Exxon Valdez Oil Spill by Will Reed

My project was on the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 that occured in the Prince William Sound. I tried to find a variety of people to interview on the issue to get as differing perspectives as possible. However, considering the number of people the spill affected, I really only got four views out of the millions of perspectives available.

Dave Tarshes is a lawyer who works at the same law firm as my dad (Davis Wright Tremaine - DWT) and my dad arranged for me to interview Dave. This interview focused on the legal aspects or the spill and the litigation with Exxon over its liability for the damage.

Chris Wooley was living in Barrow, Alaska at the time of the spill working as an anthropologist/archaeologist for the local government. He spent six weeks working on the shoreline cleanup assessment team as an archaeologist who was contracted by Exxon. He also wrote a paper explaining how, prior to the oil spill, Prince William Sound was not the pristine environment many people think it was.

Brian Hawkins is the Harbor Master in Homer, Alaska. He was also contracted to work on his boat to clean up the sound immediately after the spill. I contacted him through the fact that he is my mother’s judicial assistant’s son’s (Matt Clarke’s) boss.

Matt Clarke is the son of my mom’s judicial assistant and works as the Deputy Harbor Master in Homer, Alaska and also runs guide fishing trips on rivers. His interview is slightly confusing because it was done simultaneously with Brian Hawkins’ so there are times where Matt’s thoughts were based off of something Brian said (which, to be honest, was an extremely effective way to do this. The two of them were free to discuss everything and I got some great stuff.)
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Dave Tarshes (interview done by phone and rewritten afterwards)

Who are you and how were you involved in the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989?
First let me give you a description of the litigation related to the spill.
After the spill, many lawsuits were filed. State governments, along with the federal government, sued Exxon for damage to the environment as did many private individuals who were harmed. There were 70 plus law firms involved in the case including DWT. Our clients included mostly commercial fisherman but also people who processed fish, native Alaskans, area businesses, tour guides, and the list goes on. Overall there were probably 30,000 individuals in total. They became the plaintiffs in our lawsuit.
The courts set up an administrative structure responsible for coordinating the lawsuit. They appointed two lead counsels: one was Dave Oesting and the other was Brian O’Neil, who was the lead trial counsel. Your father knows Dave Oesting who is a partner in the Anchorage office of DWT and the co-lead council. I was appointed head of the “law team”. This meant that everything that had a law angle to it like briefs, jury business and appeals, I was in charge of. I was given this role in 1990 and I would say that the Exxon case would end up taking up about 40% of my total legal work.
My dad has mentioned to me, and I have also read things about, the controversy over punitive damages relating to the spill. Can you tell me about that?
[Small chuckle] There was a trial in Alaska in 1994 where the jury awarded the plaintiffs, our clients, $5 billion dollars in punitive damages against Exxon. Then in 2001, I think, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said that amount was too high but they didn’t specify an amount they thought was reasonable. Instead the circuit court sent the case back to the Alaska federal court in 2003 where Judge Holland said the amount should be $4.5 billion. You should double check both of those years because I’m not exactly sure. After another appeal in 2007, the amount was again cut to $2.5 billion. The case was then appealed to the Supreme Court, which finally cut the amount to finally cut to $500 million.
So what was the reason for the drastic decrease?
Before I can answer that I need to give you the basics on how damages work. There are two types of damages awarded in a case like this one. There are compensatory damages, which you can tell is related to the word compensation. Compensatory damages are defined as what is paid back for injuries according to the value of the injury. The federal court ordered Exxon to pay our clients $507 million in compensatory damage. That award didn’t change. These funds were used to pay back fisherman who had lost a lot of income due to the spill. The second kind of damages awarded are punitive damages. These are more complicated. They go over and above compensatory damages. They are there to make the guilty party pay more than just the compensation to injury. Punitive damages serve two purposes. The first is to punish the guilty because what they did was wrong. The second purpose is to discourage others from making the same mistake in the future.
When deciding to award punitive damages one thing you look at is the conduct. This was emphasized in the Exxon case. A lot of people think the bad conduct was mostly on the part of Captain Hazelwood but this is not so. The worst conduct was that Exxon knew that Captain Hazelwood was an alcoholic and they knew he had relapsed, AND they knew that he was navigating through a sensitive area. They knew all of this and acted recklessly allowing Hazelwood to continue as the captain of the ship.
What do you think of the Supreme Court’s decisions?
To put it simply, I think the decision was wrong. We won two out of three issues but lost on the amount of damages. The reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s decision was partly that they believe in that “a case of this type”, I’m not exactly sure what was meant by that, the ratio of compensatory damages to punitive damages should be 1:1. Now in this case the cut of the punitive damages to bring them down to the amount of the compensatory was extreme, but it happens.
I think the decision was wrong because it didn’t fulfill the definition and the goal of punitive damages. The amount that Exxon ended up paying was not nearly enough to punish them. Exxon is a huge company and could afford to pay way more than what they ended up paying. I think they got off very easy. The other problem is that because Exxon got off easy, other oil companies, like BP for instance, are not deterred from making the same mistakes and they are not as careful as they should be. BP should have looked at the amount Exxon had to pay and said “We should be careful”. But instead the amount Exxon had to pay doesn’t scare BP in the least.
Also it was bad that the whole process took 20 years. This concerns me greatly that the legal system took this long to deal with this important issue. Maybe you’ve heard the old saying: “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
And why did it take so long?
There really is no simple answer to that question because there is no simple reason for the length of time it took. For one thing, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back and forth because they were indecisive. I guess another reason is that the decisions were being made by slow judges. But more than that, the Supreme Court struggled immensely with the punitive damages. It was a difficult issue. Finally, it’s no secret that Exxon’s legal strategy was very effective at slowing down the process.
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Chris Wooley

