Ship Refloated; Former Skipper Gives Self Up

Exxon salvage crews successfully refloated the stricken tanker Exxon Valdez on Wednesday as the former captain of the vessel surrendered to authorities in New York to face criminal charges in the massive oil spill.

Joseph Hazelwood, 42, surrendered to police in a Long Island suburb of New York City and hours later Judge Kenneth Rohl set bail at $500,000--10 times what Alaskan authorities had sought.

Hazelwood’s lawyer said he had not decided whether to waive extradition proceedings and return to Alaska to face the charges; Hazelwood was not required to enter a plea Wednesday.

Fired by Exxon

After the Exxon Valdez ran aground on March 24, Hazelwood was found to be legally drunk and was fired by Exxon. Hazelwood left Alaska before local authorities could interview him, and had been pursued since Saturday on a fugitive warrant on three misdemeanor charges: operating a watercraft while intoxicated, reckless endangerment and negligent discharge of oil at sea.

Together, those three charges have a maximum penalty of 27 months in prison and a $10,000 fine.

“These misdemeanors are of such a magnitude that has never been equaled, at least in this country,” Rohl said. “We have a man-made destruction that has not been equaled, probably, since Hiroshima.”

FBI officials in Washington say they also are investigating whether Hazelwood could be charged with felony violations of the Clean Water Act, which prohibits negligent discharge of pollutants into navigable waters.

No people have been killed or even seriously injured by the spill, but oil has seriously disrupted the rich Prince William Sound fishing industry. Also, animal-rescue teams estimate the spill has killed several thousand birds and hundreds of sea otters.

Estimates of wildlife deaths are not easy to make because oiled birds are hard to spot from the air, and many beaches are difficult to reach for in person inspections.

In the wildlife-rich sound, cleanup crews continued to skim emulsified oil as thick as pudding. As of Wednesday, 12 days after the Exxon Valdez ran aground, the 240,000-barrel slick was estimated to affect an area the size of Delaware, and Exxon’s fleet of oil-skimming boats had picked up only about 5% of the spilled oil.

The state of Alaska condemned Exxon’s cleanup on Wednesday and asked the Coast Guard to take over the effort. Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), a senior member of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee added during a tour of Prince William Sound that fraud “is not too strong a word to describe Exxon’s cleanup claims.”

“What they are really doing is managing the failure,” Miller said after meeting with Aleut Indian residents in the tiny fishing village of Chenega Bay.

Alaska Gov. Steve Cowper said the Coast Guard should be better able to handle coordination and management of the cleanup than Exxon, which he said was too bureaucratic.

“Maybe that’s been the problem all along. You need a military system to get things done,” the governor said.

Although Cowper said he did not want to be “extremely critical” of Exxon, a letter sent to the Coast Guard by a state environmental official said Exxon had been unresponsive.

“Exxon has failed to provide . . . the information necessary to make sound planning recommendations regarding the cleanup of oil and the protection of resources,” wrote Lynn Kent, chief of the state Oil and Hazardous Substance Spill Response Section.

President Bush earlier had sent a team of high-level officials to Valdez and determined that federal management of the cleanup was not necessary. Rear Adm. Edward Nelson Jr., commander of the Coast Guard’s 17th District in Juneau had no immediate reply to Cowper’s request.

Exxon spokesman Henry Beathard said the company disagreed with charges it was not handling the cleanup properly and thought Exxon was the best organization to manage the effort.

“We gathered all the resources and organized the cleanup. We think the most effective and efficient way to carry out this project is (for Exxon) to continue,” Beathard said.

The tanker refloat went unexpectedly well. The 987-foot ship lifted off the reef three hours earlier than the Exxon salvage crew predicted, proceeding without problem under close watch of a flotilla of six tugs and other support craft, including the Coast Guard Cutter Rush, to a cove on uninhabited Naked Island 25 miles to the southwest, where repairs will be made.

Even though a relatively well-known salvage technique was used to float the Valdez--using compressed air to force water out of the ruptured hold and thus assist high tide in lifting the vessel off the rocks--”we couldn’t predict this by the exact hour or minute,” said salvage coordinator Gary Gorski, who supervised from the ferry Glacier Queen II.

Almost 1 million barrels of oil were pumped from the Exxon Valdez to three smaller tankers over the last 11 days, and the salvage process began as soon as the last of the tankers left for Southern California refineries on Tuesday. The ship was made airtight above the water line, and then, on Wednesday, compressed air was forced inside.

The air forced out some of the 998,000 barrels of sea water that had been pumped into the stricken tanker as oil was removed.

Naval architect Richard Smith, hired by Exxon, estimated before the refloat that the pressure would force enough water out of the hull to lift the ship at least three feet. He added that this technique also would produce a pressurized buffer of clean sea water between the oil left in the tanker--about 15,000 to 20,000 barrels--and the once-pristine waters off Valdez.

Even so, Exxon officials warned in advance that refloating the ship could uncover additional oil that had been pinned in pockets between the ship’s hull and rocky Bligh Reef.

The Port of Valdez was closed at 10 a.m. to clear the iceberg-dotted waters of other vessels as the refloating was attempted and Coast Guard spokesman Bruce Pimental said that the vital oil terminal would remain closed until the stricken tanker was safely anchored.

However, flow through the Alaskan pipeline returned to its normal daily flow of 2.1 million barrels Wednesday, the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. said. Oil flow from the North Slope had been cut by 60% because the spill restricted tanker traffic in Valdez harbor, but traffic has increased.

Gorski said that the ease with which the refloat was accomplished may indicate that the damage, while severe, may not be as bad as earlier feared.

Exxon officials were reluctant to estimate how long temporary repairs would take or discuss where the tanker would be taken to permanently patch its hull and rebuild its internal pumping system, which also was compromised in the accident.

Portland, Ore., was the company’s first choice, but it backed away from that option after Oregon Gov. Neil E. Goldschmidt and managers of the Port of Portland expressed concern that the Exxon Valdez would still be leaking oil when it arrived there.

Already under attack by Gov. Cowper for fouling Prince William Sound, Exxon said it would consider having the tanker repaired in the Far East--Japan, Korea or Singapore.

Even as it made that concession, the company denied its ship would endanger any port it visited for repair.

Staff writer Larry B. Stammer in Valdez contributed to this report.