A NOAA scientist surveying an oiled beach to assess the depth of oil penetration soon after the spill (Photo courtesy of NOAA)
Twenty years ago this week, an oil tanker ran aground on a rocky reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil. It’s considered to be perhaps the biggest ecological disaster in US history. Ann Dornfeld has this look at how oil spill prevention and preparedness have changed in the two decades since Valdez:
Transcript
Twenty years ago this week, an oil tanker ran aground on a rocky reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil. It’s considered to be perhaps the biggest ecological disaster in US history. Ann Dornfeld has this look at how oil spill prevention and preparedness have changed in the two decades since Valdez:
The call came in just after midnight.
“Ah, evidently leaking some oil and we’re gonna be here for a while.”
Court records indicate Captain Joseph Hazelwood was likely drunk when the Exxon Valdez ran aground.
There was hardly any clean-up equipment on hand. No plan for action. The location was remote.
Oil polluted a stretch of Alaskan coastline the length of the entire west coast of the U.S. The oil killed fish, sea otters, harbor seals and an estimated quarter of a million birds. Today, there is still oil on some beaches.
Twenty years later, a cargo vessel has just reported a spill of 160
gallons of oil in Washington state’s Commencement Bay. Investigators
have filled the “Spill Situation Room” in the state Department of Ecology.
“Who’s responsible for actually maintaining
the bow thruster, when was the last time they performed maintenance on it?”
“You mean one of the staff on board?”
“Yeah.”
Spill Response Manager David Byers says coastal states learned a lesson from Exxon Valdez, and developed rapid response systems like this.
“We’ve got crews headed up in a helicopter to do on-
water observations, we’ve got response resources on the water headed out to do containment when we find the location of the oil.”
Byers says the state handles dozens of spills this size each year, making it somewhat of a well-oiled machine.
After the Exxon Valdez, the state of Washington put in place some tough prevention standards. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the state.
The court ruled the state was making safety demands of oil companies that only the federal government could make.
Mike Cooper is Chairman of the state’s Oil Spills Advisory Council. He says that ruling is one reason why small oil spills are common in Washington’s bays. He says other states have come up against the same restrictions.
“When the Massachusetts legislature passed strict laws,
the United States Coast Guard and the industry did the same thing that they did to the people of Washington state. They sued the people of the state of Massachusetts and said, ‘We’ll decide if industry has to pay.'”
The federal Oil Pollution Act did raise industry’s liability and the amount of federal money available in the event of a spill. It also requires oil tankers and barges in U.S. waters to be double-hulled by 2015. The Exxon Valdez’ single hull was easily gouged open when it ran aground.
Today, most U.S.-flagged tankers and barges are double-hulled. Most foreign tankers aren’t yet.
But there’s no law requiring a second hull on cargo ships. Bruce Wishart is Policy Director for People for Puget Sound. He says it’s cargo vessels that are most likely to spill oil.
“It’s commonly assumed that oil tankers pose the
single greatest threat in terms of an oil spill. There are actually many, many more cargo vessels plying our waters that pose a very significant risk simply because they carry a lot of fuel on board.”
In 2007, the cargo vessel Cosco Busan spilled 53,000 gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay. Thousands of birds died, including endangered species. A fully-loaded cargo ship can contain 40 times more oil than what leaked from the Cosco Busan.
So, while oil tankers have become safer in the two decades since the Exxon Valdez, the nation’s waterways still remain at risk of a major spill.
For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.