The Big Spill

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

A captain with too much alcohol in his blood turns over command of his tanker to an unqualified third mate. The mate shouts contradictory orders to the helmsman and eventually impales the vessel on a reef, causing millions of gallons of oil to gush from the mangled hull. Companies that boasted they had the equipment and manpower in place for a quick cleanup turn out to have hardly anything available and lose irreplaceable days getting into action. Then, almost predictably, the calm weather gives way to high winds that render their efforts ineffective.

By midweek Exxon, owner of the wounded tanker, admitted that the largest oil spill in U.S. history was spreading out of control; by week's end the slick covered almost 900 sq. mi. southwest of Valdez, Alaska, posing a deadly danger to the marine and bird life that teems in Prince William Sound. The story, a tale of unrelieved gloom with no heroes, resembled a Greek tragedy updated by Murphy's Law. Everything that could go wrong did; everyone involved, including the Alaska state government and the U.S. Coast Guard, made damaging errors; hubris in the form of complacency (it has never happened, so it won't) took a heavy toll; and events marched relentlessly from bad to worse toward the worst possible.

In this case, the worst possible is an unprecedented ecological disaster. Though Exxon insists it will persist in cleanup efforts for months if necessary and promises to leave the highly scenic area "the way it was before," that is close to a physical impossibility. Earlier mishaps suggest that only about 10% of the oil from such a massive spill (this one totaled at least 10.1 million gal., perhaps 12.6 million) will ever be recovered. Some of the rest evaporates. But as the lighter components escape into the air, most of the oil turns into a thick black gunk that eventually sinks to the bottom. There it is joined by oil that first coated beaches but little by little washes back into the water.

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 by being coated with crude will still be in danger, as the bottom oil contaminates first microorganisms, then the small fish that eat them, then the larger creatures up the food chain. Fishermen in the port of Cordova (pop. 3,000) fear that their catches of salmon, herring, shrimp and crab will be ruined for years, possibly wiping out their livelihood. Says Barbara Jenson, wife of a fourth-generation fisherman: "I don't think we are going to survive this one."

In a wider perspective, the disaster points up the unresolved conflict between American desires for an unspoiled environment and demands for more energy that has long bedeviled national policy. Immediately the crack-up of the Exxon Valdez gives powerful new ammunition to environmentalists fighting against a proposal to allow oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the 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 of nuclear-power plants and led to growing reliance on coal and oil. The bill for that decision is beginning to come due. The question that will increasingly haunt energy-policy debate is this: What degree of environmental risk should be accepted for the sake of adding domestic fuel supplies to a nation that has never been able or willing to practice sufficient conservation and yet rightly views dependence on foreign-oil imports as a threat to economic and military security?

In a 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 it was not aware that the problem persisted after his treatment.

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 it got the test results, a prime case of reacting long after the damage has been done. On Friday the state filed criminal charges against Hazelwood for operating a ship under the influence of alcohol and issued a warrant for his arrest.

A 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.

To 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.

For that matter, the accident might have been avoided had the Coast Guard's radar been electronically linked to the harbor's vessel-traffic system so that an alarm would sound automatically if a tanker wandered out of its correct path. Such a state-of-the-art system is in operation in at least one foreign port. Says Curtis of the Oceanic Society: "This is not just a case of someone getting drunk. Because the industry did not take responsibility for state-of- the-art technology, the problem lies at its doorstep."

According to William Woody, an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, the accident was preceded by a series of commands that put the vessel a mile out of the shipping lanes and into harm's way. Cousins and finally Hazelwood, who had returned to the bridge, issued contradictory orders. Shortly after midnight, the tanker impaled itself on Bligh Reef, its hull torn by gashes, some thought to be 15 ft. wide. At least 240,000 bbl. of oil, equal to 10.1 million gal., poured out of the wounds.

The 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 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 by licensed masters or pilots."

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 day.

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 for inspecting oil terminals and was pretty much reduced to taking the oil companies' word for their preparedness. The Coast Guard too has sustained deep budget cuts and, says a friendly observer, "is held together with baling wire." Its closest concentration of cleanup ships and equipment is in the San Francisco area, more than 2,000 miles south of Valdez.

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.

The company compounded the damage to its image by initially misleading the press and local residents with assurances that its beach cleanups and booming operations were well under way. But on Wednesday Exxon spokesman Donald Cornett admitted that beach cleanup had not started and that one boat had just sailed around gauging the extent of the spill. Later that night he was greeted in nearby Cordova by citizens displaying signs that read, DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU HEAR. ESPECIALLY AT ALYESKA AND EXXON PRESS CONFERENCES.

Not until Wednesday was a ragtag fleet in full operation. A team from Washington, consisting of Secretary of Transportation Samuel Skinner, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William Reilly and Coast Guard Commandant Paul Yost, flew to Alaska at midweek and reported back to Bush that the cleanup was going well enough that there was no need for the Federal Government to take over. That seemed to be a polite way of saying there was no way for the feds to speed things, so Washington might as well stay out and avoid sharing the blame for what the President called a major tragedy.

The spill happened in almost the worst place and at nearly the worst time possible. The jagged coast of Prince William Sound is dotted with innumerable coves and inlets where the spilled oil can collect and stay for months, killing young fish that spawn in the shallows. Fishermen have already written off the herring season that was to start this week. Soon waterfowl by the tens of thousands will finish their northward migrations and settle into summer nesting colonies in Prince William Sound. For them, says Ann Rothe, Alaska regional representative of the National Wildlife Federation, "it will be like returning home after somebody came in and ransacked your house, took some gunk and dumped it all over the place." She fears the sea otter population of 4,000 to 5,000 "will be totally wiped out."

In a highly unusual public apology, published as an advertisement in TIME and about 100 other magazines and newspapers, Exxon Chairman L.G. Rawl promised that his company not only will pay all direct cleanup costs but "also will meet our obligations to all those who have suffered damage from the spill." Under federal law, the company must pay the first $14 million in cleanup costs, then can tap a fund set up by the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Act for an additional $86 million.

And after that? Although the pipeline law limits a company's liability to $100 million in most cases, that lid is off if a spill and the damage that results are due to negligence. A court may find that the actions of Captain Hazelwood and Third Mate Cousins -- and the failure of both Alyeska and Exxon | to respond quickly to the spill -- meet that test. Both the state of Alaska and the Federal Government have opened criminal investigations of the spill. "It will be a long war of experts," says James McNerney, a Houston specialist in environmental and maritime law. The battle over this spill and its consequences could prove almost as messy and unpredictable as the environmental damages.

With reporting by Jay Peterzell/Washington, David Seideman /New York and Paul A. Witteman/Valdez.