I need to let you know three things right off the bat.

1) I was initially very disturbed by the images of the spill, and, like a lot of Alaskans with a vested interest in the natural resources of our state (and the cultural resources – the archaeology) I was angry and scared about the effects of the spill. I was in Barrow at the time (an Eskimo community) as I mentioned in my previous note, and quite frankly, most if not all of us were outraged by the initial images of the spill. We didn’t know what to expect.

2) I was later repulsed by the greed shown by many of my fellow Alaskans who felt the spill was a chance to get money for nothing – much of it they expected to receive through class action lawsuits. Also, during the cleanup, many people tried to take advantage of the situation by over-charging, stealing equipment, etc. There was a “wild west” mentality in the summer of 1989.

Exxon paid billions for the cleanup and legitimate claims for actual damages. The subsequent legal issues related to “Punitive Damages” (punishment) decided on by the Supreme Court were issues that lawyers understand (precedent, percentages of Punitive versus actual damages, etc.)

What I saw was that big time east coast class action lawyers showed up promising folks LOTS of money to sign on to the lawsuits. Many people had their hopes sky high, but legal issues (way beyond the scope of my pea brain) prevented all the Punitive (punishment) money being paid out. I really don’t know the legal issues involved, but I do know Exxon was portrayed as stingy – however, their loyalty is to their shareholders, so it seems like there was an inherent “conflict” of perceptions there.

In subsequent spills, I have seen some of the same lawyers show up and try to get their clients free money for wildly speculative claims and for the hope of a similar ruling on punitive damages.

Of course, the press loves to beat up on Major Corporations (and I’m no Pollyanna - they are all about generating profits make no mistake about it) so this sound byte aspect of the story ends up being Big Bad Oil Companies = Bad; small independent fisherman = Good. My personal experience was that there are some very good people working for Exxon, and the same for BP. There are some amazing Alaska Native people and commercial fishermen, too. I know a lot of folks from both companies, from villages and from the fishing industry. The fact that there was a shipwreck (Exxon) or an engineering accident (BP) does not mean all these industry people are evil. It’s a shame the press tries to “tar them all with the same brush” so to speak.

3) Many people forget that, in Alaska, in 1989 we were facing a huge recession of our own. Oil prices had plummeted in the mid-1980s (85% of Alaska’s wealth depends on oil – like it or not) and people were really hurting. Ironically, in a lot of ways (the economists showed this), the job opportunities and billions spend on boat contracts, wages, etc during the cleanup helped the Alaskan economy revive. The economists wouldn’t say that the spill was a good thing, but it’s undeniable that there were significant positive economic benefits to the state at a time when a lot of people were really hurting.

