By Wickersham’s Conscience The Costa Concordia still lies on her side off the Tuscan coast, with 16 confirmed dead and many still missing. Alaskans know, to their sorrow, that not all ship’s captains are scrupulously careful, not all crew members fully qualified, and not all accidents truly accidents. A Dutch salvage company is struggling to [...]

Here is the next installment of Greg Palast’s new book Vulture’s Picnic. He has allowed The Mudflats to bring you Chapter 7 – My Home is Now a Strange Place in its entirety. This is an exclusive excerpt, just for Mudflatters. I find it absolutely riveting. If you need to catch up, here are links [...]

~An Exxon Valdez oil-filled footprint on a beach in Prince William Sound, known as “The Death Marsh” and “Diesel Beach.” Taken July 4, 2010 – twenty-one years after the spill. (photo by Jeanne Devon) By Prof.  Rick Steiner In what could be the final court showdown regarding environmental damage from the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil [...]

  [This is the third installment of Chapter 7, My Home is Now a Strange Place from Greg Palast's Vulture's Picnic. Many thanks to Mr. Palast for providing The Mudflats with an exclusive of this story that is so critical to the state of Alaska, and reveals so much about the corporate interests that still [...]

By Zach Roberts It’s weird where life takes you. In 2006, I started working for Greg Palast. He was one of my heroes. Most people know him for breaking the story of the stolen 2000 election. That was how I was introduced to his work as well, but the story that made me want to [...]

By Zach Roberts Hey Mudflatters – In addition to my duties as New York Bureau Chief of The Mudflats, I’ve taken on working with Greg Palast. You might have heard him on the Shannyn Moore Show talking about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He was a forensic economist for the Chugach Natives – kind of [...]

~Oil sheen from the Exxon Valdez spill fills a footprint on the beach 21 years later in July of 2010 Tomorrow will be a historic day. After 22 years, the final word will be had on the long-term environmental damage from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Last summer, I traveled to Knight Island in Prince [...]

By Zach Roberts Special note: This is a message to Sarah, that I sent to her via Facebook. Alaskans will get all the places, some of the references and some of the names. If you don’t get them, give it a Google, or read TheMudFlats.net (why aren’t you reading it already? What’re you a member [...]

As a psychology major, this one fascinates me. My neighbor and fellow blogger Craig has written a commentary in the Alaska Dispatch on my recent post about Prince William Sound. He not only didn’t like the essay it seems, he also didn’t even like the fact that I took the trip at all.  Let’s check [...]

By Jeanne Devon It’s 5am on the fourth of July, and the alarm goes off. I open one eye and think surely I must have set it for the wrong time, but then I remember. Today I’m heading to Prince William Sound with Shannyn Moore and Zach Roberts. Our goal is to document the lingering [...]

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”-Norman Cousins Week before last, a fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico took his own life. It was the first reported suicide in this unending and unfolding BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. William Allen Kruse, [...]

On Thursday, May 20th 1993, Bob Van Brocklin left a suicide letter. “The stress from Exxon which brought about my financial stress, was too much to deal with alone. The end should be good and maybe my spirit will live. I have a lot of fear right now, but faith is all that is left. [...]

On January 20, 1990 a Channel 4 documentary series called Scottish Eye aired Slick Operators. The documentary tells the story of BP’s role in the Exxon Valdez oil spill and their lies in the aftermath of the spill. Sadly it is still very relevant today. BP is the largest owner of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and [...]

Yes, I follow Sarah Palin on Twitter. It’s my guilty secret. Most of the time I can ignore it, because gone are the days of the three-part tweets about grizzly mamas and fireweed, and hockey scores, and misattributed quotes from Roman philosophers.   I used to love that. But here’s one that floated by in [...]

Bill Sherwonit has been a freelance nature writer since 1992. His most recent book, “Changing Paths: Travels and Meditations in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness” is now available HERE. For nearly a quarter-century, Bill has written extensively about wild lands and wildlife. Though he continues to journey into the wilderness each year, he has also paid increasing [...]