Posted on 02/03/2004 2:55:41 PM PST by farmfriend
Spill Spin
By Robert G. Williscroft, PhD
They did it again: U.S. District Judge H. Russell Holland in the U.S. District Court in Anchorage, Alaska, has just levied a fine totaling nearly $7 billion against Exxon Mobil Corp. for its part in the 1989 oil spill near Valdez, Alaska. As the headlines flash around the world, leading newspapers are regurgitating material from 15 years ago. For example, on Thursday the Washington Post reported that "The grounding of the Exxon Valdez on March 24, 1989, set off the largest oil spill in history, devastating area ecosystems and the local fishing industry."
Let's correct the record right up front: Far from being one of the largest oil spills in history, as reported by the Washington Post, the Prince William Sound spill was only 10.8 million gallons, and ranked a distant 54th. The Amoco Cadiz spilled nearly 70 million gallons of oil off the coast of Brittany, France, on March 16, 1978, over six times the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez, and yet even this spill ranks only sixth. On June 3, 1979, the exploratory well IXTOC I blew in the Bay of Campeche off Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico, spewing 140 million gallons of oil into that beautiful bay. And even this ranks only number two. The all time "winner" is former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who caused the deliberate release of over 40.5 billion gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf, over 3,750 times the size of the Prince William Sound spill.
What Happened
It all began at 9:12 in the evening on Thursday, March 23, 1989. Harbor Pilot William Murphy "had the conn" of the Exxon Valdez as she departed the Trans Alaska Pipeline terminal. With the help of a harbor tug, he guided her safely through the Valdez Narrows seven miles out. By 11:25 Murphy had yielded the conn to Captain Hazelwood, and departed the ship. Hazelwood reported this fact to Vehicle Traffic Center, and also reported the presence of many burgy bits -- small icebergs from nearby Columbia Glacier -- in the shipping channel. To avoid problems with the ice he obtained permission to divert his track from the normal outbound channel across the separation zone into the inbound channel, and then he turned the bridge over to Third Mate Gregory Cousins. Before leaving the bridge, Captain Hazelwood instructed Cousins on exactly when to return the ship to its designated outbound shipping lane. The time was about five minutes to midnight.
Good Friday was just a few minutes old when Third Mate Cousins plotted a fix and determined that he should bring the Exxon Valdez back on track. About the same time Lookout Maureen Jones reported that Bligh Reef light had appeared broad off the starboard bow. It should have been off the port bow; Cousins ordered a sharp right turn. Unfortunately, the Exxon Valdez was not yet up to normal cruising speed. She was sluggish and slow in responding to Cousin's turn order. He was actually reporting the dire situation to Captain Hazelwood over the bridge telephone when the Exxon Valdez came to a jolting, grinding stop, hard aground atop a pinnacle at the edge of Bligh Reef. Eight of her eleven cargo tanks had been ripped open. The wind was blowing from the north at ten knots, it was just above freezing with a slight drizzle of mixed rain and snow. Visibility was ten miles. Three hours and fifteen minutes later 10.8 million gallons of crude oil had washed into Prince William Sound.
According to authorities, the final toll in Southeast Alaska was thirteen hundred miles of beaches fouled by 10.8 million gallons of crude oil. Workers counted more than 35,000 dead birds and 1,000 dead sea otters after the spill, but since most carcasses sink, this is considered to be a small fraction of the actual death toll. The best estimates are: 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 killer whales, and billions of salmon and herring eggs.
Penalty Phase
Captain Hazelwood and Exxon were slapped by a federal jury with civil penalties of close to a billion dollars for the spill. Although Captain Hazelwood was charged with three counts of Felony Criminal Mischief, and misdemeanor charges of operating a vessel while intoxicated, reckless endangerment, and negligent discharge of oil, he was convicted only of negligent discharge of oil, which is a misdemeanor that normally would receive no sentence. In an apparent reaction to public outcry, Judge Holland awarded Captain Hazelwood one thousand hours of community service over a five-year period.
On October 9, 1991, the U.S. District Court approved the settlement among the State of Alaska, the United States government, and Exxon. The settlement resolved various criminal charges against Exxon as well as civil claims brought by both federal and state governments for recovery of natural resource damages resulting from the oil spill.
