Officials Score Exxon Cleanup as Inadequate

State and federal officials unleashed a fresh barrage of criticism against Exxon on Friday, blasting the company for “entirely inadequate” efforts to clean up crude oil spilled when a tanker struck a reef last month.

Dennis Kelso, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said his department has been left on standby three weeks after the 11-million-gallon spill. Officials are awaiting Exxon’s plan to clean 3,000 shore sites.

“No plan has been submitted,” Kelso said. “I do not think there is a written plan.”

Deadline on Plan

Gov. Steve Cowper and Coast Guard Commandant Paul Yost returned to survey the hundreds of miles of oily coastline. Yost set a deadline of today for Exxon to produce a cleanup plan for the spill, which officials said was not breaking up as fast as they had hoped.

Authorities said they probably would have to use high-pressure hot water spray to cleanse many beaches, a controversial technique because it kills organisms on and beneath the surface of the beach.

“Don’t look for a miracle on beach-cleaning,” Yost said. “We need hundreds of people, maybe multihundreds, maybe multithousands.”

Yost did not say what he would do if Exxon did not provide a cleanup plan, but he made it clear that he expected to receive one.

‘Big Cloud of Dust’

“I have no doubt Exxon will meet the deadline,” he said. “Exxon will give me a plan this weekend. I hope you’re going to see a big cloud of dust . . . and when that settles, you’re going to see beach cleanup.”

Cowper, who arrived Friday wearing faded jeans and rubber boots, said he was pleased that Yost had taken over command of the cleanup effort.

“We were not satisfied with the way the operation was being coordinated,” he said. “I think it’s obvious that we, the state and the Coast Guard, are not satisfied with the way Exxon has performed.”

Cowper led loud denunciations of Exxon by state officials last week, threatening even to shut down the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. But officials had been more muted this week until Kelso’s comments.

Tells Frustration

“We’ve been frustrated by the in-the-water cleanup. We don’t want to see that replicated on the shoreline,” Kelso said, calling Exxon’s efforts “entirely inadequate.”

Exxon officials did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

The lower edge of the slick was by the Barren Islands, a prime breeding habitat for sea birds 200 miles from where the Exxon Valdez hit a reef on March 24, said Larry Dietrich, director of environmental quality for the Department of Environmental Conservation.

Tom Royer, a physical oceanographer with the University of Alaska’s Institute of Marine Science, said Friday that ocean currents would carry the oil slick into Cook Inlet and down the east coast of Kodiak Island, one of the world’s most productive fisheries.

“Whatever comes into that area will stay there for an extended period. The oil will remain off the island for one to two months,” he said.

Royer, who has studied the currents for 15 years, said the oil that flows into Cook Inlet will eventually be swept down the Shelikof Straits and then down the Aleutian chain.

He also said that within a month or two most of the oil sheens and slicks would disappear from Prince William Sound waters, except for some of the bays and shorelines where oil will continue to pose a problem.