Attached is a paper I wrote after my experience during EVOS that will give you a good idea about my “view” of the spill and its impact in The Big Picture. As an archaeologist, my “frame of reference” is generally hundreds/thousands of years. I looked at the spill and its impacts from that perspective. Some people called me unprofessional names when I published this, saying I was an “Exxon whore” (and worse). It was ironic because I felt that I kind of stuck my neck out to be honest and not over-state things either way. But emotions rule for some people. You’re seeing that now in the Gulf.

I’m sorry not to be able to take a lot more time to respond, but I put a lot of time and effort into this paper, as well as another one I wrote: “The Alutiiq Culture Before and After the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.” I don’t have a pdf of the Alutiiq paper (from 1994, I think), I apologize. I also got grief about that one. There were lawyers (and expert anthropologists) who claimed the spill “destroyed the Alutiiq culture.” I detailed the actual impacts (yes, people were affected and the villagers closest to the spill were most directly affected and emotionally affected.) But culture is an adaptive mechanism and to claim the spill “destroyed” culture was, in my professional opinion, non-sense. Also, the spill affected different people differently within the native community. Again, I tried to step back, look at the big picture, and try to make an objective assessment of the impacts. I have noticed that since the spill there has been a proliferation of Alutiiq traditional dancers in many of the villages and that the spill may even have strengthened some aspects of local village culture.

The big “take-away” is that during the initial stages of the spill, there are huge emotional impacts and different people deal with that differently. Some groups of people have never gotten “over it” – and my observation was that some groups who were so emotionally and financially tied up in the endless litigation continued to stay angry and upset. I am not saying people shouldn’t take advantage of their rights under the legal system, but it seemed like the litigation victimized people long after the direct spill impacts ended.

You asked about the Supreme Court decision and how it may have affected BP’s “readiness.” I don’t think that’s the issue. The big parallel I see between the lack of “readiness” in Prince Wm Sound and the lack of “readiness” in the Gulf is the lack of effective regulatory oversight. In Alaska, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (the regulatory group with oversight on the spill preparedness) had been GUTTED because of budget issues in the late 1980s. They weren’t effective in ensuring Industry was prepared. I think a similar process has played out in the Gulf. I haven’t read their response plans, but it sounds like the MMS was not being an effective regulator and ensuring effective preparedness.

I got to see hundreds of miles of remote shoreline in Kodiak and the Alaska Peninsula. Very little oil made it down there relative to the oil in Prince Wm Sound. Also, the press put out a “map” of the oiling in 1989 implying that all the beaches from Prince Wm Sound to the Alaska Peninsula were all oiled. Our shoreline assessments – where teams of specialists (and oil geologist, a biologist an archaeologist and a Coast Guard and Landowner representative) produced maps that showed heavy, moderate and light oil for 1989. The press (New York Times printed it) took that map and took the full extent of the area and put a big black outline over the whole area from the Copper River to the Alaska Peninsula and everyone in the country thought that the whole area was greased. I saw a similar map of the Gulf the other day. From what I’ve heard from the folks on the ground down there, that map is totally inaccurate, implying that the whole gulf is full of oil. It is a mess, and it’s unprecedented in the sense that it continues to spew oil.

I hope this has been helpful, and I will leave you with this final thought: things are never “black and white” like the press tries to portray them – there are lots of shades of grey when you really start looking into things. Use your own independent critical thinking skills to guide you.

