Alaska Oil Spill Commission. (1990).Spill: The wreck of the Exxon Valdez

On March 24,1989, Alaskans awoke to the shock of disaster. Shortly after midnight, the 987-foot-long supertanker Exxon Valdez had run hard aground on Bligh Reef, spilling 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into the unspoiled waters of Prince William Sound. The worst case had occurred.

This was the threatened tanker catastrophe residents of Prince William Sound had dreaded-but many had come to discount--ever since the trans-Alaska pipeline system was proposed in the late 1960s. A few of those scrambling to cope with the disaster knew something more chilling still. Though nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil already had escaped the fully-loaded Exxon Valdez, another 40 million gallons remained on board- and the ship was in considerable danger of capsizing. The spill that became the environmental disaster of the decade easily could have been five times worse.

The system that carried 25 percent of America's domestic oil production had failed. So had the regulatory apparatus intended to make it safe. The promises that led Alaska to grant its rights-of-way and Congress to approve the Alaska pipeline in June 1973 had been betrayed. The safeguards that were set in place in the 1970s had been allowed to slide. The vigilance over tanker traffic that was established in the early days of pipeline flow had given way to complacency and neglect. In the months following the spill, more than 1,000 miles of Alaska's coastline would be sullied by NOM Slope crude.

Communities touched by the effects of the spill staggered under the damage to land and water upon which they lived or the impact of the massive cleanup mobilization after the spill. Alaskans from walks of life as diverse as the oil industry and subsistence communities struggled with the economic losses, sorrow and dislocations as well as, for some, the opportunities that came with the spill and cleanup. Attitudes toward oil development, the land and sea, the industry and the future were examined and re-examined as Alaskans searched for answers to the question of how things went wrong.

The Alaska legislature created the Alaska Oil' Spill Commission to provide some of the answers. Two months after the spill, the governor appointed an independent panel to study the event and recommend public policy remedies. The commissioners came to their work with broad experience in government and public affairs. Their sole purpose was to learn the causes of this disaster and propose changes that would minimize chances for a recurrence of similar disasters anywhere. Our mission was clear: The report must show a path for Alaska, the United States and the world to a vastly improved system for transporting oil and other hazardous substances in the marine environment.

This disaster could have been prevented-not by tanker captains and crews who are. in the end, only fallible human beings, but by an advanced oil transportation system designed to minimize human error. It could have been prevented if Alaskans, state and federal governments, the oil industry and the American public had insisted on stringent safeguards. It could have been prevented if the vigilance that accompanied construction of the pipeline in the 1970s had been continued in the 1980s.

In 1977, when tanker operations began from Valdez, we thought we had created a system that offered guarantees against most disasters. As chairman of Alaska's Oil Tanker Task Force, I pulled together a team that provided the first full-scale simulation of marine operations ever done for a North American port.

Our simulation model demonstrated to the masters and pilots the conditions that would put their ships on the rocks. So we sought certain precautions: Tanker lanes into Port Valdez were set to insure the maximum feasible level of safety in tanker operations. Restrictions were imposed to limit operations in high winds. Agreements between the state, the industry and the Coast Guard established that when ice was encountered, the ships would slow down and proceed at minimum speed in the tanker lanes, rather than proceeding outside the lanes at sea speed, as did the Exxon Valdez.

The historical record developed by the Alaska Oil Spill Commission is clear: The original rules were consistently violated, primarily to insure that tankers passing through Prince William Sound did not lose time by slowing down for ice or waiting for winds to abate. Concern for profits in the 1980s obliterated concern for safe operations that existed in 1977.

This disaster could have been prevented by simple adherence to the original rules. Human beings do make errors. The precautions originally in place took cognizance of human frailty and built safeguards into the system to account for it. This state-led oversight and regulatory system worked for the first two years, until the state was preempted from enforcing the rules by legal action brought by the oil industry. After that, the shippers simply stopped following the rules, and the Coast Guard stopped enforcing them.

This past year the Alaska Oil Spill Commission traveled to the coastal towns and villages of Prince William Sound and Southcentral Alaska to hear from the people most affected by the spill. We found communities and individuals whose lives and trust had been destroyed, but who had rededicated themselves to protecting their livelihood on water and land. Walter Meganack, Sr., traditional village chief of the Alaska Native subsistence community of Port Graham, offered these words at a conference of mayors from spill-affected communities:

It is too shocking to understand. Never in the millennium of our tradition have we thought it possible for the water to die. But it is true ... what we see - Iv now is death. Death~not of each other, but of the source of life, the water. We will need much help, much listening in order to live through the long barren season of dead water, a longer winter than before ... We have never lived through this kind of death. But we have lived through lots of other kinds of death. We will lean from the past, we will learn from each other, and we will live.

Port Graham is about 250 miles, by water, from Bligh Reef. To get there. the oil had to travel the length of Prince William Sound, past Green, Storey, Knight. Montague and LaTouche islands, out into the Gulf of Alaska and along the rocky headlands of Kenai Fjords National Park. It had to round the corner at the end of the Kenai Peninsula, plastering Elizabeth Island and heading into Cook Inlet and the outer reaches of Kachemak Bay. Moving beyond Port Graham and the surrounding area, the oil fouled beaches down the Alaska Peninsula-in Katmai National Park, along the Shelikof Strait, on Kodiak Island and beyond. As the oil spread so, belatedly, did the impact of cleanup and containment efforts, with an army of worker supplies, a navy of boats to move and house them and an air force to bring more personnel and track the oil's movement.

To trace on a map the tortured route of the oil spilled from the Exxon Valdez is to appreciate the vulnerability of every coastline on earth as supertankers of 500,000 deadweight tons and more carry crude oil to market. When the Alaska pipeline was being planned and built, the largest tankers in the American flag fleet were about half that size. The world's oil shipping companies, to the great benefit of consumers and corporate shareholders, have created a megasystem that carries oil from wellheads in the far corners of the earth to refineries in its major industrial centers. But this megasystem is fragile. It requires careful scrutiny from outside the industry in design, construction and operation. When it fails, as it has in tanker disasters around the world, entire coastlines are at risk. Had a spill the extent of the Exxon Valdez disaster occurred off the United States East Coast, the devastation would have stretched from Cape Cod to Chesapeake Bay.

This is a huge risk, yet Alaskans assume such peril daily as supertankers carry 2 million barrels of North Slope crude through Prince William Sound and out into the Gulf of Alaska. Other Americans on three coasts face just as ominous a threat as the world tanker fleet delivers 52 percent of U.S. oil consumption from foreign sources.

What will reduce these risks? Obviously, the present system, providing minimum penalties for creating massive environmental damage, has not deterred the industry from putting the coasts and oceans of the world at continual risk. The system calls out for reform. The mission of this commission is to explain what must be done and why

Questions:

Who were the stakeholders in this incident?

What should have been done to prevent this disaster?

What responsibilities did Exxon have to future stakeholders?

How did Exxon react to the disaster, and did they act responsibly before, during, and after this disaster?