$100 million riding on recovery
By Traci Watson, USA TODAYTen years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which poured 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, the most highly debated question is whether the area has recovered.
Scientists who work for Exxon Corp., the owner of the Valdez oil tanker, say, yes, it has.
Scientists who work for the government say, no, it hasn't.
"Study by study, the scientific conclusions are completely predictable based on where funding is coming from," says Hal Geiger, a salmon scientist for the Alaska Department of Fish & Game.
The reason for the dispute? Money, at least in part. Exxon's 1991 settlement with the Alaskan and federal governments requires the company to pay an extra $100 million if researchers find major ecological damage that was undetected at the time of the settlement.
But the battle is also for victory in the public-relations wars: Should Americans regard the spill as a mistake that, with the help of nature and corporate goodwill, has been fixed? Or is the spill a continuing tragedy that should not be forgiven?
Each side accuses the other of sloppy research and ulterior motives.
"There's a sense that Exxon's primary goal here is to shoot holes in the science and conclusions" of the government research program, says Stan Senner, the science coordinator of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, the joint federal-state agency set up to research the effects of the spill on the sound.
"The problem the trustees have is, anything they see, they assume has to be related to the oil spill," counters David Page, a chemistry professor at Bowdoin College and the unofficial leader of the Exxon scientists.
Occasionally, the two sides grudgingly agree. Scientists from both camps concur that the sound does not have large amounts of Exxon Valdez oil coating its floor.
They also agree that the biggest wave of oil-related wildlife deaths occurred in the first few weeks after the spill. But the two sides are at odds on nearly everything else, from the best way to count sea otters to how many pink salmon returned to spawn in the sound in 1990, an important statistic for the many fishermen and Alaska Natives who depend on the fish.
One of the most important differences is over the definition of "recovery." The definition used by the trustees says that for recovery to take place, animals and plants must exist in the same numbers as they would if the spill had never happened.
Exxon scientists argue that the trustees' definition is impossible to meet because natural conditions have changed in the decade since the spill. "The definition of recovery that makes sense to me is (that) a healthy biological community has been re-established," says Frank Sprow, Exxon's vice president for environment.
Robert Paine, a scientist from the University of Washington who has worked for neither Exxon nor the trustees, faults both sides in a 1996 paper in the ecology journal Annual Review of Ecological Systems. Paine calls the trustee definition "idealistic and unattainable," but he writes that Exxon's definition leaves out important biological details.
Effects on animals
The two sides also disagree over the status of some of the most noteworthy species in the sound. In that discussion , every argument made by one side is greeted with a counter argument from the other:
Harbor seals. U.S. Fish & Wildlife biologist Kathryn Frost and her colleagues recorded a 43% drop in seals at oil-covered sites from 1988 to 1989, compared with an 11% drop at oil-free sites in the same period. So far, the oil-stricken populations have not rebounded, Frost says.
Exxon consultant John Burns, a retired marine-mammal coordinator for the state of Alaska, doubts those statistics. He says that soon after the spill, he heard reports of live, oil-coated seals spotted far from the area affected by oil. He says those sightings mean the seals Frost thinks are dead merely fled the scene.
Frost responds that she and her research partner surveyed every seal resting site in the sound and saw no oil-covered seals.
Sea otters. They are multiplying like crazy in the sound. But in some of the most heavily oil-coated bays, such as those along the northern end of Knight Island, otters are scarce.
That's probably because of the oil, says James Bodkin of the U.S. Geological Survey. He notes that 165 otter carcasses were found just after the spill along Knight Island's oil-drenched northern coast.
Nonsense, says David Garshelis, an Exxon consultant who works for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. He cites a 1985 study showing that sea otters have never favored the area in question. The carcasses simply washed in, he says.
Harlequin ducks. Exxon consultant John Wiens, a professor at Colorado State University, says his surveys show that the bright-colored duck has recovered.
Daniel Esler of the U.S. Geological Survey disagrees. He found that female ducks living on an oil-covered island were much less likely to survive winter than those living on a similar but pristine island. That would have a big ripple effect on duck populations, he says.
David Irons of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, who also works for the trustees, has done duck surveys that agree with Exxon's assessment, but notes that other evidence doesn't. "Someone could conclude they're recovering," he says. "Someone else could conclude they're not recovering." His assessment: They're not.
Some of the disputes are even more bitter and tangled than those over seals, otters and ducks. Both sides, for example, have spent years studying the spill's effects on pink salmon, the sound's most important species commercially and one that many Alaska Natives rely on.
No surprise: The two sides came to completely opposite conclusions. The trustee scientists found that the spill killed some fish and slowed the growth of others. Recent trustee studies show that extremely small oil concentrations - as low as one part per billion - can harm salmon eggs.
Exxon's studies, however, concluded that oil had only minuscule and short-term effects on salmon, if any. "My point of view is that the spill had no deleterious effects on pink salmon," says Ernest Brannon, an Exxon consultant and a top salmon scientist at the University of Idaho.
That kind of talk infuriates the people who live around the sound. They save most of their ire for Exxon. But many also are angry with the trustee scientists, who have concluded that most species in the sound are on the mend.
Gail Evanoff, president of the village of Chenega Bay, scoffs at the reports of recovery. "There is no recovery taking place whatsoever," she contends.
Accusations of bias
Other locals distrust the trustees for what they say is biased decision-making. The trustees recently were on the verge of declaring pink salmon officially recovered, but a public outcry persuaded them to keep the salmon a "recovering" species.
"Pinks were on the recovered list with an asterisk, 'Except for oiled streams,' " says Riki Ott, an activist from Cordova. "Politics overshadows all the trustee council's moves."
But even more than politics, the nature of science itself has helped create the divisions, scientists on both sides say. "Biology is never simple," Frost says. "That's why it drives people crazy."
Paine, the outside reviewer, criticizes the science done by both sides. He says both misspent money and conducted research suffering from statistical flaws.
Sediment specialist Peter Chapman, of EVS Environment Consultants in British Columbia, is one of the few scientists involved who know both sides and have no stake in the matter. Chapman has watched as Exxon scientists argue that oil is leaking into the sound from natural oil seeps, while trustee scientists claim that what's actually leaking into the sound is coal dust. "This is becoming personal, which it shouldn't be," Chapman says. "There's all that money involved, people who feel their livelihoods have been ruined, people who hate Exxon. This is not what scientists should be doing."
© Copyright 1999 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Reprinted here with permission.
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