Best wishes, Chris
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Brian Hawkins (interview done by phone and rewritten afterwards)

Brian, I was told that you were in Valdez during the spill?
Yeah. That was in 1989. So I was a commercial fisherman in the area who fished in Prince William Sound out of Homer, Alaska. I had a 48 foot boat. Now I remember the spill because it happened before the big fishing season had opened. It was during the spring. It was on Good Friday. So I remember that it happened on Friday. On Saturday morning I got a call telling me about the spill and they asked if I could go to work with my boat to help with the cleanup. They asked me how much I charged and I just doubled my rate. They accepted it really quickly and to this day I feel like I went to cheap, you know?
So by Sunday I was working as support for the skimming ships. We would skim oil from the water and take it back to unload it at a mother ship. Now, I think I worked for about 100 days straight. All we did was pull skimmers through the water. We pulled these skimmers through what seemed like “rivers of oil”. I mean just tons of oil. It was like we were pulling the booms through brown chocolate mousse.
So it seems like you reacted to the spill fairly quickly. What do you think about the accusations that Exxon’s response was slow and ineffective?
Well anyone with any common sense can tell that the response was bad. What we learned was that people standing on the beaches shoveling oil for hours will never have any real positive effect.
Can you tell me about the damage the spill did to the area?
A really obvious effect was the wildlife that was affected. So on our skimmer was a conveyer. When we pulled up a haul of oil we had to check in the thick oil for anything. We had to poke lumps to make sure that there wasn’t a sea otter because we couldn’t put sea otters in the tank.
A lot of people said we should be cleaning these animals off but scientists said we should be euthanizing them. And I believe this to be true. There’s really nothing we could do for most of these animals. It was too expensive and hard to clean them and most of the time the cleaning didn’t work very well. I mean, it would have been better to just put a .22 shell through their head.
Compared to the number of animals affected, the number of people affected was actually pretty small. I was fishing for salmon in the ‘80s. The year of the spill, it was actually quite funny, Exxon informed us fisherman that if we wanted to settle a claim to get any money, we had to fish that year. It was like to prove to them that there weren’t any fish left in the water. So basically all us fisherman were stuck in the same area fishing for fish that had had their populations completely decimated. And since your settlement was based on your catch that year it turned into a competition, and with all us fishing in the same small are it was really competitive. I mean, no one really knew how to address compensation.
So the year before the spill I could sell the fish I brought in for somewhere from 70-90 cents per pound. The year of the spill was a complete waste of time to fish. After the spill I sold my catches for something like 12 cents per pound. The way it worked was that as soon as the spill happened, demand for seafood from the region plummeted because, well of course, no one wanted sea food from a “contaminated environment”. I mean, who wants that? And it’s the same deal with the stuff coming from the Gulf of Mexico and that area right now. The demand for food from their area is going to fall through the floor.
Then I guess over the last five years the industry has started to recover. But of course I got out of it a long time ago. I had a family of five who I was trying to feed with just my income and with no fish and no demand for the fish I was actually able to catch I just got tired of it and eventually just quit. After that I got a skippering job for some fairly big companies.
Do you see anything we learned from Valdez being put to work in the Gulf of Mexico right now?
Well obviously a lot of new knowledge and equipment is being used and in that way I see learning. But what wasn’t learned was that… well, it happened again. We LET it happen again. Yeah, in a slightly different way but still. With Exxon, we had never had a catastrophe in that way of that magnitude. But just because it hadn’t happened doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have planned for it. It’s the same in the Gulf. We are doing all this off shore drilling and oil stuff in the water and even though we’ve never had a problem like this before we still should have planned for it. There’s no excuse. It’s just us being arrogant. We need to make our government responsible for these things because they didn’t plan for it. But now they’ll plan for it. I think they should keep looking for new oil; we need the oil. I can guarantee this won’t happen again. Now that it’s happened once we’ll prepare for it and it won’t happen again. We all pay the price. My advice to fisherman down there [in the gulf] is to get a new job as quick as possible.
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Matt Clarke (interview done by phone, retyped afterwards)

