Word: valdez
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...anyone has benefitted from the Valdez, Alaska oil spill it has to be Procter & Gamble. Faced with the problem of cleaning oil-smeared wild-life, Dr. Randall W. Davis, a biologist on the scene there prefers the dishwashing liquid, Dawn. He told the New York Times: "Dawn is chemically quite sophisticated. We went over its composition with chemists at Procter & Gamble and concluded that Dawn had just the mix of properties we needed...
Alice Berkner, another naturalist on scene at Valdez, also told The Times she uses Dawn: "It cuts through this terrible oil quite effectively, but we have to work on the birds pretty hard even...
...there you have it folks. Direct from Valdez, Alaska, Dawn really does "take grease out of your way." Twenty dollars says that it will be only a matter of weeks before the Madison Avenue ad agency in charge of the Dawn account gets a hold of these quotes and we see a new nation-wide Dawn media blitz...
What was the 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...
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...