U.S. Officials to Assume Bigger Oil Cleanup Role : Coast Guard to Get Increased Authority in Effort to Control Alaskan Spill; Military Troops Readied

Under pressure from the state of Alaska, the Bush Administration moved Thursday to assume more control over the massive Alaskan oil spill cleanup, increasing Coast Guard authority in the effort and preparing to dispatch military troops to cleanse beaches and wildlife.

But Administration officials made clear that they would oppose putting the entire effort under federal control, warning that such action could cost the government millions of dollars.

The new Coast Guard role, disclosed by Commandant Paul Yost Jr., will allow his subordinates essentially to direct the cleanup but leaves the Exxon Corp. nominally in charge of the operation and responsible for the $1 million a day in costs.

1,500 Army Troops

The military participation, expected to be announced today, would enlist 1,500 Army troops based in Ft. Lewis, Wash., to help cleanse oil from birds and marine animals and to clean Alaska’s oil-stained beaches and coves, Administration officials said.

A White House go-ahead is still pending, but presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said: “The concern is, we need a comprehensive way to deal with this continuing and long-term cleanup.”

Alaska Gov. Steve Cowper, frustrated with the slow pace of Exxon’s cleanup and the ever-widening path of environmental damage, had called on the Coast Guard to coordinate the effort, rather than to continue in a secondary role. The new military involvement was advocated by Alaska’s congressional delegation during a meeting with President Bush.

Some Alaskans had urged that the federal government take control of the cleanup altogether. But Yost and other Administration officials warned that, if the government took complete charge of the cleanup, it would have to pay the bills first and seek reimbursement from the oil company later. They testified that Exxon had been a “good corporate citizen” and had done everything the Coast Guard had asked.

“I don’t want to shut off . . . Exxon, with its open checkbook, by stepping in, beating my chest, and saying (the cleanup) is going to be federalized,” Coast Guard Commandant Yost told a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing on the spill.

Yost described the stepped-up Coast Guard effort as “in consonance” with the wishes of Alaska officials. In Valdez, state officials indicated that they likely would approve of such an arrangement.

“We’re not so enamored of any particular (organizational) model,” said Dennis Kelso, director of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. “We just want results.”

Yost said that the new, more assertive federal oversight for the first time will bring together the men and machines sent to Alaska in a concerted effort to clean up the oil and stop it from spreading farther, Yost said.

Until Wednesday, the bulk of the oil company’s efforts had been devoted to recovering the nearly 1 million barrels of oil that remained in the tanks of the Exxon Valdez as it lay on a reef in Prince William Sound.

The tanker has now been refloated, freeing resources that Yost said will be managed by the Coast Guard, which will take “a lot more control than we have to date.”

In addition to the regular Army troops, National Guardsmen and Interior Department firefighters are likely to be enlisted in the cleanup effort, an Administration official said. Such manpower is considered ideal for the job because troops and firefighters can set up camp for themselves and will not drain already depleted supplies of food and housing in small Alaska towns.

Yost and Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner discussed those plans late Thursday afternoon in a meeting with aides to President Bush. White House spokesman Fitzwater, asked when the military might begin work, told reporters “beginning about now.”

In their testimony earlier in the day, Skinner and Environmental Protection Agency chief William K. Reilly noted that the magnitude of the vast spill would require intensive and prolonged cleanup efforts. But they also said that the use of untrained personnel could cause more harm than good.

Environmentalists believe that troops caused ecological damage when they were enlisted in the late 1970s to help clean oil from the beaches of France after a major spill off that nation’s coast.

Alaskan state officials have credited Exxon with being willing to buy any supplies or obtain any piece of equipment requested by its cleanup contractors, the state or even local fishermen who are struggling to protect local salmon hatcheries on their own.

But state environment chief Kelso complained that the supplies often are not deployed well enough to make a difference and said that Cowper had urged the Coast Guard to take command of the cleanup in an effort to combat this problem.

“It doesn’t do us any good to have all the equipment in the world if it isn’t deployed effectively,” Kelso said.

Both Republicans and Democrats at the hearing Thursday--before the Senate Commerce Committee and a subcommittee of the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries--urged that the government take over the cleanup. A larger federal role would speed the effort and assuage public concern that the company whose irresponsibility appeared to have caused the accident was now in charge of cleaning it up, they said.

Insufficient Funds

But Skinner and Yost steadfastly opposed such a move, noting that the Coast Guard’s emergency fund to pay for oil spill cleanups contains just $3 million.

“I’d rather go with Exxon’s balance sheet than with the Coast Guard’s,” Skinner said.

The officials said, however, that the government is prepared to take complete charge of the effort if Exxon ceases to cooperate.

Staff writers John M. Broder and James Gerstenzang in Washington and Mark A. Stein in Alaska contributed to this story.