Word: longer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When Captain Joseph Hazelwood heads for the mailbox these days, he no longer waves to his neighbors in Huntington Bay, N.Y. Instead, his head sagging, he hurries back indoors to the lonely anguish that has engulfed his life since the early morning of March 24, when his tanker, the Exxon Valdez, struck a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound and leaked 11 million gal. of crude oil into the pristine waters...
...drank heavily aboard the Valdez; in fact, his management of the ship won the praise of superiors. Both in 1987 and 1988 the Valdez was singled out for a prestigious company award for "safety and performance." Nevertheless, he was increasingly disillusioned with his career, largely for reasons ranging from longer work hours and frozen pay levels to the growing powerlessness of captains to make their own judgments. A week before the oil spill, Hazelwood told a friend that he was thinking about taking a job as a harbor pilot on the Columbia River in Oregon...
...Coast Guard, anticipating that Congress would soon ease the rules, issued a directive stating that, provided visibility exceeded two miles, pilotage endorsements were no longer mandatory after a vessel passed a certain point in the sound. But the point at which the new rule applied is unclear. The Coast Guard argues that only certified officers could 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...
...fatigue of the Valdez crew also appears to have played a role in the grounding. Personnel cutbacks throughout the merchant-marine fleet have resulted in fewer sailors working longer hours. When Hazelwood began with Exxon in 1968, as many as 40 sailors worked on ships smaller than the Valdez. But on the Valdez's maiden voyage in 1986, it sailed with a crew of 24. On Hazelwood's last journey, the crew had been cut to a bare-bones staff of 20 and was going to be trimmed to 15 in order to reduce costs further. As a consequence, twelve...
...general issue is open for debate and compromise. Right-to-life absolutists will find themselves isolated. Appeals to fairness, not to mention more cynical arguments regarding the cost to society of poor women having unwanted babies, will be more likely to succeed when banning government-paid abortions is no longer virtually the only restriction available to those who think unrestricted abortion is wrong...