What are your opinions on the cleanup process? (His response to Brian’s thoughts on Exxon’s bad cleanup response)
Well now, Will, you have to understand that in 1989 I was only 18 in a economics history class so my personal memory of the spill isn’t vast.
What I feel we learned from the lack of speed and efficiency in cleanup was that spill response equipment needed to address a major spill. We had never had a spill the size of this one so we had no practice reacting to it. Exxon’s faults come from their lack of preparedness. There was no preparation for a spill of that magnitude because it had never happened before. The money was there but it had never been faced, so they weren’t ready.
You have to understand the vast geography of Alaska. Alaska is a long ways away from you up there so you may not fully get it. Where Brian and I are, in Homer, is over 100 miles away from Valdez. So when people, like Brian, were contacted to help out 100 miles away, you can bet the response was slow. Not only that but also the weather was difficult that time of year and it made it hard for a quick response.
Another thing that was a problem was that there just was a lack of man power and machine power. And this is, again, just because they did not know what they were dealing with because were unprepared. It’s a very difficult situation and people were doing lots of scrambling from the very beginning.
(In response to Brian discussing the drop in fish demand due to “contaminated waters”)
So Will, let me jump in here. It has to be made clear that we would never sell contaminated fish. It’s simply that as soon as the spill occurred, people around the world labeled our water’s, Alaskan waters, as contaminated. It wasn’t the fish we were selling that were the problem, they were still just as good as before. What ruined the market was that they came from contaminated waters.
Do you see anything we learned from Valdez being put to work in the Gulf of Mexico right now?
I feel like this was a good example of industry overpowering regulation. The development of the technology was there, there were just no safety measures in place for the recovery. The government looked kindly on oil companies and the process of oil shipping. But my gut feeling is grim. The oil companies have the best technology and employees of anyone out there for dealing with things like this. Only they can do it. This is not a job for the coast guard or anyone like that. We can’t deal with an oil spill. It’s really an industry specific issue.
One way to put how “we all pay the price” is that, when a big spill happens, the oil companies “privatize the profits and socialize the losses”.
I mean the Supreme Court really let Exxon off the hook. Although, if the Supreme Court had come down harder on Exxon, I do not believe that BP would have been any more careful. The problem in the Gulf area still would have happened. Now it would be a different story if the BP catastrophe had happened during the time the Supreme Court was milling over the Exxon case. They would have come down way harder and in a more effective way on Exxon.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill Catherine Most

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was the biggest in the nation and most devastating in terms of environmental and economical impact in world history (until the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico). It occurred on March 24, 1989 spilling about 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound. Here are interviews with people who were in some way or another connected and affected by this tragic spill:

Interview with Smiley

Smiley is like an uncle to me and good friends with my Dad. He lives with his wife Mo in Naknek, Alaska and fish many different seasons there. His real name is John Knutsen but has come to be known to me as Smiley because of the great big smile his Eskimo face makes. This is his individual experience with the Exxon Valdez oil spill:

