Years later, Valdez's stain remains

ExxonMobil's legal battle rages 18 years after the oil spill, as the case is likely headed to the Supreme Court.

By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 4, 2007 edition

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Eighteen years after captain Joseph Hazelwood radioed that the oil tanker Exxon Valdez had "fetched up hard aground" on Alaska's Bligh Reef, the battle over environmental damage and financial liability may be nearing conclusion after years of legal wrangling.

The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld a $2.5 billion punitive damages judgment against ExxonMobil, which means the US Supreme Court is likely to settle the case.

Meanwhile, not all animal species have fully recovered from what was the largest oil spill in US history, and more than 30,000 people affected by the spill are still waiting for what they call adequate compensation.

Some 11 million gallons of crude were dumped into the Prince William Sound that day in March 1989. Winds, tides, and currents spread much of it over 10,000 square miles and 1,200 miles of rocky beach. Hundreds of thousands of seabirds, fish, and other animals were killed. Tens of thousands of fishermen, cannery workers, native Alaskans, and others were affected.

Though it's been more than 18 years since the spill, a federal study earlier this year concluded that oil has persisted below the surface of exposed shores and that the remaining oil is declining by only about 4 percent a year. Particularly persistent is the thick, emulsified goo known as "oil mousse."

"Our results indicate that the remaining subsurface oil may persist for decades with little change," researchers from the National Marine Fisheries Service and other agencies concluded in a report published in February. "Such persistence can pose a contact hazard to inter-tidally foraging sea otters, sea ducks, and shorebirds, create a chronic source of low-level contamination, discourage subsistence in a region where use is heavy, and degrade the wilderness character of protected lands."

Last year, the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, which oversees ecosystem recovery in Prince William Sound, painted a mixed picture.

Some species, including bald eagles, harbor seals, and river otters, have recovered to prespill levels. But others – killer whales, sea otters, mussels, and clams among them – have not fully recovered. Pacific herring, which are commercially valuable as well as being a source of food to marine mammals, birds, invertebrates, and other fish, appear not to be recovering, and at one point the fishery had collapsed with only 25 percent of the expected adults returning to spawn, according to the oil spill trustee council.

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