The Mudflats

On March 24, 1989 I was living thousands of miles away from Alaska.  I had never been to Alaska.  I had never thought about going to Alaska.  I sort of remembered some nature show I’d seen on TV that told me that during the summertime, there were actually flowers, and the snow melted and there were a lot of frolicking caribou.  But that was pretty much it.  Alaska was a vast, mysterious unknown – like those old maps you see where Europe is perfectly and precisely drawn, the east coast of North America is sort of accurate, and by the time you get to Alaska it’s kind of a featureless shoreline, with no backside because people had a vague idea there was something there, but didn’t really know what.  That was the Alaska in my mind on March 24, 1989.

And then the Exxon Valdez slammed into Bligh Reef hemorrhaging millions of gallons of black crude oil into the crystal blue waters of Prince William Sound.  Images of oil soaked otters, waves lapping the shore with a viscosity that was nothing like water, the agonizing wait for a response team, wind and weather that foiled efforts at containment, and grown men and women in Alaska brought to tears during interviews by the media.  I, like millions of Americans watched people in boots and orange suits hosing rocks in a job that looked as futile as counting grains of sand on the beach, and felt helpless, and heartbroken and overcome with a dark black feeling of loss.

I had serious thoughts about going to Alaska to do something, anything to help.  Then I heard reports that scads of well-meaning but fairly incompetent outsiders were arriving in Alaska with no skills and no means of taking care of themselves…brought by grief, but becoming a burden.  So I stayed away.

A friend of mine cut up her Exxon credit card.  I drove past the Exxon station where I usually filled up, and went to the Shell station down the road.  But the weeks after the oil spill felt like watching a horrible accident I was powerless to stop, which, of course is exactly what it was.

And the media told me it was some drunk ship’s captain that did it all.  Went to the bar,  pounded down a few drinks, fell asleep at the wheel and plowed that tanker right into the ground.  That was the message we all took away.  And as the weeks and months passed, the media’s attention went elsewhere.

Two years later, my plane touched down and brought me to live in Alaska.  For many years, I couldn’t bring myself to go to the Sound.  I started to hear stories from people I knew.  A friend told me about his experience working on a boat near Naked Island in the Sound.  His official duty was “bird rescue”.  “How many do you think you rescued?” I asked, imagining him gently scrubbing some oil soaked cormorant, or shear-water.  “There were none left to rescue,”  he said.

I heard stories from those who saw helicopters in the darkness, dumping “something” on the oil.  The chemicals in the dispersant that the helicopters dropped, were designed to sink the oil to the bottom, out of sight and out of camera range, and those chemicals were arguably more toxic than the oil itself.

I met fishermen whose livelihoods were gone, in one day.  The people who were present at “ground zero” still seemed to suffer from post-traumatic stress.  They had seen the killing fields, and it had changed them as people.

The first time I went to Prince William Sound  I didn’t know what to expect.  It was beautiful.  The sky was blue, the water was blue, birds soared.  Small rocky islands, covered in spruce trees, tidewater glaciers depositing icebergs in the water that looked like sculptures.   On the surface you never would have known.  But the dark secrets are not buried deep.  One scoop of sand from a garden trowel on an island beach reveals at the bottom of the hole, thick, black oil; as though cutting the thin skin will actually make it bleed again.  As I crossed the Sound silently, wind in the sails, and looked down into the water, I knew that below me were huge balls of coagulated oil send to the bottom by the dispersants, and for which 20 years was the blink of an eye in their toxic lifetime. And I knew that the ghosts of wild creatures, and the 20% of the litigants in the Exxon case who had already died waiting for some kind of healing were close.  And I knew I was not the first person to add my own tears to the salt water of the Sound.  But tears do not dilute oil.

Shannyn Moore was in Alaska on that day while I was on the other coast, glued to my TV screen, and has a wonderful post up today to mark this 20th anniversary.

The Myth continues…a drunk captain…an endlessly delayed response…a big storm. The truth is mired somewhere under the sediment of propaganda and media campaigns. What should be remembered as the greatest example of environmental terrorism is now better known as a drunk driver story.

[snip]

The Federal Government and the State of Alaska were complicit in the Spill and the cover-up. Precautions, provisions, and preventative measures had all been made law. It seemed that wasn’t the issue…the problem was finding a government agency to enforce those laws. Exxon’s cost cutting measures insured a disaster; layed off spill responders; not fixing the disabled Raycas radar; the containment boom barge iced into dry-dock. All those profit enhancements were expected of a company that answered only to it’s shareholders. The government agencies that looked away from negligence and their responsibility have never been held accountable.

Last June, the Supreme Court gave Exxon a pass.  They pledged allegiance to corporate interest and allowed Exxon to pay a total of three days profit for destroying the Sound and those who depended on it for their livelihood, and loved its unspoiled beauty and wildness.  The stonewalling, and the appeals had paid off.

There is no way to turn back this 20-year clock.  We look back with wiser eyes, and think of what we should have done differently.  If only we had known the cost to Alaska economically, spiritually, and environmentally.  We surely wouldn’t have let this happen.  Never.

We are now at the beginning of another clock.  We often fail to recognize these moments for what they are, but we are living in a time when we can make these decisions again, and create an outcome of our choosing.  Prince William Sound is lost to us, but Alaska has other jewels.  One of them is Bristol Bay – unspoiled as the Sound used to be, and home to the world’s largest salmon fishery.  A double frontal assault is coming to the Bay.  On the left flank is the spectre of offshore oil development.  Voices questioning whether this is a wise decision, and urging us to think of fish before petroleum, are pressured to change their message or be silent.  Our governor told us to vote “no” on an initiative that would have kept the Bay safe.  King Oil has no use for King Salmon.

And pressing in on the other side is Pebble Mine – an open pit gold/copper/molybdenum mine, of which sulphuric acid and heavy metals are byproducts, and the largest of its kind in the world.  It will sit at the confluence of two rivers at the headwaters of Bristol Bay.  If you had to choose a type of mine not to have, and the place not to have it, this would be it.  If Pebble Mine doesn’t irreparably damage it’s surrounding ecosystem it will be the first time ever for that type of mine.

So, today as we mourn the loss of our Sound, the priorities of our Supreme Court, and all the unquantifiable life that we will never get back, we need to look forward.  We need to remember the lessons of the past and apply them to the blank slate of the future.  We will decide our priorities.  Do we want a toxic mine that will give us jobs for 50 years while poisoning another body of water on which so many depend, or do we want to guard that treasure with everything we have, and say that there are fish, and there is mining, and Bristol Bay is not big enough for both of them?

I never knew Prince William Sound before the spill.  In some ways I don’t know what was lost.  I don’t want future generations of Alaskans to say that about Bristol Bay.  I want them to see what would have been lost, and know that we did what we needed to do to save it for them.

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Shannyn Moore will be hosting a Town Hall meeting tonight at Vagabond Blues in Palmer at 7:30.  Come join the discussion and learn how you can act for the future of our state and its renewable resources.