TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041089/04108900.041

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 15KB | 266 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 38

The Big Spill


Bred from complacency, the Valdez fiasco goes from bad to worse
to worst possible

By George J. Church


    A captain with too much alcohol in his blood turns over
command of his tanker to an unqualified third mate. The mate
shouts contradictory orders to the helmsman and eventually
impales the vessel on a reef, causing millions of gallons of oil
to gush from the mangled hull. Companies that boasted they had
the equipment and manpower in place for a quick cleanup turn out
to have hardly anything available and lose irreplaceable days
getting into action. Then, almost predictably, the calm weather
gives way to high winds that render their efforts ineffective.

    By midweek Exxon, owner of the wounded tanker, admitted
that the largest oil spill in U.S. history was spreading out of
control; by week's end the slick covered almost 900 sq. mi.
southwest of Valdez, Alaska, posing a deadly danger to the
marine and bird life that teems in Prince William Sound. The
story, a tale of unrelieved gloom with no heroes, resembled a
Greek tragedy updated by Murphy's Law. Everything that could go
wrong did; everyone involved, including the Alaska state
government and the U.S. Coast Guard, made damaging errors;
hubris in the form of complacency (it has never happened, so it
won't) took a heavy toll; and events marched relentlessly from
bad to worse toward the worst possible.

    In this case, the worst possible is an unprecedented
ecological disaster. Though Exxon insists it will persist in
cleanup efforts for months if necessary and promises to leave
the highly scenic area "the way it was before," that is close
to a physical impossibility. Earlier mishaps suggest that only
about 10% of the oil from such a massive spill (this one totaled
at least 10.1 million gal., perhaps 12.6 million) will ever be
recovered. Some of the rest evaporates. But as the lighter
components escape into the air, most of the oil turns into a
thick black gunk that eventually sinks to the bottom. There it
is joined by oil that first coated beaches but little by little
washes back into the water.

    What happens next is a matter of theorizing. Nearly all
previous massive spills have occurred in areas of moderate
climate, where the waves, currents and winds of the open ocean
dispersed them; the hemorrhage from the tanker Exxon Valdez is
the first big spill to foul an enclosed body of cold water.
Clifton Curtis, executive director of the Oceanic Society,
predicts that the oil deposits on the bottom will act "as lethal
time-release capsules," turning loose "harmful petroleum
hydrocarbons for months and even years." Birds, fish and marine
animals such as seals and otters that are not killed quickly by
being coated with crude will still be in danger, as the bottom
oil contaminates first microorganisms, then the small fish that
eat them, then the larger creatures up the food chain. Fishermen
in the port of Cordova (pop. 3,000) fear that their catches of
salmon, herring, shrimp and crab will be ruined for years,
possibly wiping out their livelihood. Says Barbara Jenson, wife
of a fourth-generation fisherman: "I don't think we are going
to survive this one."

    In a wider perspective, the disaster points up the
unresolved conflict between American desires for an unspoiled
environment and demands for more energy that has long bedeviled
national policy. Immediately the crack-up of the Exxon Valdez
gives powerful new ammunition to environmentalists fighting
against a proposal to allow oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge, one of the last large tracts of U.S.
wilderness virtually untouched by man. The proposal, which has
the support of President Bush, has passed the Senate Energy and
Natural Resources Committee, but it may be delayed by the Prince
William Sound disaster. Says Senator Joseph Lieberman, a
Connecticut Democrat: "The Exxon Valdez spill illustrates in a
devastating way how delicate the environment of Alaska can be
and how impotent we are to protect it from our own mistakes."
Ironically, America's worst oil spill occurred just four days
before the tenth anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident
that choked off the development of nuclear-power plants and led
to growing reliance on coal and oil. The bill for that decision
is beginning to come due. The question that will increasingly
haunt energy-policy debate is this: What degree of environmental
risk should be accepted for the sake of adding domestic fuel
supplies to a nation that has never been able or willing to
practice sufficient conservation and yet rightly views
dependence on foreign-oil imports as a threat to economic and
military security?

