Word: tankerous
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...foundering tanker spews oil off the Texas coast while Congress dithers over a bill to create rapid-response cleanup teams. Even the President admits the need for a budget-and-tax compromise, but a heralded bipartisan summit has so far failed to produce even an agreement on how large the federal deficit really is. Flagrant political scandals -- most notably, craven sellouts by lawmakers to the savings and loan industry -- raise new calls for campaign reforms, but the effort is going nowhere. The decline of the nation's schools produces gusts of rhetoric but not one serious education reform...
Between Corpus Christi, Texas, and Mobile, one of the world's most extensive petrochemical complexes attracts the heaviest concentration of oil-tanker traffic off any U.S. coast. The Exxon Valdez disaster, which dumped 11 million gal. of crude oil into Alaskan waters in March 1989 should have jolted the U.S. -- and the Gulf States in particular -- into preparations for coping with such devastating spills. Just how dismally they have failed was demonstrated last week when fires and explosions wracked the 886-ft. Mega Borg for seven days, 60 miles off Galveston. For a time the convulsions threatened to disgorge...
Incredibly, emergency crews were not able to attack the flames promptly with anything more effective than seawater. The Norwegian owners of the stricken tanker had hired a Rotterdam-based salvage firm to deal with the accident. Nozzles, hoses and pumps for fire-fighting-foam equipment had to be air shipped from the Netherlands. This took two days. Some oil-containment equipment was flown from London. Experts and other gear came from Alaska and Seattle. Mexico was asked to send a huge oil-gobbling skimmer. And while the Rotterdam firm hired Texas boats and seamen to help out, a French company...
...Cowper announced that the state would take a more aggressive role in the ongoing cleanup effort. That is not welcome news for Exxon. The company has spent $2 billion so far on the cleanup, has been indicted by the Federal Government for allowing an incompetent crew to operate the tanker and has replaced Hazelwood in many hearts and minds as the real culprit in the tragedy...
...damage suits that will keep lawyers overpaid for years. After the jury rendered its verdict, Hazelwood talked wistfully about going back to sea. "That's what I do," he said. His attorney suggested he might even try to persuade Exxon to reinstate his client as skipper of an oil tanker. As unlikely as that now seems, no one can dismiss the surprising reversal of perception that last week's verdict seemed to confirm. Said Mei Mei Evans, coordinator of an Alaska-based coalition of environmentalists called the Oil Reform Alliance: "Exxon and Hazelwood are just two agents in a very...