In the Shadow of the Tanker Valdez, a Plea to Cut Oil Use

One year ago, Mavis Muller and the people of Homer, Alaska, were fighting to keep the worst oil spill in U.S. history out of their back yard.

On March 24, about 200 miles northeast of Homer, the Exxon Valdez tanker had run aground, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. Muller, a painter, and her neighbors worked for hours to save their beach, constructing homemade log booms and stringing them across the mouth of their Kachemak Bay. And it paid off.

“The beaches on the other side of the booms were hammered, but oil didn’t come into the bay,” Muller said Saturday at a floating press conference on San Diego Bay, about 100 yards from the hull of the Valdez. “The victims became the rescuers, to make something right out of something very wrong.”

On the first anniversary of the spill, however, Muller joined with a coalition of environmental groups to warn that something is still wrong: America’s continued reliance on fossil fuels.

“The way we use energy is at the root of these kinds of environmental catastrophes,” said Kelly Quirke, a spokesman for Greenpeace, which organized a small flotilla of boats that bobbed within view of the damaged tanker. “If the lessons from the Exxon Valdez are the same old litany of better tanker bottoms, better oversight and better hoses and pumps, we’re fooling ourselves. We must respond . . . by cutting oil consumption.”

As Quirke spoke, four sailboats and three kayaks darted back and forth in front of the tanker, which is being repaired at National Steel and Shipbuilding Co.

One kayak carried a sign that said, “No Drilling, No Spilling.” Another had a black kite moored to its nose.

“It’s the color of black oil,” said the man inside, Russ Owen.

The sailboats displayed Muller’s artwork--huge painted banners designed to memorialize the Alaskan communities impacted by the spill. “Homer Still Fighting for the Peninsula,” said one. “Alaskans Still Fighting for the Earth,” another read.

In all, Muller has painted more than a dozen banners for the cities of Anchorage, Cordova, Fairbanks, Homer, Kodiak, Seward and Seldovia, many whose beaches, islands and inlets were devastated by oil. Across the country, she said, similar banners were being unfurled Saturday in 27 cities, like one in Santa Cruz that says “Still Fighting for an Oil-Free Bay.”

According to statistics compiled by Greenpeace, the United States, with only 5% of the earth’s population, consumes 28% of the world’s oil--an average of 17.4 million barrels a day in 1989. By contrast, the United States holds less than 3% of the world’s remaining oil reserves--about a 4 1/2-year supply.

“Oil is a finite resource,” said Quirke, who called the shift to alternative energy sources inevitable. “It’s our responsibility to begin that transformation now.”

Quirke blasted the Bush Administration for offering “environmental lip-service” instead of leadership. In 1990, he said, the U.S. Department of Energy has set aside seven times more money for fossil fuel development than for energy efficiency programs.

“Any national energy plan that focuses on fossil fuels will cause more spills,” he said, as one of the sailboats came about, revealing a previously hidden banner: “Change the Course--Steer Toward Sane Energy.”

Jay Powell, a spokesman for San Diego’s Environmental Health Coalition, agreed that American consumers need to be more conscious of how their decisions in the marketplace can save energy. Every energy-efficient refrigerator or light bulb helps, he said.

“Conservation is not making people suffer,” he added. “It’s allowing them to be more responsible to the future.”

Muller said she believes the enduring lesson of the spill is that no matter how far away, environmental catastrophes are everybody’s problem.

“Sometimes I think, ‘How can people relate to this heartbreak?’ ” she said, admitting that Alaskans feel so distant from the lower 49 states that they refer to them as “the outside.”

“But then I look in the eyes of people who are losing their redwoods,” she continued, “or who are fighting to save their deserts from off-road vehicles, and they understand. Everyone feels this loss.”

Later Saturday afternoon, about 50 people gathered at Tidelands Park in Coronado to listen to music, look out at the bay and remember the events of one year ago.

“I know I’m as guilty as the next guy, driving my big ’66 down the road,” one of the musicians told the crowd. “But at least I’m thinking about it. That’s a good thing.”