Word: alaska
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...learned to its sorrow that some stains cannot be easily scrubbed away. Exxon said last week that it will have to spend $1.28 billion, or ten times as much as initial projections, to clean up the 11 million gal. of crude oil that the supertanker Exxon Valdez spewed into Alaska's Prince William Sound last March. The surprising estimate, which did not take into account potential penalties or lawsuit settlements, made the Alaskan disaster one of the most expensive industrial accidents ever...
...seafaring that enables you to smell a storm on the horizon or watch the barometer and figure how to outmaneuver it." Because of such gifts, Hazelwood rose swiftly through the ranks. Only ten years after graduating, he became a captain, in charge of the Exxon Philadelphia, a California-to-Alaska oil tanker. At 32 he was the youngest skipper in Exxon's fleet...
...question of whether Cousins was qualified to be in charge of the ship while it was in Prince William Sound. The answer hinges on "pilotage endorsement," a certification from the Coast Guard that entitles a licensed officer to steer ships in certain federal waters. In 1977, when the Alaska pipeline opened, such approval was required all the way down to the entrance of Prince William Sound -- past Rocky Point, Busby Island and Bligh Reef. But since then, the rules have been liberalized several times...
...command ships down to the Bligh Reef area, where the Valdez ran aground. Hazelwood's attorneys insist that the point of freedom was the established pilot station at Rocky Point, some seven miles north of the reef. Hazelwood's position appears to be bolstered by a 1986 memo from Alaska Maritime Agencies, a Valdez shipping agency that serviced Exxon. That memo states that the Coast Guard had waived pilotage requirements from the pilot station to the sound's entrance...
After all the coverage of last March's Alaska oil spill, was there anything left to report? Nation editor Jack E. White figured there was. In the Los Angeles bureau, Brown pored over National Transportation Safety Board reports and testimony by tanker crew members and others to unravel the complex chain of events. Then he went back to Valdez to talk with Coast Guard investigators. Says Brown: "I found the web of culpability surrounding the accident was almost as sticky and far-reaching as the spill itself." Meanwhile, New York correspondent Behar, who wrote the story, interviewed Hazelwood's family...