Word: valdez
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...sense, the Valdez tragedy begins not in Alaska but on Long Island, N.Y. There, in 1985, Captain Joseph Hazelwood was convicted of drunken driving. Last September in New Hampshire, he was again found guilty of driving while intoxicated. In a five-year span, his automobile driver's license was revoked three times. Hazelwood is still not permitted to steer a car, but he retained his license to command a ship -- why, no one can satisfactorily explain. In 1985, after Hazelwood informed the company about his drinking problem, Exxon sent him to an alcohol rehabilitation program. The company says...
Hazelwood appeared to be in control of himself when he boarded the Exxon Valdez Thursday night, March 23. But when his blood was tested fully nine hours after the ship ran aground, he had a blood-alcohol level of .06, higher than the .04 the Coast Guard considers acceptable for ship captains. Assuming he drank nothing after the accident and his body metabolized at the normal rate, Hazelwood's level at the time of the accident was about .19, almost double the amount that causes a motorist to be judged drunk in many states. Exxon fired Hazelwood after...
...local pilot steered the tanker out of the port of Valdez. Once he had departed from the ship, Hazelwood left the bridge and went to his cabin while the vessel was still moving along the jagged shores of Prince William Sound. That was in violation of Exxon policy, which calls for the captain to keep command until the ship is on the open ocean. Hazelwood turned over the steering of the ship to Third Mate Gregory Cousins, who is not licensed by the Coast Guard to pilot a vessel through Alaskan coastal waters...
...dodge icebergs that were floating in the sound, Cousins asked the Coast Guard station in Valdez for permission to switch from the path taken by outgoing vessels to the one used by incoming ships. The Coast Guard gave its O.K. but then lost radar contact with the ship. The local newspaper, the Valdez Vanguard, reported that the Coast Guard two years ago replaced its radar with a less powerful unit. Had it maintained contact, the Coast Guard could have warned Cousins that he was straying close to the dangerous rocks of Bligh Reef...
...supposedly impossible had happened. Since the building 15 years ago of the pipeline that carries Alaskan oil from the North Slope to Valdez for shipment by tanker to the West 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...