Word: spilled
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...were filing off ships in Valdez, Alaska, last week and heading toward the phones, Mike's Pizza Palace or the bar at the Pipeline Club. Final paychecks were burning holes in thousands of pockets. The work force that spearheaded Exxon's $1 billion effort to erase the largest oil spill in U.S. history was calling it quits before the winter-storm season descends on Prince William Sound. Six months after the Exxon Valdez ran hard aground on Bligh Reef and dumped 260,000 bbl. of crude oil into one of the most scenic bodies of water in the world...
Whether or not that is fair, everyone agrees that the damage from the catastrophic spill could not be undone so quickly. Much of the oil has been removed and much has been diluted beyond detection, but quite a bit remains. Though the area's wildlife populations will survive, their ranks have been reduced and are still suffering. No one knows how many years or decades it will take the land and water -- and the psyches of Alaskans -- to recover fully. The only certainty is that Exxon still faces a long siege of recriminations, lawsuits and expense as the company tries...
...most indelible image of the spill is that of dead and dying creatures. The body count so far includes 34,000 birds (among them were 139 bald eagles) and 984 sea otters. (One man also died, crushed in the dumbwaiter of a ship in the Exxon cleanup fleet.) Scientists believe the actual wildlife toll is much higher. Recovered bird carcasses, for example, may represent only 5% to 10% of the victims. Many dead otters disappeared under the water, and searches for other animals were limited to the high-water marks on some of the affected islands to respect the wishes...
...Hawk Seafoods in Valdez: "It's been a hideous year for us." Cesarini, who filed a lawsuit against Exxon, says he had expected to process 14 million lbs. of fish but got only 3 million. On a positive note, the three large commercial fish hatcheries in the spill's path were protected, and millions of salmon returned in late summer to spawn in glacial streams along the sound...
Antipathy toward Exxon threatens to obscure the fact that it mounted the largest response ever to an oil spill. The effort was like organizing an infantry division from scratch and deploying it in battle within 60 days. At the cleanup's peak, Exxon marshaled more than 1,400 boats, 85 aircraft and 11,300 people. With that mobilization came such daily logistic headaches as providing 200 tons of food and disposing of 1,400 gal. of human waste in a remote and unforgiving environment. "I think Exxon did a hell of a job," says David Usher, whose firm Marine Pollution...