Exxon Suspends Alaska Cleanup; Work Is Left Undone

After spending six months and more than $1 billion trying to clean up the worst oil spill in U.S. history, Exxon will suspend its massive operation here today, leaving Alaska’s sullied shores to a winter of uncertainty.

But as the oil giant publicly congratulated itself and cranked up a final public relations blitz to shake off “the black hat,” wary state officials complained about work left undone in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska.

About 10.8 million gallons of North Slope crude oil gushed into Prince William Sound when the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground March 24. The state maintains that 57% of the original spill--some 147,400 barrels--remains unrecovered, either on 1,244 miles of contaminated shoreline or in the water.

Army Straggles Back

Through a misty fog, the remnants of a summer army that totaled nearly 12,000 workers, 1,200 boats and 100 aircraft straggled back into port here Thursday.

“I think they could have worked out here for another six weeks,” said Steve Provant, the state’s on-scene coordinator for the Department of Environmental Conservation.

“They’re all from Louisiana and Texas and they’re probably more fearful of winter here than the Alaskans,” he added.

Promising to leave 300 emergency crew members, scientists and monitors behind to survey oiled areas and collect data over the winter, Exxon insisted that the demobilization amounted to a scale-down rather than a pull-out.

“We are not leaving,” declared Otto Harrison, Exxon’s general manager of Valdez operations. “We are here and we care.”

Terry Koonce, a senior vice president, defended Exxon’s cleanup efforts, which often came under fire from the state and environmentalists as too-little-too-late.

“In time, we’ll be fully exonerated,” he said in an interview.

“We acknowledged our responsibility from the beginning and we apologized to the American people and we promised to do everything we could to make it right,” Koonce said. “Normally, when you do all that, you don’t have to wear a black hat in our society.

“We’ve taken a pretty good hammering.”

According to biologists, so did the wildlife in Prince William Sound.

To date, the known casualty toll numbers 980 sea otters, 138 bald eagles and 33,126 sea birds. Exxon’s winter plans do not include wildlife rescue or rehabilitation.

Alaska’s lack of faith in Exxon’s commitment was driven home by Gov. Steve Cowper’s scheduled visit to Valdez today to unveil the state’s own winter oil spill plan. State officials have vowed to bill Exxon for their work.

A float-plane tour by Exxon of four oiled islands Wednesday showed considerable progress on some tarred shorelines. Others were still heavily oiled.

Oil has been found as far as four feet below the surface of beaches that have already been treated, and small sheens lapped at the shores of the worst ones.

Don Carpenter, head of logistics for the cleanup, walked one of the cleaner beaches, turning over rock after rock in a fruitless search for “the little critters” he said have begun regenerating.

Normally, the shore and little tide pools are said to be teeming with microorganisms.

“There should be starfish and mussels, anemones, barnacles, algae, plankton, crabs--all sorts of things,” said Provant, the state’s on-scene coordinator.

“I won’t say any of the beaches are clean until the organisms re-establish themselves.”

Exxon officials dodged direct questions at a news conference Thursday about the percentage of impacted areas they consider clean; they used the words “environmentally stable,” instead.

According to Exxon’s Harrison, the remaining oil poses no threat to marine life.

“Of course, we would like to see the beaches clean, and they’re not,” said Clyde Robbins, the Coast Guard vice admiral who serves as federal on-scene coordinator.

“But as much as could be done has been done this year,” he added.

However, Robbins said, the once-pristine shores “will not ever be clean in the eyes of someone who wants a perfect world and deserves it but can’t have it.”

Robbins, who has final authority over the operation, said he is pleased with Exxon’s performance and has received assurances that there is “no question” the company will return to finish the job.

But what Alaska’s fierce winter storms will do to contaminated areas and what spring will bring remain unknown.

“I don’t think nature will take care of everything,” said Provant. “I don’t believe Mother Nature can handle something like this in a year.”

Of all the methods used to treat the rocky shores--from hand-polishing to hot-water blasting--Exxon has pinned most hopes on “bioremediation.”

The process involves spraying oiled beaches with French fertilizer, which encourages the growth of oil-eating microbes.

While Exxon claims the method already has shown dramatic results on Green Island, critics suggest that Mother Nature really did the bulk of the work by cleansing the gooey island with lashing spring storms.

Experts say winter’s chill will slow down bioremediation by 75%.

But even the mightiest efforts of nature and technology cannot offer any guarantees.

“People tend to want to know that there is some way to preclude a spill like this from ever happening again, or if it does, that it can be quickly cleaned up in a nice, neat package,” said Koonce.

“But look at the rest of transportation,” he added. “We never expect airplanes to stop crashing, as tragic as that is, do we?”