Word: spills
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What happens next is a matter of theorizing. Nearly all previous massive spills have occurred in areas of moderate climate, where the waves, currents and winds of the open ocean dispersed them; the hemorrhage from the tanker Exxon Valdez is the first big spill to foul an enclosed body of cold water. Clifton Curtis, executive director of the Oceanic Society, predicts that the oil deposits on the bottom will act "as lethal time-release capsules," turning loose "harmful petroleum hydrocarbons for months and even years." Birds, fish and marine animals such as seals and otters that are not killed quickly...
...last large tracts of U.S. wilderness virtually untouched by man. The proposal, which has the support of President Bush, has passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, but it may be delayed by the Prince William Sound disaster. Says Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat: "The Exxon Valdez spill illustrates in a devastating way how delicate the environment of Alaska can be and how impotent we are to protect it from our own mistakes." Ironically, America's worst oil spill occurred just four days before the tenth anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident that choked off the development...
...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 magnitude would occur. Catastrophic events of this nature are further reduced because the majority of tankers calling on Port Valdez are of American registry and all of these are piloted...
Alyeska nonetheless boasted that it would have equipment on the scene of any major spill within five hours. When the unthinkable happened, the reality was somewhat different: the first crews and equipment did not get to the spill until ten hours after the accident. And then they could do little because booms to contain the oil and mechanical skimmers to scoop it up were pitifully insufficient. Moreover, the barge capable of receiving the skimmed oil had been damaged and could not be deployed until the next...
...hang-up? In a word, says an Alyeska supervisor, "complacency." Lulled by almost twelve years of oil shipping through Valdez without a major accident, Alyeska let its old equipment run down to the point that it was taxed to the limit when it cleaned up a small spill of a mere 1,500 bbl. in January. Workers who had been hired to devote full time to 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...