FBI Starts Probe of Valdez Spill as Toll Mounts

As rescue workers reported observing greater numbers of oil-soaked wildlife in Prince William Sound, the FBI said Friday it has begun a criminal investigation into the cause of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Agents from the FBI’s Anchorage office said they would investigate whether Exxon violated the Clean Water Act and other federal anti-pollution laws when a tanker captain, later found to have alcohol in his blood, retired to his cabin and let an inexperienced crew member guide the 987-foot tanker onto a reef of sharply pointed rocks 25 miles south of Valdez a week ago, causing the greatest oil spill in North American history.

Most of the 240,000 barrels of crude released by the wreck still is adrift or is fouling more than 60 miles of inaccessible sand and gravel beaches along Prince William Sound, a large and rugged body of water uniquely rich in fish, marine mammals and birds.

The Clean Water Act, which outlaws “negligent discharge of a pollutant into navigable waters” of the United States, carries penalties ranging from $50,000-a-day fines to five years’ imprisonment. Prison terms up to 15 years are possible under such laws as the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act.

A federal source, who declined to be identified, said Alaska’s attorney general is considering charging one or more individuals involved in the spill to prevent them from fleeing his state’s jurisdiction.

Exxon spokesman Brian Dunphy--after refereeing a tense Valdez town meeting Friday that was disrupted and finally cut short by two shoving and shouting incidents--said that he was unaware of the FBI case and declined to discuss it in detail until the company could find out more about it.

“I’m sure we’ll participate fully with those investigations,” he said.

Winds, Current Push Slick

Meanwhile, in the field, scientists and local fishermen reported that the 1,000-square-mile slick had been pushed by winds and pulled by currents onto wildlife habitat, oiling an unknown but apparently growing number of birds and sea otters. However, the most-sensitive areas, such as sheltered coves and fish hatcheries, have so far been spared.

The major focus of cleanup crews now is to keep the 10 million gallons of oil out of those areas. In one case, Exxon’s Alaska coordinator, Don Cornett, said 10 skimmers, or boats able to suck oil off the surface, have been bunched in the southwest corner of the sound to keep oil from fouling the big Port San Juan salmon hatchery in Sawmill Bay.

Fishermen also have set up three booms across the bay and are pleading for more of the buoyant and absorbent material for additional booms.

Gov. Steve Cowper’s office announced that the Soviet Union would send a skimmer ship and Norway would send five environmental experts to assist in the cleanup.

The Norwegians are expected to arrive in Anchorage today, and the 11,400-ton Soviet ship Vaydagursky is expected to arrive in four or five days, said spokesman Terence O’Malley.

Even with such efforts, biologists expect the wildlife body count to grow as oil that has stayed mainly in the frigid water washes over the sound’s many islands and rocks.

As the oil reached key fishing grounds, state officials issued emergency orders Friday canceling planned fishing seasons for sablefish and shrimp. The sablefish fishery was worth $200,000 last year and was scheduled to open today, while the shrimp fishery was already under way.

Fisheries officials also planned to decide this afternoon whether to close the multimillion-dollar season for herring, a valuable product on the Japanese market.

Two Islands Hit

Reports indicate the oil began taking its biggest toll on wildlife Thursday afternoon, when the goo washed ashore on long pieces of beach on Knight and Green islands. Oil-soaked animals were not found by early air reconnaissance, a common means for surveying the vast sound, but scientists and others who made the four-hour boat trip to the affected islands said they found many blackened animals huddled or dead on the beaches.

“It was devastating. There is no other way to describe it,” said Katherine Frost, a marine mammals specialist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “All of us were walking around silent, shellshocked.”

Roy Corral, a local photographer, said he saw otters frantically, vainly struggling through the polluted waves in an apparent effort to rid their thick fur of the oil robbing them of insulation from the frigid water.

“They go skimming across the top, shaking and bouncing in agony,” he said.

On the beaches, he said, scores of murrelets, cormorants and other birds are barely distinguishable from the oil-smeared sand and gravel.

‘Can’t See It From Air’

“The birds are the color of rocks, and the rocks are covered with oil,” the photographer said. “That’s why people were saying they can’t see the impact--you can’t see it from the air. You have to be there and walk the beach to see it.”

Similar independent reports in the past have been discounted because, for example, sea lions engaged in normal basking behavior were interpreted by amateurs as dead and floating.

But confirmation by professionals, such as Frost and Alice Berkner of the International Bird Rescue Center, have convinced many people in Valdez that wildlife is being affected.

