Word: guard
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...jagged shores of Prince William Sound. That was in violation of Exxon policy, which calls for the captain to keep command until the ship is on the open ocean. Hazelwood turned over the steering of the ship to Third Mate Gregory Cousins, who is not licensed by the Coast Guard to pilot a vessel through Alaskan coastal waters...
...dodge icebergs that were floating in the sound, Cousins asked the Coast Guard station in Valdez for permission to switch from the path taken by outgoing vessels to the one used by incoming ships. The Coast Guard gave its O.K. but then lost radar contact with the ship. The local newspaper, the Valdez Vanguard, reported that the Coast Guard two years ago replaced its radar with a less powerful unit. Had it maintained contact, the Coast Guard could have warned Cousins that he was straying close to the dangerous rocks of Bligh Reef...
...that matter, the accident might have been avoided had the Coast Guard's radar been electronically linked to the harbor's vessel-traffic system so that an alarm would sound automatically if a tanker wandered out of its correct path. Such a state-of-the-art system is in operation in at least one foreign port. Says Curtis of the Oceanic Society: "This is not just a case of someone getting drunk. Because the industry did not take responsibility for state-of- the-art technology, the problem lies at its doorstep...
...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...