Word: coasted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...finally refloated the crippled tanker last week, towing it about 25 miles to nearby Naked Island for temporary repairs. But Exxon had trouble finding a dry dock that would accept the vessel. Cowper, who had cited the company's bungled attempts to manage the cleanup and called on the Coast Guard to take over, gave qualified approval to a belated offer of aid from the Bush Administration. The President remained opposed to the Government's directing the cleanup, but said he would provide personnel and equipment to help...
...supposedly impossible had happened. Since the building 15 years ago of the pipeline that carries Alaskan oil from the North Slope to Valdez for shipment by tanker to the West Coast, oil companies had been shrugging off environmentalists' forebodings of just such an occurrence. In January 1987, Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., the consortium of oil companies (including Exxon) that manages the pipeline, filed a contingency plan with the Federal Government detailing how it would handle a 200,000-bbl. spill in Prince ; William Sound. Alyeska did so only grudgingly, however, protesting, "It is highly unlikely that a spill of this...
...combatting oil spills were replaced by people whose primary duties lay elsewhere. The state government failed to keep Alyeska up to the mark; the legislature denied its watchdog agency funds for inspecting oil terminals and was pretty much reduced to taking the oil companies' word for their preparedness. The Coast Guard too has sustained deep budget cuts and, says a friendly observer, "is held together with baling wire." Its closest concentration of cleanup ships and equipment is in the San Francisco area, more than 2,000 miles south of Valdez...
...until Wednesday was a ragtag fleet in full operation. A team from Washington, consisting of Secretary of Transportation Samuel Skinner, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William Reilly and Coast Guard Commandant Paul Yost, flew to Alaska at midweek and reported back to Bush that the cleanup was going well enough that there was no need for the Federal Government to take over. That seemed to be a polite way of saying there was no way for the feds to speed things, so Washington might as well stay out and avoid sharing the blame for what the President called a major tragedy...
...spill happened in almost the worst place and at nearly the worst time possible. The jagged coast of Prince William Sound is dotted with innumerable coves and inlets where the spilled oil can collect and stay for months, killing young fish that spawn in the shallows. Fishermen have already written off the herring season that was to start this week. Soon waterfowl by the tens of thousands will finish their northward migrations and settle into summer nesting colonies in Prince William Sound. For them, says Ann Rothe, Alaska regional representative of the National Wildlife Federation, "it will be like returning...