    In a sense, the Valdez tragedy begins not in Alaska but on
Long Island, N.Y. There, in 1985, Captain Joseph Hazelwood was
convicted of drunken driving. Last September in New Hampshire,
he was again found guilty of driving while intoxicated. In a
five-year span, his automobile driver's license was revoked
three times. Hazelwood is still not permitted to steer a car,
but he retained his license to command a ship -- why, no one can
satisfactorily explain. In 1985, after Hazelwood informed the
company about his drinking problem, Exxon sent him to an alcohol
rehabilitation program. The company says it was not aware that
the problem persisted after his treatment.

    Hazelwood appeared to be in control of himself when he
boarded the Exxon Valdez Thursday night, March 23. But when his
blood was tested fully nine hours after the ship ran aground,
he had a blood-alcohol level of .06, higher than the .04 the
Coast Guard considers acceptable for ship captains. Assuming he
drank nothing after the accident and his body metabolized at the
normal rate, Hazelwood's level at the time of the accident was
about .19, almost double the amount that causes a motorist to
be judged drunk in many states. Exxon fired Hazelwood after it
got the test results, a prime case of reacting long after the
damage has been done. On Friday the state filed criminal charges
against Hazelwood for operating a ship under the influence of
alcohol and issued a warrant for his arrest.

    A local pilot steered the tanker out of the port of Valdez.
Once he had departed from the ship, Hazelwood left the bridge
and went to his cabin while the vessel was still moving along
the jagged shores of Prince William Sound. That was in violation
of Exxon policy, which calls for the captain to keep command
until the ship is on the open ocean. Hazelwood turned over the
steering of the ship to Third Mate Gregory Cousins, who is not
licensed by the Coast Guard to pilot a vessel through Alaskan
coastal waters.

    To dodge icebergs that were floating in the sound, Cousins
asked the Coast Guard station in Valdez for permission to
switch from the path taken by outgoing vessels to the one used
by incoming ships. The Coast Guard gave its O.K. but then lost
radar contact with the ship. The local newspaper, the Valdez
Vanguard, reported that the Coast Guard two years ago replaced
its radar with a less powerful unit. Had it maintained contact,
the Coast Guard could have warned Cousins that he was straying
close to the dangerous rocks of Bligh Reef.

    For that matter, the accident might have been avoided had
the Coast Guard's radar been electronically linked to the
harbor's vessel-traffic system so that an alarm would sound
automatically if a tanker wandered out of its correct path. Such
a state-of-the-art system is in operation in at least one
foreign port. Says Curtis of the Oceanic Society: "This is not
just a case of someone getting drunk. Because the industry did
not take responsibility for state-of-the-art technology, the
problem lies at its doorstep."

    According to William Woody, an investigator for the
National Transportation Safety Board, the accident was preceded
by a series of commands that put the vessel a mile out of the
shipping lanes and into harm's way. Cousins and finally
Hazelwood, who had returned to the bridge, issued contradictory
orders. Shortly after midnight, the tanker impaled itself on
Bligh Reef, its hull torn by gashes, some thought to be 15 ft.
wide. At least 240,000 bbl. of oil, equal to 10.1 million gal.,
poured out of the wounds.

    The supposedly impossible had happened. Since the building
15 years ago of the pipeline that carries Alaskan oil from the
North Slope to Valdez for shipment by tanker to the West Coast,
oil companies had been shrugging off environmentalists'
forebodings of just such an occurrence. In January 1987, Alyeska
Pipeline Service Co., the consortium of oil companies (including
Exxon) that manages the pipeline, filed a contingency plan with
the Federal Government detailing how it would handle a
200,000-bbl. spill in Prince William Sound. Alyeska did so only
grudgingly, however, protesting, "It is highly unlikely that a
spill of this magnitude would occur. Catastrophic events of this
nature are further reduced because the majority of tankers
calling on Port Valdez are of American registry and all of these
are piloted by licensed masters or pilots."

    Alyeska nonetheless boasted that it would have equipment on
the scene of any major spill within five hours. When the
unthinkable happened, the reality was somewhat different: the
first crews and equipment did not get to the spill until ten
hours after the accident. And then they could do little because
booms to contain the oil and mechanical skimmers to scoop it up
were pitifully insufficient. Moreover, the barge capable of
receiving the skimmed oil had been damaged and could not be
deployed until the next day.

