Green Jersey

Thoughts on the Exxon Valdez spill from around the web

The Exxon Valdez. Image via NOAA.gov.

The catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred 20 years ago today.

Just after midnight on March 24, 1989, an estimated 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, killing a quarter million seabirds and thousands of other animals, devastating habitats, and causing problems that continue today — as well as providing lessons, as we work to shape our energy policy in ways that lean less heavily on oil.

Here are a few thoughts from writers around the web.

From AK Muckraker, blogging at The Mudflats:

Two years later, my plane touched down and brought me to live in Alaska. For many years, I couldn’t bring myself to go to the Sound. I started to hear stories from people I knew. A friend told me about his experience working on a boat near Naked Island in the Sound. His official duty was “bird rescue.” “How many do you think you rescued?” I asked, imagining him gently scrubbing some oil soaked cormorant, or shear-water. “There were none left to rescue,” he said.

I heard stories from those who saw helicopters in the darkness, dumping “something” on the oil. The chemicals in the dispersant that the helicopters dropped, were designed to sink the oil to the bottom, out of sight and out of camera range, and those chemicals were arguably more toxic than the oil itself.

I met fishermen whose livelihoods were gone, in one day. The people who were present at “ground zero” still seemed to suffer from post-traumatic stress. They had seen the killing fields, and it had changed them as people.

From Meg White, writing for AlterNet:

This week you may catch the sliver of media coverage regarding the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill — and, regretfully, there will only be a sliver, for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, a lot of the people telling the story have spoken to Big Oil before talking to small town Alaska, and the meager amount of anniversary coverage that the public will receive will be damaged because of that.

…Some of the misinformation is unintentional and unavoidable. Though you’ll see “11 million gallons of oil spilled into Prince William Sound” repeated in the media, there’s no way to know if that number is accurate. Most scientists say 11 million is a low-end estimate, now placing their guesses as high as 30 million gallons.

From J.S. McDougall, blogging on the Huffington Post:

It’s hard to argue that there’s a more lasting and clear example of the destructive force that unchecked corporate greed has on our environment and communities than the Exxon Valdez oil spill that devastated Alaska’s Prince William Sound 20 years ago today. Then, like now, we are hopelessly addicted to carbon-based fuels. Oil and coal have exposed our Achilles heel to the Fates, and we tempt them every day that we do not aggressively transition to low-energy lives and sustainable fuel sources. We don’t need a power-shift in this civilization as much as we need a power-down.

From Liz Borkowski, writing at The Pump Handle:

The New York Times’ Andrew Revkin points out one silver lining of the disaster: Over the past 20 years, the amount of oil moved has increased, while the amount spilled has decreased. Another less-noticed effect is more sinister. As Sheldon Krimsky explained here in 2007, Exxon was able to get its punitive damages reduced from $5 billion to $2.5 billion after funding academic researchers who would publish articles finding that juries are not competent in awarding punitive damages. Then, in 2008, Andrew Revkin noted that the Supreme Court had reduced the damages to $500 million. Other companies facing stiff punitive damages will no doubt be citing the Exxon-funded research for many years to come.

The toll of this disaster is still very much in evidence, but will our elected officials bear it in mind as they make decisions about how we’ll meet our energy needs in the decades to come?

From John, writing on A DC Birding Blog:

This was one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, and its effects are still apparent in Prince William Sound. Since oil was absorbed into the sand, animals still have access to it.

From Heather Moyer, posting at the Sierra Club’s Compass site:

Tuesday, March 24 marks the 20th anniversary of one of the worst environmental disasters in history, the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Sadly, two decades after the disaster, oil spills are still a regular occurrence. Earlier this month, a tanker off the coast of Australia crashed, spilling 52,000 gallons of oil and shutting down local fisheries. Read more about it in our news release, and stay tuned for some ways you can take action to help end our dependence on oil.