Exxon received the largest fine ever imposed for an environmental crime: $150 million. Recognizing Exxon's actions in cleaning up the spill and its voluntary payment of certain private claims, the court forgave $125 million of that fine. Exxon paid $12 million to the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund and $13 million to the national Victims of Crime Fund. Exxon also agreed to pay $100 million as restitution for the injuries caused to the fish, wildlife, and lands of the spill region. Finally, Exxon agreed to pay another $900 million over a ten-year period. This settlement contains a provision allowing the governments to claim as much as $100 million more to restore damaged resources, where that damage could not have been anticipated from then available data.
But it didn't end there.
In September 1994, a federal jury awarded $5 billion in punitive damages to 34,000 fishermen and other Alaskans who said they had been harmed by the Exxon Valdez oil spill. This award trumped the earlier punitive award, equal to a year's worth of Exxon profits at the time.
In June 1997, Exxon appealed the $5 billion judgment. In October 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Exxon's appeal, but in November 2001, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the $5 billion judgment excessive, and sent case back to the U.S. District Court in Anchorage. In December 2002, Judge Holland reduced the punitive damage judgment against Exxon Corp. from $5 billion to $4 billion, and both sides appealed. Then in August 2003, the 9th Circuit again sent the case back to Holland after the U.S. Supreme Court found that a $145 million punitive damage award against State Farm Insurance was excessive.
The Fallout
Shortly after the spill in Prince William Sound, one news report described it as the worst man-made disaster since the bombing of Hiroshima. The Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and other groups pounced on the apparent villains, focusing their anger on Exxon and Captain Hazelwood. They even organized cut-ins where everyone cut up their Exxon credit cards. They laid plans to bring about the indictment of corporate officers on criminal charges.
While these things make terrific news copy, and the headline writers love it, does this reflect reality?
Exxon spent more on the initial cleanup than the annual budget of several nations a fact recognized by the court when it excused $125 million of Exxon's fine because of these actions. Nevertheless, the civil penalties levied against Hazelwood and Exxon are examples of how justice can be miscarried when emotion overcomes logic, and opinion replaces fact.
Consider, for example, reports from the Office of Response and Restoration of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):
In its evaluation of the effectiveness of the cleanup methods used after the spill NOAA says:
And then NOAA cites these examples [emphasis NOAA's]:
What NOAA is really saying here is that the original problem was in many ways exacerbated by some of the intensive cleanup efforts and methods, however noble and well-intentioned. It doesn't take brilliant insight to understand that oil covering the surface of rocks and sand is much less a problem than oil heated to low viscosity and forced down into the sediment by high pressure hot steam. The hot high pressure steam not only cleaned the rocks, it also permanently destroyed the lichens and other vegetation that resided on the rocks. As it turns out, most of these would have survived the oil had they simply been left alone.
The oil floating on the cold Prince William Sound water tended to congeal into larger clumps of a tar-like substance. These clumps typically grew until they became sufficiently dense that they sank to the bottom where they eventually were covered with silt. While this certainly poses some threat to the bottom critters near the clumps, for the most part the problem is relatively benign. By spraying the surface oil with detergents, however, the clumps never form. Envision television detergent ads wherein detergent treated dishwater holds grease in suspension so that it does not stick to plates. In the ocean, detergent disperses oil in the same manner: it mixes with the water instead of floating on top. Consequently, much of the oil gets transported into the ecosystem by birds, and by fish near the surface passing oil-saturated water through their gills. Even after as much as possible of this oil is soaked up into rags and other mop-up devices, sufficient detergent dispersed oil remains in the water to do great harm.
As with the Amoco Cadiz spill, the IXTOC I spill, and even the Gulf War disaster, after five years, only a concerted effort could show that a spill had ever happened. After ten years, unless you knew about the spill, you probably could find no evidence at all.
But now, with the huge new damage award, it has started all over again. Spin has replaced historical fact. Fiction has conquered truth. Why? It is far more dramatic for the media to thunder about 1,300 miles of polluted coastline than it is to explain that the intertidal habitats, as NOAA put it, "proved to be surprisingly resilient," and that significant damage was caused while trying to clean it up.
Dr. Williscroft is a retired submarine officer, deep sea/saturation diver, businessman, writer, and life-long adventurer. Among other activities he spent 22 months underwater, a year in the equatorial Pacific, 3 years in the Arctic ice pack, and a year at the Geographic South Pole. His articles appear in TCS, and in the popular online periodicals DefenseWatch Magazine and Mens News Daily. He can be reached through his website or by email.
I love seeing pictures of caribou laying or grazing next to the pipelines. They give me confidence in the words spoken by environmentalists.
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