Valdez spill lingers in court and on Alaska shores

By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Nearly 17 years after the
Exxon Valdez supertanker grounded on a reef in Alaska’s Prince
William Sound, its environmental impact and the legal battle
over compensation still haunt the area.

Pockets of relatively fresh Exxon Valdez oil remain on
shorelines as distant as Katmai National Park, about 300 miles

from the site where the supertanker disgorged 11 million
gallons of crude oil, according to government scientists who
presented their studies at a conference this week in Anchorage.

“This stuff isn’t changing at all. It’s just the same kind
of goo that got deposited there in 1989,” said Jeff Short, a
National Oceanic and Atmospheric researcher.

Litigation against Exxon Mobil Corp. by about 32,000
fishermen, Alaska natives, property owners and others continues
in court.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral
arguments on Friday over whether Exxon Mobil should pay a $5
billion punitive fine that the oil giant has been appealing for
more than a decade.

“This is almost the end of the road. This will not be
reviewed again. They’ll pick the number and tell us what it
is,” predicted Dave Oesting, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

Decisions in the 9th Circuit usually come weeks or months
after the oral arguments. The appeals court has twice
questioned the award, sending it back to the trial judge to
reduce the fine.

U.S. District Judge Russel Holland has twice sided with the
plaintiffs, though he eventually reduced the amount to $4.5
billion. Accrued interest could bring the total amount to
nearly $9 billion, Oesting said.

Exxon Mobil, the oil giant created from the merger of Exxon
and Mobil in 1999, argues that the spill’s effects have long
receded and that the fine is unjustified.

The company points out that it spent more than $2 billion
on the clean-up and shelled out $1.025 billion for a 1991
settlement with federal and state governments.

Exxon Mobil has argued in legal motions that the appeals
court should reduce Holland’s “outlandish judgment” to no more
than $25 million.

ECOLOGICAL DEBATE

Along the coastline, debate about the spill’s environmental
effects continues.

According to the group that administers the settlement
money paid by Exxon to the governments, only seven of 30 marine
species, resources or services have recovered to pre-spill
levels. Whether the spill is to blame and whether remnant oil
is causing harm remains unsettled.

A scientist who has worked for Exxon says that even if
there are isolated pockets of lingering oil, it is not getting
into the food chain.

“Is it ecologically relevant? No,” said David Page, the
Bowdoin College biochemistry professor who has studied the
spill on the company’s behalf.

“To say that it’s somehow causing damage when it’s part of
the baseline, that’s not really scientifically correct,” said
Page, who added that natural oil that seeps along Alaska’s
coastline overshadows any lingering Valdez oil.

But Prince William Sound residents believe the spill
triggered a cascade of environmental ills.

“As subsistence fishermen and hunters, we still see the
effects of that oil spill just about daily,” said Gary
Kompkoff, head of the tribal council in Tatitlek, a tiny Native
village just a few miles from the Exxon Valdez grounding site.

He cited a dramatic fall in the number of herring as one of
the most serious effects because herring make up much of the
diet for other sea life. “If the herring don’t return, then we
have nothing to harvest,” he said.