Hand-to-Hand Combat in Oil Spill Battle : Alaska Volunteers’ Vow: Leave No Stone Unturned

In the hush just before dawn on a remote Alaskan shore, all that can be heard is the tiptoe of the wind through spruce trees and the moan of ocean waves bowing before the rocks.

Then it ends.

“Rise and shine, happy campers! Breakfast!”

Benn Levine is good natured in his summons. But he means business.

A new day has begun in the protracted battle to turn the clock back to March 23, the day before the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef, hemorrhaging 11 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude into the icy waters of Prince William Sound.

On this day, men and women emerge from their tents at Mars Cove near Point Dick on the Kenai Peninsula to resume the struggle to restore a small patch of shoreline 350 miles from Bligh Reef to its pre-spill beauty.

What makes this cleanup crew different is they do not work for Exxon, which has employed thousands of cleanup workers at $16.69 an hour. This group says doing something to reclaim Alaska is wages enough.

They are convinced that they can do the job better than Exxon. They also hope to establish a precedent that will force the giant oil company to do more than clean shoreline surfaces.

The 15-member volunteer crew, the only such group on Alaska’s beaches, plans to literally leave no stone unturned.

While Exxon workers do what they can to remove oil from surfaces, the volunteers are carting rocks and stones to homemade but ingenious rock-washing machines brought to the beach. After the stones are cleaned they are returned to their original locations.

There are some who question the effort.

“I’m not a great one for removing pieces of nature and putting it back,” said David Kennedy, scientific support coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But Kennedy and others say they can appreciate the frustration and sense of helplessness at witnessing the despoliation of pristine shorelines.

“I have mixed feelings on volunteers,” Kennedy said. “But, in one respect it’s kind of a healing process and a way for people to feel they are doing something about their environment.”

Jim Heinzen of Homer remembers the day well. He was a crewman on the “Jani-K” operating near Yukutat east of Prince William Sound and bringing in a load of black cod.

“I remember looking out and seeing this big patch of water that wasn’t right. The waves were flat,” Heinzen said as he sat near a campfire shortly after breakfast.

He spotted 50- and 100-yard patches of black-brown oil.

“It was the first time I realized what a monster it would be. I climbed up high on the bait shed. I had this sense of betrayal, like God, this is not going to be right for sometime,” he said.

He wanted to yell. “I tried, but couldn’t. There was a rage you had to contain. There was no way to express yourself. Nothing you could do.

“You have to have a way of assimilating your anger. I think doing it here we’ve had an effect. I don’t feel angry now.”

No one is sure how successful the group will be. The work is slow and tedious.

On this morning, young men and women--a research economist on leave from the University of Alaska, a member of the radical environmental group “Earth First!” and a fisherman, among others, are on their hands and knees on an oily shoreline.

They are dressed in bright yellow rain slickers. Some of them use garden trowels to lift pebbles from the oily surface. Progress is measured in inches.

Occasionally, one of them will take a break. “It smells like a refinery,” one said, adding that it made him dizzy.

The Homer Area Recovery Coalition, which fielded the volunteers, is operating on a shoestring. So far, they reported having raised and spent $12,000. One hourly Exxon worker donated $1,000. Bill Choate, a salmon fisherman, donated the use of his boat to ferry volunteers to and from Mars Cove.

A man could be hardened by the tempests of the sea. He could grow wary because of nature’s vicissitudes. He could become an adversary. Or, a man could come to love the sea. Choate came to love it. And, when the oil arrived in the Shelikof Strait he stood on the pitching deck of The Horizon and wept.

“Everyone was depressed. Some of us were in tears,” he said. “It was just horrible. I remember we came together (on shore) and built this fire.” At one point, they walked down the beach. “The oil got worse and worse until there was a dead bird every 25 feet. Then a helicopter landed. An Alaska Fish and Game guy cheerily tells us this is a ‘lightly impacted beach. It’s not that bad.’ ”

So far, Exxon has said it will spend $1.26 billion on the cleanup. That money paid for an armada of cleanup boats and ships, and for 11,000 workers.

Of the 1,460 miles of shoreline hit by the spill, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said that Exxon has treated 176 miles of shoreline within Prince William Sound. The U.S. Coast Guard, which uses a different accounting method, said that another 419 miles outside the sound have been treated by Exxon. For its part, Exxon said it has treated more than 900 miles of shoreline and will complete the job by its Sept. 15 quitting time.

Exxon spokesman Everett McGehee said: “I think Adm. Clyde Robbins (of the U.S. Coast Guard) has been impressed and pleased with the progress we’ve made.”

The volunteers and others, however, are not.

“All you have to do is look,” said Levine, who leads the small band of volunteers at Mars Cove.

Whatever the disagreements over the number of miles treated, only about 17% of the oil is removed by Exxon’s physical washing, according to Parmely (Hap) Prichard of the EPA’s Office of Research Development.

Eric Larson, a research economist at the University of Alaska, sits on the ground and leans against a spruce tree while making an entry into his journal. The wind blows and he instinctively draws the collar of his slicker around his neck.

Time is different here, he said. “It just seems like days of the month don’t work out here. You don’t look at a clock. You watch the tides,” he said. Here the tides lap against heavily oiled shores.

That’s why he’s here.

“It’s a personal contribution. I wanted to help the beach. Taking money for that seems conflicting, inconsistent,” he said. “You can’t value the beach at its full value. It’s priceless.”