Exxon Valdez cleanup (via Flickr's JimBrickett)

It was 22 years ago today that, with a captain who’d been drinking and an exhausted mate at the wheel, the Exxon Valdez hit a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. But it wouldn’t quite be accurate to say this is merely the disaster’s anniversary – the people and wildlife of Alaska continue to feel the effects of the Exxon Valdez spill today.

A total of 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled in one of the world’s most beautiful places, home to an incredibly diverse ecosystem. The estimated direct wildlife death toll:

• 250,000 seabirds
• 2,800 sea otters
• 300 harbor seals
• 250 bald eagles
• Up to 22 orcas
• Billions of salmon and herring eggs

While scientists say bald eagles, harbor seals and pink salmon have recovered, sea otters and orcas are still struggling. And a full 22 years into the disaster, herring and a bird called the pigeon guillemot still haven’t made any gains towards recovery.

Local fishing communities were devastated by the spill. Beyond the direct decline in catch, fishing licenses that had been sold from one generation to the next, providing a critical source of retirement income, were now worthless. Rates of divorce, depression and even suicide all spiked.

Despite a $2.5 billion cleanup effort, the federal government estimates only 15% of the oil was recovered through oil skimming and beach cleanup. According to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, the remaining oil isn’t hard to find:

In 2001, researchers at the Auke Bay Laboratories, NOAA Fisheries, conducted a survey of the mid-to-upper intertidal in areas of the sound that were heavily or moderately oiled in 1989. Researchers dug over 9,000 pits, at 91 sites, over a 95-day field season. Over half the sites were contaminated with Exxon Valdez oil. Oil was found at different levels of intensity from light sheening; to oil droplets; to heavy oil where the pit would literally fill with oil. They estimated that approximately 16,000 gallons (60,000 liters), of oil remained. The survey also showed a trend of an increasing number of oiled pits as they surveyed lower into the intertidal zone, indicating that there was more oil to be found lower down the beach. In 2003, additional surveys determined that while the majority of subsurface oil was in the mid-intertidal, a significant amount was also in the lower intertidal. The revised estimate of oil was now more than 21,000 gallons (80,000 liters). Additional surveys outside Prince William Sound have documented lingering oil also on the Kenai Peninsula and the Katmai coast, over 450 miles away.

The amount of Exxon Valdez oil remaining substantially exceeds the sum total of all previous oil pollution on beaches in Prince William Sound, including oil spilled during the 1964 earthquake. This Exxon Valdez oil is decreasing at a rate of 0-4% per year, with only a 5% chance that the rate is as high as 4%. At this rate, the remaining oil will take decades and possibly centuries to disappear entirely.

That research refuted years of denial and delay by Exxon. Until this study, one Exxon-funded scientist had even claimed, “Trying to find a signal of the spill today is like trying to tune in PBS from Mars.” So much for that wishful thinking.

The year after the disaster, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act placing new regulations on oil shipping and requiring oil companies to have cleanup plans. However, last year’s Gulf oil disaster showed that much more needs to be done. Regulators approved drilling without even reading spill response plans, BP consistently underplayed the size of the spill, and now there’s no guarantee fines and penalties will go to restoring the damaged ecosystem. Will Congress act to close these loopholes?

Many of my friends’ lives were dramatically impacted by the Exxon Valdez oil spill more than 20 years ago. They went from fishermen to conservationists who happened to fish.

Why?

They saw the devastation the Exxon Valdez oil spill caused to the environment, and ultimately to their community. And they realized that in a world where enormous companies have a profit motive and the means to spend a great deal of money lobbying our government, someone needs to pay attention, to be the squeaky wheel that ensures our coastlines are not oiled.
Mostly what I hear from these folks is sorrow and anger. They remember the oiled coastline of Prince William Sound, and the wildlife that died. And they remember the cost to the fishing town when the herring didn’t come back. Twenty years later, the herring still haven’t come back.

And you know, they also remember being told that nothing could go wrong with the oil tankers, and that the Sound was safe. And they feel sorry and angry for the folks on the Gulf Coast who heard the same thing about the oil rigs.

From Anger to Action

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill, my friends and people around the country used their anger to change things to make oil shipping safer. They changed the rules to require double hulled tankers. Even more importantly, they changed the rules so that in Prince William Sound, a citizen oversight committee was created to watch over oil tankers, to do their own studies of tanker safety, to do their own inspections of oil facilities to make sure the rules were being followed.

We need to take that concept and make it happen all across this country for all oil and gas development. But first, we need to pass an energy bill that moves us into a prosperous future and out of a past where we convince ourselves over and over again that we have to accept the enormous price oil and gas development can exact on wildlife, people and our communities.

Tell your Senators we need to stop pursuing unsafe energy options and pass clean energy legislation now.

