Exxon Refusing to Pay Oil Spill Expenses, Alaska Mayors Charge

Fifteen mayors and village chiefs from communities hit by the Exxon oil spill joined together Thursday to complain that Exxon was refusing to pay for their oil spill expenses.

The small-town mayors said Exxon has ignored their calls for help while their towns’ problems mount and the bills add up to an estimated $60 million in costs related exclusively to the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Exxon rejected the mayors’ reimbursement plan and returned with a totally different plan that demanded--in exchange for reimbursement--that Alaska cities, their officials and even their families “prevent any actions or conditions that could result in a conflict with Exxon’s best interests.”

An Anchorage law firm that analyzed the Exxon reimbursement offer called this “the most outrageous paragraph in the entire Exxon counterproposal.”

Lawyers Gordon Tans and Fred Arvidson said Exxon was trying to “buy silence,” prevent future lawsuits and get the mayors to sign a document that would put Exxon’s interests above the public interest.

Kodiak Mayor Bob Brodie said at a news conference that the mayors offered a simple agreement in English and “we get back a document in Chinese.”

Brodie said that towns have been reeling under “the impact of huge influx of people into our municipalities (and) the inability to get workers to do normal city functions because they’ve been hired away to combat the spill.”

“We’re working together in a united front that has been seldom seen . . . . We are representing the basic person in Alaska, the fisherman, the cannery worker, the office worker, who have all been impacted and had their lives disrupted by Exxon’s oil,” Brodie said.

Although the mayors represent people in small towns across the southern coast of Alaska, Seward Mayor Harry Gieseler said: “We’re talking about 25% of the population of the state in 15 communities.”

The mayors are asking Exxon to reimburse their communities for all expenses and costs that are a direct result of the spill and to set up an account to make advance payments.

Kenai Mayor John Williams explained that “many of our smaller communities are on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of having to put forth cash to deal with the problems presented by the spill.”

The mayors said towns are suffering from a crime wave directly attributable to the tremendous influx of Exxon cleanup workers, and they insisted that Exxon be required to pay for more police protection.

Walter Meganack, chief of the tiny Aleut hunting and fishing village of Port Graham, said: “There is oil on our beaches because Exxon didn’t buy a boom early enough to take care of the oil. That has killed our fish . . . . We are a small village, and we cannot afford to negotiate with Exxon day after day.”