Word: slick
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...Alaskan accident was partly the result of another corporate lapse: the reduction of its spill-management staff during cost cutting in the mid-1980s. The company lost nine of its top environmental and spill-control officers, including scientist G.P. Canevari, the inventor of Corexit 9527, a commonly used oil-slick dispersant...
...canceled. Salmon fisheries are also in danger: within the next few weeks, hundreds of millions of salmon fry were scheduled to be released from hatcheries located in protected bays ringing Prince William Sound. So far, salmon fishermen, using their own boats to deploy containment booms, have kept the slick from spreading to the hatcheries. If this tactic should fail, Exxon has promised to move the tiny fish to safe hatcheries elsewhere along the coast. But cancellation of the salmon season is still a possibility...
...that assumption has been shattered, perhaps irreparably, by the 10 million gal. of oil that have poured from the Exxon Valdez since it went off course and ran aground in Prince William Sound in late March. By last week the thick, tarry crude had spread into a slick that covered 1,600 sq. mi. of water, fouling 800 miles of shoreline in one of the world's richest wildlife areas. In the wake of the largest oil spill in U.S. history, Alaskans are in shock. Said Dennis Kelso, the state's environment commissioner: "People are going to have strong feelings...
...midweek Exxon, owner of the wounded tanker, admitted that the largest oil spill in U.S. history was spreading out of control; by week's end the slick covered almost 900 sq. mi. southwest of Valdez, Alaska, posing a deadly danger to the marine and bird life that teems in Prince William Sound. The story, a tale of unrelieved gloom with no heroes, resembled a Greek tragedy updated by Murphy's Law. Everything that could go wrong did; everyone involved, including the Alaska state government and the U.S. Coast Guard, made damaging errors; hubris in the form of complacency...
Frank Iarossi, president of Exxon Shipping Co., flew from his Houston home to Valdez and by Friday night took command of the cleanup. By then the slick was spreading and chemical dispersants could not be used because the seas were too calm for them to be effective. On Sunday winds picked up to 70 m.p.h., hindering boats from booming and skimming the oil. The winds drove the oil into a froth known as mousse; workers who tried to apply a napalm-like substance to the oil and ignite it with laser beams did not succeed...