Executive Gets Earful : Alaska ‘Town Meeting’ Derides Exxon’s Claims

Five weeks after the Exxon Valdez leaked 10.1 million gallons of oil into a pristine sound and hours after Exxon showed off its beach-cleaning effort to reporters, an oil company executive got an earful when he tried to convince a fishing community that things were looking better.

Exxon got good reviews from a state geologist who watched Smith Island being prepared for pregnant seals. But citizens of Cordova let Exxon Vice President Ulyesse J. LeGrange know at a Thursday night “town meeting” on North America’s worst oil spill that they don’t see the same progress.

Michele O’Leary, one of 300 people at Cordova High School’s gym to talk with LeGrange and others coordinating the spill cleanup, disputed Exxon’s claims about the number of skimmers it operates.

When Exxon said 19 were working in the sound, an overflight by pilots for the Cordova United Fishermen’s Union found only three, she said. On another occasion Exxon said it had 45 skimmers at work, and the union found only five.

Dennis Kelso, the state’s chief environmentalist, said, “There has been a long pattern of claims by Exxon that don’t bear out when people go look at what’s happening.”

Kelso said “nobody believes” the company’s recent announcement that the shoreline cleanup is ahead of schedule--a mention that drew laughs from the audience.

The first wave of several hundred oil cleanup workers landed Thursday on spill-contaminated islands critical to the seal population in the Sound, but at least 55 of the $17-an-hour laborers jumped ship after seeing the cramped quarters in which they were expected to live for up to three weeks.

“Apparently a lot of men just walked away when they saw where they were supposed to stay,” said Lt. Kathleen Donohue, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.

Exxon has hired the Navy troop carrier Juneau to serve as a floating hotel in the battle to clean up the polluted beaches. Normally the vessel billets up to 800 Marines in narrow three-tiered bunks stacked on top of each other.

The men walked off the ship before it left Valdez late Wednesday.