    What was the hang-up? In a word, says an Alyeska
supervisor, "complacency." Lulled by almost twelve years of oil
shipping through Valdez without a major accident, Alyeska let
its old equipment run down to the point that it was taxed to the
limit when it cleaned up a small spill of a mere 1,500 bbl. in
January. Workers who had been hired to devote full time to
combatting oil spills were replaced by people whose primary
duties lay elsewhere. The state government failed to keep
Alyeska up to the mark; the legislature denied its watchdog
agency funds for inspecting oil terminals and was pretty much
reduced to taking the oil companies' word for their
preparedness. The Coast Guard too has sustained deep budget cuts
and, says a friendly observer, "is held together with baling
wire." Its closest concentration of cleanup ships and equipment
is in the San Francisco area, more than 2,000 miles south of
Valdez.

    Frank Iarossi, president of Exxon Shipping Co., flew from
his Houston home to Valdez and by Friday night took command of
the cleanup. By then the slick was spreading and chemical
dispersants could not be used because the seas were too calm for
them to be effective. On Sunday winds picked up to 70 m.p.h.,
hindering boats from booming and skimming the oil. The winds
drove the oil into a froth known as mousse; workers who tried
to apply a napalm-like substance to the oil and ignite it with
laser beams did not succeed.

    The company compounded the damage to its image by initially
misleading the press and local residents with assurances that
its beach cleanups and booming operations were well under way.
But on Wednesday Exxon spokesman Donald Cornett admitted that
beach cleanup had not started and that one boat had just sailed
around gauging the extent of the spill. Later that night he was
greeted in nearby Cordova by citizens displaying signs that
read, DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU HEAR. ESPECIALLY AT ALYESKA
AND EXXON PRESS CONFERENCES.

    Not until Wednesday was a ragtag fleet in full operation.
A team from Washington, consisting of Secretary of
Transportation Samuel Skinner, Environmental Protection Agency
Administrator William Reilly and Coast Guard Commandant Paul
Yost, flew to Alaska at midweek and reported back to Bush that
the cleanup was going well enough that there was no need for the
Federal Government to take over. That seemed to be a polite way
of saying there was no way for the feds to speed things, so
Washington might as well stay out and avoid sharing the blame
for what the President called a major tragedy.

    The spill happened in almost the worst place and at nearly
the worst time possible. The jagged coast of Prince William
Sound is dotted with innumerable coves and inlets where the
spilled oil can collect and stay for months, killing young fish
that spawn in the shallows. Fishermen have already written off
the herring season that was to start this week. Soon waterfowl
by the tens of thousands will finish their northward migrations
and settle into summer nesting colonies in Prince William Sound.
For them, says Ann Rothe, Alaska regional representative of the
National Wildlife Federation, "it will be like returning home
after somebody came in and ransacked your house, took some gunk
and dumped it all over the place." She fears the sea otter
population of 4,000 to 5,000 "will be totally wiped out."

    In a highly unusual public apology, published as an
advertisement in TIME and about 100 other magazines and
newspapers, Exxon Chairman L.G. Rawl promised that his company
not only will pay all direct cleanup costs but "also will meet
our obligations to all those who have suffered damage from the
spill." Under federal law, the company must pay the first $14
million in cleanup costs, then can tap a fund set up by the
Trans-Alaska Pipeline Act for an additional $86 million.

    And after that? Although the pipeline law limits a
company's liability to $100 million in most cases, that lid is
off if a spill and the damage that results are due to
negligence. A court may find that the actions of Captain
Hazelwood and Third Mate Cousins -- and the failure of both
Alyeska and Exxon to respond quickly to the spill -- meet that
test. Both the state of Alaska and the Federal Government have
opened criminal investigations of the spill. "It will be a long
war of experts," says James McNerney, a Houston specialist in
environmental and maritime law. The battle over this spill and
its consequences could prove almost as messy and unpredictable
as the environmental damages.