Word: valdez
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...happened with almost every ethnic group in America, the Hispanics are learning that growing numbers and assertiveness often produce growing hostility. As far back as 1943, hundreds were injured in a Los Angeles race riot, an event dramatized in the current West Coast hit play, Zoot Suit, by Luis Valdez. But now the antipathy is becoming more intense and pervasive as the Hispanics become not only more visible but also more insistent on their rights...
...night from the summit overlooking the harbor, there is a stunning view of cold, moonlit mountains bending down to a deep bowl of dark water: Valdez Harbor, Alaska, the end of the endlessly fought-over trans-Alaska pipeline. Far below sits a cluster of saucer-shaped storage tanks. Pairs of fat aluminum pipes stretch toward shipping berths 500 yds. out from shore at the tip of long, brightly lit piers. At one berth, the black shape of a tanker lies like a beached whale being fed intravenously. The tanker is hooked to four hydraulically powered feeder lines. All night long...
Daylight breaks early this time of year. Shortly after 3 a.m., wintry light quickly overtakes the fishing village of Valdez. On Good Friday of 1964, an 8.4-scale earthquake killed 31 people and forced the town to relocate. Then came a cultural and economic upheaval caused by the pipeline. Nearly 4,000 construction workers and $150-per-hour prostitutes swiftly turned Valdez into a rollicking boomtown. Life is calmer now. The construction workers have left, and the tanker trade has created lucrative permanent jobs. Valdez has a modern high school to show for its troubles and a small, gleaming...
...halt traffic. Explains Coast Guard Captain Ronald Kollmeyer: "When you have literally thousands of icebergs in the shipping lanes, you can't drive an 800-to 900-ft. tanker through that sort of gauntlet." Last August, the glacier's calving increased enough to force closing of the Valdez lanes to night traffic for nearly a week...
...avoid more serious shutdowns if the glacier retreats, the Coast Guard has been considering a number of alternatives. One proposal, to build a powerful radar station near Valdez to monitor icebergs, would require large amounts of money before geologists can confirm that the glacier is indeed retreating. Also, most icebergs calved by Columbia Glacier are "growlers" (20-ft.-wide slabs of ice that rise less than four feet above the water line) and somewhat larger "bergy bits" that are not easily picked up by radar. Another idea is to tow bergs out of the shipping lanes. But both solutions would...