, such as bald eagles and, later, river otters, did seem to bounce back quickly. However, scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service say Exxon's claims are premature even now. Not only are some species, such as loons and harlequin ducks, showing no signs of recovering, but new research suggests that the Exxon Valdez spill may be killing today.
Wright of the National Marine Fisheries Service believes traces of Exxon Valdez oil among the rocks in salmon streams are killing eggs. Research at the service's Auke Bay Lab found that the tiny red eggs actually draw the oil to them.
In the same way, people suing Exxon believe the spill has had a longterm toxic effect on them. J. Steven Picou, a sociologist at the University of South Alabama, found major psychological stress among coastal residents, including severe depression in 40 percent of commercial fishermen in 1995.
The toll on fishing
Since the spill, commercial fishing has crumbled, though not entirely because of oil. Disease decimated the herring industry, while growing salmon competition dropped prices from $2.70 a pound in the 1980s to just 50 cents a pound in some places now.
''For a lot of fishermen, it's getting to the point where you can't afford the peanut butter and gas to go fishing,'' said O'Neill.
Ultimately, scientists may never know the full impact of the spill, partly because they don't know enough about pre-spill wildlife populations and partly because the Sound was changing anyway. Water temperatures have risen four degrees Fahrenheit in recent decades, altering the food supply in unpredictable ways. The best that Molly McCammon, executive director of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, can say is that recovery work is not finished: ''There is a long way yet to go.''
Beyond the waters of Prince William Sound, the big spill has had a dramatic effect on the oil industry. Publicly embarrassed, and certain more regulations were coming, major oil companies put up $1 billion to start a new firm to prepare for catastrophic spills, the Marine Spill Response Corp.
Meanwhile, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act in 1990, which greatly increased polluter liability for spills, set up a $1 billion national cleanup fund, and required tankers to have a protective outer hull by 2015. The law also imposed new rules aimed at better emergency response planning, one of the major weaknesses in the Valdez accident.
Today, the port of Valdez has gone from an embarrassment to an industry showcase, with tugboats escorting the tankers, better radar tracking their movements, and monthly emergency drills.
Taken together, these measures have reduced the amount of oil spilled in US waters from at least 4 million gallons each year in the 1980s to only 565,500 gallons in 1997, according to the Oil Spill Intelligence Report.
Ironically, the progress against oil spills may make the country less prepared for the next Exxon Valdez-scale disaster. With no catastrophic spills since 1989, response companies have struggled for business.
In essence, cleanup companies pay lots of people to be trained and wait. For instance, the Marine Spill Response Corp. keeps a staff of six on its 210-foot cleanup vessel stationed outside San Francisco even though it has worked on only two oil spills.
Now, with crude oil prices at a 12-year low, oil firms are laying off thousands and merging with each other to save money. Some fear they will cut back even more on how much they pay to keep spill equipment and personnel on standby.
''MSRC's capacity far, far exceeds regulatory requirements,'' said Benz, praising the company's founders. Oil companies ''are clearly spending far more than they have to.''
The possibility of emergency response cuts scares environmentalists as the oil industry presses to explore for oil and gas in the sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and as the existing Trans-Alaska Pipeline to Valdez ages. Nine environmental groups recently called on federal regulators to hold up the merger of Mobil and Exxon until issues regarding the Valdez spill are settled. ''A new millennium demands a new commitment by corporations to act responsibly toward the environment and the human beings affected by their operations,'' the activists said.
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 03/07/99.
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