My individual experience with the Exxon Valdez oil spill is very vague right now as it has been about twenty-one years since it happened. It was in March of 1989 when I first heard the news over the radio and did not think much of it initially as the oil leak did not begin to spread immediately and the volume and size was not very apparent at the onset. As Alaskan fisherman we are accustomed to boats and ships running aground and blowing up on the rocks during storms or mechanical mishaps or any occasional navigational failure. Generally the boat or ship sits grounded until the next high tide and it backs off under its own power or in some cases someone else aids by towing them off. In the case of the Exxon Valdez Captain Hazelwood tried repeatedly to back the vessel off but was unable to and did not report the grounding immediately. This is not an uncommon thing here in Alaska for captains to react in that fashion, I believe, as I have run aground with my own fishing vessel in my fishing endeavors and on one occasion had to call your Dad to come rescue me by towing me off. The tides had peaked and were waning and I would not have been able to float again for about three weeks.
As days went by the size and volume of the spill began to become evident and the event was on the news constantly as is the spill in the Gulf right now. I watched the evening news daily and was astonished not only by the size and how fast it was spreading but by the lack of action and by the lack of equipment to clean up the spill. No one was prepared for this catastrophe and I believe then as I do now that the Oil Companies were unwilling and unprepared to think something like this could happen. It just shows their lack of respect for the elements and the power of what nature has over humankind. As even more days passed we watched the oil slick slowly creep down the Pacific side of the Alaska Peninsula and I begin to worry that with the tides and the lack of clean up it would eventually make it through the first pass in the Aleutians. This pass is False Pass and once through there it was just a matter of days or weeks before the natural flow of the currents would have it in Bristol Bay and in the area of the largest Salmon runs in the world. We are right now being threatened by another foreign company digging the largest open pit mine at the head waters of Bristol Bay which could potentially pollute the waters of our great rivers and destroy our Salmon Fishery.
In the fall of 1989 I had just ordered a new Bristol Bay Aluminum Gillnetter from Curry in Bellingham, Wash. It was custom built to gillnet salmon, seine herring in Togiak and also long line or crab in Bristol Bay. The prices for seafood were at their all time high and we were living the good life and expecting to improve on that with the completion of the new 32' foot gillnetter to begin fishing it in 1990. I was anxious to begin fishing but news reports of the largest oil spill in the history of the U.S. and how it was tainting the fish in Prince William Sound began to spread around the world. This of course definitely affected the price of Salmon and that effect is still being felt to this day.
The size and volume to the then largest spill in the U.S. had people believing that all the seafood in Alaska was being tainted and the demand for our precious Salmon plummeted. Fortunately our price for Salmon was at $1.25 in 1990 down considerably from the all time high of $2.40 a pound. In 1991 things really made a down turn with canneries citing the Exxon Valdez as a factor in the lack of demand for Salmon offered us a meager $.50 a pound for our precious salmon. The fisherman reacted with a Bay wide strike and we eventually settled at $.70 a pound. The price never recovered and we have never gone over a dollar a pound for our salmon since then... Exxon initially were very apologetic and offered to pay all claims and would be responsible for the total clean up of Prince William Sound. As a fisherman I submitted my claim as I was affected by the drop in demand and price of Salmon but to this day twenty one years later I have not received a penny of restitution. There are rumors of payoffs for us but there never will be the total recovery of what I have lost. Both the mental and physical stress of the effect will never go away and there never can be a resolution for to heal that effect. Exxon eventually recanted on their initial statement of being responsibly for claims and cleanup which went to the wayside and went to the court system to have their liability decreased. They eventually had their case heard before the U.S. Supreme Court to lessen the fine that was initially imposed upon them and it was very favorable to them to have the liability amount reduced from five billion to five hundred million. The saga continues as we await the payment of that five hundred million.
I have made trips to Prince William Sound and to this day you can turn over any large rock and discovery oil tar and residue under the rocks and still effecting the seafood and wildlife in that area..
I hope this helps you a little as a perspective from someone who was not affected directly but indirectly and gives you an idea of how emotional and devastating it is for those affected directly.

Interview with Heide Mairs (Phd. in geology)
Heide is a geologist with Exxon Mobil having now worked for them for 25 years. She recalls that this was nothing more than a tragic accident with a tremendous clean-up effort. Exxon has had numerous studies done of the waters and rocks in and around Bligh reef and those studies show the oil to be gone. As for the remaining claims of the fishermen, Exxon paid handsomely for the clean-up, mainly hiring fishermen who were affected so there is no financial loss to them. As a company with shareholders, Exxon is beholden to their shareholders to appeal any judgment as the legal system allows. Personally, it took some focus away from the business of searching for oil fields around the world. The cost of discovering new oil reserves is tremendous and the clean-up took resources and attention away from that for over a year. The company has gone to great expense to make sure that all their oil tankers in Alaskan waters are double-hulled.

