Trouble Over Oiled Waters : IN THE WAKE OF THE EXXON VALDEZ The Devastating Impact of the Alaska Oil Spill <i> by Art Davidson (Sierra Club Books: $18.95; 224 pp.)</i>

The Exxon Valdez disaster played like a Greek tragedy. The daily papers and evening news reported a heroic struggle against odds that seemed unsurmountable . . . and were. There were heroes and villains, to be sure, but they loomed small against the vastness of the oil slick itself.

For those of us remote, yet passionately concerned, catharsis could not be completed; there was no target at hand, no deeds of valor we could commit. While we hoped that a lesson would be learned from the tragedy, we yearned for an end to the excruciating images of dying otters and devastated coastlines. We wanted vengeance, to be sure, but we wanted even more to learn that life would carry on; we wanted it over.

Your reviewer discovered that he very much wanted not to replay the Exxon Valdez horror in book form. Happily--if you can use that word in this context--Art Davidson’s sensitive, intelligent writing overcame that resistance. As awful as the oil spill was in actuality, and as painful as it is in Davidson’s chronology, fine writing tells. It worked for Sophocles.

Homer may be the better analogy. “In the Wake of the Exxon Valdez” is the chronicle of an event that is now largely history. Davidson has composed his chronicle of many small, human-sized particulars. It begins the night of March 23, as the crew of the Exxon Valdez readied her for the five-day cruise to Long Beach, Calif. The night that the mayor of Valdez, Alaska, convened a town meeting to discuss the risks to the town of oil development. The night that Alyeska oil executives and technicians celebrated a “safety dinner” at the Valdez Civic Center, in part praising themselves for the way they had handled the Thompson Pass 1,700-barrel oil spill of two months earlier--a response that the Coast Guard had described as “adequate,” about which Alyeska was self-congratulatory, but which some of the locals had found inept and troubling.

Davidson makes the effort to develop many of his characters so that their points of view and actions are understandable. This extends from the infamous Capt. Joseph Hazelwood himself to a fascinating assortment, including Riki Ott, Cordova fisherwoman and Ph.D. in pollution-related research; Frank Iarossi, president of Exxon Shipping; Dennis Kelso, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner; Boyd Evison, National Park Service Alaska regional director; Adm. Paul Yost, commander of the U.S. Coast Guard; Lawrence Rawl, Exxon CEO, and scores of Alaskans who threw themselves into the thick, or found themselves engulfed by it.

There are some unlikely heroes. One must be Iarossi, who functioned as Exxon man-on-the-spot, spokesman, and cashier of hundreds of millions of dollars. While maintaining a defensive shield around his company, he worked with feverish energy and intelligence to minimize the damage to Exxon by proceeding with the cleanup of spill, coastline and wildlife with an almost reckless indifference to Exxon’s red ink.

More understandable heroes were the people of southeast Alaska, most of whose livelihood depends one way or another on the marine bounty. They tirelessly scouted the ever-growing perimeter of the oil slick, constantly giving the lie to optimistic forecasts--and sometimes fictional reports--by industry and government alike declaring the limits of the disaster. They quickly focused on the salmon hatcheries and other critical resource sites, and threw themselves into protecting them, often long before the money and material were available to do the job properly.

A scattering of animal lovers flew in from almost everywhere, concentrating a fanatic energy on locating and rescuing as many of the birds and mammals as they could. The heavies: not only Exxon and Alyeska, but the state of Alaska and the U.S. government. Fellow travelers: the bulk of Alaskans who elected to take the bounty of the pipeline but who staved off their concerns until after the horse was long out of the barn.

As all who followed the events know, the vaunted preventive measures held in ready by Alyeska, Exxon and the state were largely a sham, a fraud. The a posteriori justification: “They wouldn’t have worked anyway.” The state of Alaska and the federal government abdicated their intrinsic regulatory and protective functions to Alyeska, once again reminding all who watched that “self-policing” is a contradiction in terms.

Worse, both governments badly compromised their roles in the cleanup through their preoccupation with putting the best face on the disaster. Industry and government conspired to put busy crews and “cleaned” beaches before the television cameras, when the truth was that hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil continued to saturate the gravel beaches and coat the coastal bottoms.

Almost everyone and everything about the disaster was intense, which permits Davidson to express himself in a comparatively mild manner. That stylistic affectation is less painful to read and more plausible than if Davidson had chosen to express the frustration that no doubt rages out of view. Unlike many books meant to be good for you, this one is a good read.

There are many lessons to be learned from Davidson’s accounting: Rescuing injured wildlife is usually meaningless from the standpoint of speeding a population’s recovery, but it is an important way for many people to make their own peace with the disaster. Large amounts of money--whether at risk or on the table--bring out venality and greed from all directions. When most people are running in circles, there are a critical few who proceed cool-headedly and systematically to tackle a problem for which there may be no solution. And most important: Neither industry nor government as yet knows how to protect marine systems from disasters such as the Exxon Valdez, despite what they may say.

Investment in prevention offers a better return than investment in recovery, but the best investment of all is in reducing consumption of oil itself.