First Mess Up, Then Mop Up

By Paul A. Witteman

In the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill last March, Captain Joseph Hazelwood was widely viewed as America's Environmental Enemy No. 1. As the dimensions of the catastrophe in Prince William Sound came into focus, people had little trouble deciding where their sympathies lay: with the seabirds and otters suffering and dying in the oil-laden waters, not with the hard-drinking skipper who was in his cabin doing paperwork when his tanker plowed into Bligh Reef.

What a difference a year makes. Bursts of applause erupted in Courtroom C of Alaska Superior Court in Anchorage last week, as the jury acquitted Hazelwood on the three most serious charges stemming from the accident. After almost eight weeks and a dizzying parade of witnesses, the prosecution managed to win a conviction on only a relatively insignificant misdemeanor charge: negligent discharge of oil. Judge Karl Johnstone, miffed that Hazelwood had never apologized for his role in the spill, sentenced him to 1,000 hours of cleanup labor and $50,000 restitution to the state, but suspended a 90-day jail sentence and a $1,000 fine. His lawyers vowed to appeal. Had the defrocked skipper been found guilty on all charges, which included a felony count of criminal mischief and misdemeanor counts of intoxication and recklessness, he could have faced more than seven years in prison and $60,000 in fines. "I'm just relieved," said Hazelwood.

Ultimately, Hazelwood's fate turned on one question: whether he was drunk at the time of the accident. Witnesses testified that they had seen the captain drinking in Valdez bars on the afternoon before his ship set sail. The prosecution also introduced tests taken eleven hours after the crash that showed Hazelwood with a blood-alcohol level of 0.061%, higher than the Coast Guard's 0.04% limit for a seaman operating a moving vessel. But Hazelwood's lawyers suggested he might have imbibed after the accident occurred to settle his badly shattered nerves. The captain never took the witness stand. In the end the jury decided the evidence was too ambiguous for a conviction.

What is clear is that oil is still tainting much of the coastline in the sound and the Gulf of Alaska. After a helicopter tour last week, Alaska Governor Steve 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.

Hazelwood's curious journey from villain to victim is not yet complete. The Coast Guard is expected to seek the revocation of his captain's license, and he remains a co-defendant with his former employer in more than 100 civil 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 complicated and very flawed system of extraction and transportation of petroleum."