“The Day the Water Died”

In fall of the year after the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, the National Wildlife Federation sponsored a series of hearings where more than 120 Alaskans impacted by the oil spill testified before a commission about their views and concerns, illustrating the grave impacts of the spill on Alaska’s wildlife and citizens.

Their stories, thoughts and emotions were then brought together by the National Wildlife Federation in a publication titled, The Day the Water Died.

For more personal stories behind the tragedy of Exxon Valdez, read these excerpts from the testimonies.

By Jim Adams, NWF Regional Executive Director, Alaska Regional Center and Western Regional Center

Help ensure NWF has the funding needed to be on the front lines helping wildlife >>
 

For all the latest news on how the oil spill is impacting the Gulf Coast’s wildlife & to learn how you can help, visit www.nwf.org/OilSpill.

I write this from Venice, Louisiana, a few days after the explosion at British Petroleum’s (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil rig set off a massive oil spill in the Gulf. Looking at the scale of the ecological disaster, I am frustrated, saddened and angry. BP has been long on promises and short on responses. Though two decades have passed since the Exxon Valdez spill occurred in Alaska, the oil industry and the various governmental enforcement agencies don’t seem to have learned much.

With a huge volume of oil flowing in the Gulf of Mexico unabated, we clearly have an epic catastrophe unfolding. The greatest coastal wetland system in America is at the height of spring wildlife nesting season. It now faces what may be the largest oil spill in the nation’s history. It is hard to imagine a more dire situation.

BP and the other oil giants have at various times testified before congressional committees that deep, offshore oil could be developed without harming the environment. But the reality I am experiencing here on the ground in Louisiana is revealing their rhetoric as little more than spin.

As of this writing, there are no reliable predictions when the flow of crude will be stopped or where the oil slick is headed next.

What will happen to this oil? Some of the lighter constituents will volatize into the air where, in combination with other pollutants, it will increase haze and ground-level ozone. When my colleagues and I flew through that haze over the oil slick, the air burned our eyes and throats. And scientists are warning that pollutants could linger for generations in the Gulf Coast’s soil and water.

Last summer, on the 20th anniversary of the Exxon spill, I traveled to Cordova, Alaska, a once-peaceful fishing village that became ground zero for the 1989 disaster when the supertanker ran aground on Bligh Reef, spilling more than 11 million gallons of crude into Prince William Sound. On that trip, I met with scientists who were part of a team that took 9,000 samples from holes dug along the impacted shoreline. They found oil in half of them, and they told me that crude oil and its breakdown products will continue to enter the food chain for years to come.

Of the 31 impacted species of wildlife studied there, only a third is fully recovered. And the once-plentiful pigeon guillemots and Pacific herring remain absent from the Sound. What does the future hold for Gulf Coast wildlife?

Coastal Louisiana produces 40 percent of the nation’s oysters. Oysters are filter feeders that are known to ingest and concentrate pollutants in their systems at levels 1,000 times higher than those found in ambient waters. Oil-impacted oyster beds may be off-limits for years to come, and there are long-term ramifications of low-level contamination on such species as bluefin tuna, bottlenose dolphins, sperm whales and manatees, as well as on humans who consume tainted fish and shellfish.

Unlike the formerly pristine Prince William Sound, coastal Louisiana has seen its share of environmental insults. Canals dredged by the oil industry have carved up the once-vast coastal wetland system. The canals accelerate saltwater intrusion, destroying the protective cypress forests and replacing brackish and freshwater wetlands with degraded salt marshes. Withdrawing oil and natural gas has further deflated the region, causing millions of acres of marshes to subside. Coupled with sea-level rise caused by global warming, Louisiana is losing the equivalent of about two football fields of land every hour.

For those of us who care about the viability of the ocean and of our world, this is our “Avatar moment.” We must challenge those who continue to pollute and destroy our world before it passes a point of no return.

We support President Obama’s freeze on new coastal drilling, because it is time to reassess America’s energy priorities. This is not just about making oil platforms safer—this is about moving to an entirely new energy platform.

Oil companies have deployed 700 lobbyists in Washington and spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising to persuade us that their drilling operations are completely safe. They have successfully stalled congressional action on clean energy alternatives and persuaded politicians to put oil company profits ahead of real energy reform. Now the bill is coming due. The hidden costs of our oil dependency are no longer invisible.

Helping Gulf Coast Wildlife: For information about the wildlife species threatened by the oil spill and updates on National Wildlife Federation activities relating to the region, please visit www.nwf.org/oilspill.

Many of you wrote letters and placed phone calls to your members of Congress in support of the American Clean Energy and Security Act to protect wildlife from global warming, create clean-energy jobs and improve the nation’s energy security. As a result, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill on the eve of the 4th of July weekend. It was a close fight, and every letter and call counted.