For example, Frost, still clad in a bright-orange survival suit, concurred with Corral that, “you don’t see the oiled birds (on the beaches) until you are right on top of them--sometimes until you practically step on them.”

What Frost and others cannot yet say is how many oil-soaked birds, otters and other animals are out there. By late Friday, only a handful had arrived at a rescue station set up at the local community college.

“It’s a very large area and hard to assess,” Frost said.

Checking for Toxics

Meanwhile, Jacqueline Michel of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said some researchers are taking water samples to find out if the unusually thick and pervasive slick might have trapped volatile crude-oil components, such as toxic benzene, in the seawater. If that happened, she said, the toxics could severely impact juvenile fish and the tiny zooplankton that form the base of the local food chain--a development that could have lasting impact on the area.

Local fishermen have banded together to ask just such questions and try to learn how the slick might affect the crucial local fishing economy. They worry about such things as what young salmon will eat when released from hatcheries in a few weeks if the plankton is dead, or how the oily water might affect their ability to “imprint” on the sound--that is, recognize its unique nature so they can return to the area to breed.

Scientists say it is too early to be able to answer such questions. Although a wealth of data exists on the effects of past spills, they say there are too many variables to use those experiences to accurately predict this incident.

Indeed, logistics are making all efforts in the spill difficult. The leading edge of the spill is now 80 or more miles from Valdez, among a puzzle of craggy and uninhabited islands. Low clouds kept most aircraft grounded for most of Friday, and boats can take four hours to get to the affected area.

This has greatly slowed cleanup efforts, as work crews can spend far more time just getting to and from the dirty beaches than they spend trying to clean them up.

The city of Seward, which is about 160 miles southwest of Valdez, bought about 10,000 feet of containment boom to protect sensitive sections of Resurrection Bay.

At Kenai Fjords National Park on the Kenai Peninsula near Seward, workers hustled to protect fertile salmon streams.

“We expect the windward side of our boundary . . . to be slimed,” said park Supt. Anne Costellina. “There’s not a lot we can do about it.”

Frank Iarossi, president of Exxon Shipping Co., said his company skimmed only 7,300 barrels from the sea in the first week. He blamed the lack of progress on government indecision and bad weather, but angry local residents and state officials say Exxon responded too late with too little equipment.

President Bush, meeting in Washington with regional reporters, reiterated his backing for further oil drilling on Alaska’s North Slope despite the Exxon Valdez accident.

“Now you have a ship that runs on a reef at 12 knots and driven by somebody or in command by a person who allegedly had been under the influence,” Bush said. “I’m not sure you can ever design a policy anywhere to guard against that.”

Joseph Hazelwood, 42, the tanker’s captain, was found about 10 hours after the accident to have a blood-alcohol level of .061--50% higher than the legal limit of .04 for operating a vessel, federal investigators said.

“The logical suggestion,” the President said, “would be, well, should we shut down the Gulf of Mexico? Should we shut down the oil fields off of Louisiana because of this? And the answer would be no. That would be irresponsible.”

Bush said the nation would “redouble every effort to provide the proper safeguards.”

But he warned that the nation’s increasing dependence on foreign oil “is not acceptable to any President who is responsible for the national security of this country.”

“So what you do is do the best you can . . . “ he said, “but not take irresponsible action to guard against an incident of this nature.”

The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, William K. Reilly, acknowledged Friday that “there will certainly be more oil spills.”

“That is a regrettable cost of our energy dependency, of our energy needs,” he said. But he contended that the United States had little alternative.

“We have to remember here that if we don’t get oil out of Alaska, we’ll be getting it from other countries,” he said. “And those countries will be sending tankers up the East and West Coast of the United States, and they’re very vulnerable environments in the Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound and San Francisco Bay.

“So there’s going to be risk no matter what we do.”

Bush also told the regional reporters Friday that he would support “constitutional steps” to impose mandatory testing of alcohol and drug use by tanker crews.

“I want to see a drug-free workplace, and I would certainly think we could expand that to reasonable requirements in terms of people who are fulfilling important functions like taking crude oil through straits,” he said.

But, Bush added, “it’s awful hard to guard against abuse of this nature when you’re making laws.” Noting that the strait was “pretty wide,” he said: “I don’t think there is any way you could plan, as you’re making the pipeline, against this kind of abuse.”

In Anchorage, a second class-action lawsuit was filed accusing Exxon of gross negligence in the spill and cleanup effort. Plaintiffs included fishermen, seafood processors, kelp harvesters, tour boat operators and maritime shippers. The first lawsuit was filed by two Prince William Sound fishermen.

Staff writers Douglas Jehl and Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story from Washington.