Exxon Needs More Crews, Hearing Told : Officials Criticize Company’s Cleanup Effort, Readiness to Deal With Disaster

Exxon must put more crews to work if it hopes to meet its September deadline to clean up shores fouled by the nation’s largest oil spill, a top Coast Guard officer testified today.

Vice Adm. Clyde Robbins told a five-member U.S. House Interior subcommittee investigating the spill and its cleanup that “it appears they need to expand their resources in order to meet the fall completion.”

He described the spill as “one of the worst economic and environmental calamities this nation has faced.”

Robbins is directly responsible for coordinating the cleanup, reporting to Coast Guard Commandant Paul A. Yost Jr., President Bush’s emissary to the spill site.

The state’s top environmental official testified today that Exxon stalled in its response to the spill and gave bad information. The panel also heard from fishermen who said they fear that their multimillion-dollar catch in Prince William Sound will be reduced this season because of the spill.

“We’ve been told, we’ve been emphatically told, that we’re going to have a normal fishery this summer. We’re going to have anything but a normal fishery,” Ken Adams of the Cordova District Fishermen United said Sunday.

Adams said the state could put a large part of the sound off-limits when the commercial salmon season begins May 15. The state has not yet set any limits while it monitors the spill’s movement.

At an estimated $84 million, Prince William Sound has the nation’s eighth-largest commercial fishing industry, Adams said. About 85% of the catch is salmon.

Riki Ott, a member of the Cordova group’s board of directors, said the fishing industry had long been fearful of a spill. Cordova is a fishing town on the edge of the sound, about 50 miles from Valdez, the terminal for the trans-Alaska pipeline.

‘Russian Roulette’

“We knew we were playing . . . Russian roulette,” she said.

Dennis Kelso, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, questioned Exxon’s statements that it could have more effectively contained the spill had it been allowed to use chemical dispersants.

Kelso said neither Exxon nor Alyeska, the oil industry’s jointly owned operator of the pipeline, was prepared to deal with the oil spill.

“Neither of them had the equipment on site to deal with it either through mechanical means or chemical means,” he said.

He also said Exxon’s response was “reluctant and myopic, characterized by stalling techniques, disinformation and a refusal to pay real attention to damage outside of Prince William Sound.”

The subcommittee today was wrapping up two days of hearings investigating the spill. Today’s session was expected to include testimony from Exxon, which has defended its actions.

Alyeska’s vice president for operations, Theo L. Polasek, said that the industry’s response plans were sufficient to deal with a spill but that there was confusion after the tanker ran aground.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) told Polasek, “I’m not so sure this (the cleanup) was a high priority for you people.”