While letters were pouring in from real voters like you who want a new energy future, a surprising number of calls and faxes were being sent to undecided lawmakers from phone numbers outside of their districts urging a vote against the bill. Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello received a letter that supposedly was sent from a local chapter of the NAACP, asking him to oppose the measure. On further investigation, Perriello discovered that this letter along with five others purportedly sent from different organizations were all forgeries. It was a fraud that corrupted the very heart of America’s democracy—the connection between members of Congress and their constituents.

In reality, the NAACP recently joined in partnership with the National Wildlife Federation to support passage of the legislation. During their Centennial Convention in July, NAACP delegates recognized the economic opportunities that will flow from global warming solutions, stating in a resolution that “solving the climate crisis can create 5 million ‘green’ jobs that will be in places where they are needed most.”

The fake NAACP letter and other phony messages sent to lawmakers were products of outright deception created by companies such as Bonner & Associates, a lobbying group known to create “strategic grassroots”—an artificial version of grassroots lobbying known in Washington, D.C., as “Astroturf.”

In recent years, large corporate interests have successfully deceived Congress and the public by paying for such Astroturf campaigns. Here is how it’s done: Corporations hire firms like Bonner & Associates, which in turn make up fake organizational names or borrow real organizations’ letterheads, hire professional callers who improperly identify themselves with made-up groups and urge unsuspecting residents to call their members of Congress to oppose important reform legislation that they misrepresent as bad. Bonner & Associates refused to reveal its corporate clients that funded their deception, but the firm has represented a number of big energy companies in the past. Congress is now investigating their activities.

This is merely the latest fraud by the major energy companies to mislead the public. On a recent visit to Prince William Sound in Alaska, I saw scientifically-collected samples that demonstrate much of the oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill remains where it went when it was washed off the surface of the rocks. It continues to damage fish and wildlife habitat and contaminate our food chain. The oiled sound is no longer the pristine place it once was and most of the canneries in the town of Cordova are gone.

When the pipeline and port in Prince William Sound were built, the oil industry promised President Nixon they would have a response team, oil booms and other equipment ready to address any spill that might occur. They didn’t.

In the days after the accident, as the oil spread more than 800 miles through the sound and along the Alaska Coast, Exxon promised to clean it up and make the 30,000 people living in the region’s fishing villages “whole.” They did neither. Instead, Exxon cheated innocent people of their livelihoods. For the next 20 years, the company fought bankrupt fishermen, cannery owners and other innocent victims all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the end, Exxon paid only pennies on the dollars lost. Many of the original victims died waiting; others lost everything dear to them.

There is an often-repeated quote, first attributed to President Abraham Lincoln, that says, “You may fool all of the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Well, the executives of big oil along with the dirty coal industry believe they can fool all Americans all the time.

Oil companies will do everything they can to stop the clean energy and climate legislation passed in the House from advancing in the Senate. Once again, we expect a close vote. Call your two U.S. Senators, tell them that you are a real constituent and urge them to pass the bill to protect our world, create millions of new jobs and restore a strong economy built on a domestic energy future. Let’s work together to prove President Lincoln right.

It has been twenty years since the Exxon Valdez hauling oil from the Port of Valdez (at the terminus of the Alaska pipeline) was guided by a drunken pilot. You may remember that the a super tanker veered off course and struck the Bligh Reef ripping a huge gash in its single bottomed hull, spilling its fully-loaded oil cargo across what was then one of the most pristine and productive sounds in the world.

Prince William Sound will never be the same-nor will its inhabitants ever be again.

Last week I returned to Prince William Sound to learn that much of the oil that was spilled is still there sitting under the sand and gravel in the tidal zones of every damaged coastal area. Many once vital fish populations have crashed and will likely never recover from the spill or from all the toxic chemicals that Exxon left scattered in this once pristine ecologically important water.

Last week travelling around the sound, I witnessed abandoned docks, canneries, and hollowed out fishing villages that once were thriving communities with well-kept fishing vessels.

Many hard-working and courageous commercial anglers who fished its waters in all kinds of weather have been personally destroyed by this spill and by the calloused way they were treated by Exxon, by the courts and by the Federal government. I learned about people who lost their boats, homes and livelihoods and even lost their families because of this spill. The human tragedy has been powerfully told in a book entitled, “Not One Drop – Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill” by a dedicated tireless voice for truth, Riki Ott. Ott has written her most powerful book on the subject giving witness to the oil giant’s 20-year trail of pollution, litigation and public deception that led to the tragic 1989 spill.  Ott delves deep into the personal losses and disruption to the fishing community. (http://www.rikiott.com/books/)

Exxon used its vast corporate resources to drag out the court process and to avoid full accountability and proper compensation for the innocent lives that were destroyed. (Many of these these people died before they ever received a dollar and those who lived long enough got about $15,000 for their terrible losses. Their lives will never be the same. Yet Exxon has the audacity to pretend that they did no harm.

Today, I saw a bumper sticker on a big expensive car that said, “Drill Now!” as if there were vast supplies of oil off-shore in the US—there is not.  How fast we forget what a terrible price others pay for our oil addiction.