Interview with Peter Most

Peter is a commercial fisherman in Alaska and my dad. He was living in Seattle Washington with his wife of one year when the Exxon Valdez ran aground. This is his story of the Exxon Valdez disaster:
The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in 1989 when I was 32. I had been running my own boat and crew since I was 18. I was not even in Alaska at the time of the spill but it was all over the news and fast. I was not affected by it directly because Prince William Sound is nowhere near Bristol Bay where I fish. The spill affected me indirectly because it put a damper on the market for all salmon, especially Alaskan salmon which was my major source of income. A lot of salmon come out of Prince William Sound because it is a major fishery. More Humpie (pink) salmon come out of Prince William Sound but more sockeye salmon come out of Bristol Bay. Alaska has the largest salmon runs in the world. Since the spill, there have been very few salmon come out of Prince William Sound; their fishery has come back little by little but is still nothing compared to what it was before. It is a big debate on whether or not to help restore the fishery or let it restore naturally by itself. This controversy is because many hatcheries around the world that have had manmade intervention are not doing as well as others that have just simply been left alone.
I have never been to Valdez but did go to Cordova (which is a neighboring city) in 1974 with dad to go hiking. We took our big boat named Kayak, which was a processor (basically a floating canary) to buy people’s fish and then process them on the boat and can then to be sold to people elsewhere. Of what I can remember it was cold, and all the old people drank beer and wine, and most of all it was beautiful. The bay that we anchored in was the most natural place in the world with the ecosystem and landscape untouched by man, except for the small fishing village.
When the spill first happened Exxon convinced the state of Alaska to redirect all resources deemed necessary to Prince William Sound and this had a tremendous ripple effect. An example of that is this: Bristol Bay is the home of the largest sockeye salmon run in the world. You basically fish up to 20 hours per day for 3 weeks straight and usually for 2-3 weeks beyond that at a slower pace. But 80% of the income from this fishery is made in the 3 week peak fishing period. You must be prepared. All fishermen prearrange their fuel sources. Fuel is purchased in Seattle (There are no refineries in Alaska) and shipped in by barge to arrive on the fishing grounds as the season starts. But the spill happened as many of those fuel barges were leaving Seattle. Some fuel barges were on the fishing grounds early but most were en route as Exxon started to scramble for resources. All fuel barges heading into Alaskan waters were redirected to Prince William Sound. Fishermen in Bristol Bay, who had paid for that fuel months ahead, had to leave their boats tied to docks and could not fish. That left them with no income for the season. That in turn caused many to be unable to make boat payments (Boats for the Bay cost upwards of $350,000 in addition to the permit cost which was approximately $250,000 at that time) which in turn caused the boats to be taken and sold by the banks holding the loans. Exxon never compensated these people. If a fuel barge had hit rough seas and sank on the way to Bristol Bay, the fisherman’s entire season would be covered by insurance. But Exxon was responsible so the boat/season insurance did not compensate the fishermen as Exxon was expected to do that. The initial judgment in favor of these types of claimants has been fought by Exxon in various courts for 21 years. Many of the fishermen impacted in this way are now dead. Exxon is still fighting the judgment which has been reduced multiple times and currently stands at one tenth the original judgment. That amount of money is equal to one day’s profit for Exxon at current earnings. I also remember that I thought it was interesting that after the Exxon Valdez was towed to a dry dock in the lower 48, the company changed the name of the ship and sent it to the Mediterranean or someplace far away from Alaska. They also closed every Exxon retail gas station in Alaska and many in Washington as people were boycotting them.
A friend of mine visited the city of Valdez about a year ago and told me about the people in the city. They don’t even want to talk about the spill, and I don’t blame them, it was an event that put that city on the world map and caused many suicides. The local museum was given a grant that they still have not put to use because it was for the museum to be expanded for an exhibit on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. To the people of the town, the spill is something that must not be named.
The other way the spill impacted the state is by impacting the perception of the fish on the world market. At the time, the majority of the salmon caught in the entire state of Alaska were sold to overseas markets, mainly Japan. Once the spill occurred with the ensuing worldwide news coverage, Japan and other major buyers called all Alaskan salmon ‘Tainted’ claiming the fish were now worth substantially less on the world market. A salmon from Bristol Bay could not possibly ever have entered the waters of Prince William Sound. Bristol Bay fish grow up in the Bering Sea and then return directly to the Bay. But for over ten years people claimed that the fish were not being received well on the world market as they might have come through the heavily oiled waters of Prince William Sound. Alaskan salmon was all treated the same. The price for Bristol Bay sockeye went from $2.00 per pound the year before the spill to $1.50 and then continued to drop to $.60. Only now, over twenty years later is it recovering to $1.00.
The one good thing to come out of the Exxon Valdez was the law requiring all oil tankers sailing in Alaskan waters to be double hulled rather than single hulled. It is expensive, but preserving the ecosystem should come at any cost.