Editor's note: Squamish Climate Action Network (CAN) member Ana Santos provides Chief readers with her observations during an expedition to study the impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on the Prince William Sound, 21 years after its devastation.
The Prince William Sound 2010 survey is over. Back in Whittier and still with wobbly legs from riding the waves for three weeks, we head straight for the fish bar, determined to end the project on a celebratory note.
Immediately, my efforts to keep oil out of my mind at least for this one evening prove vain as I glance at the front page of the Anchorage Daily News that I find on our table.
In 1969, a barge hit the rocks off the coast of Massachusetts, spilling 189,000 gallons of fuel oil. Today, the fiddler crabs in Wild Harbor are still sick with narcosis caused by hydrocarbon poisoning; they act drunk, move erratically, and react slowly to predators.
They have also changed their burrow-building method - instead of drilling straight down like normal crabs, they go only a few inches deep and then turn sideways, repelled by an oily layer lingering below the surface.
The data collected during our survey this summer will be analyzed in the coming months. Studies to date show that, overall, Prince William Sound is recovering but cannot be considered a healthy environment, just like our own body could not be considered a healthy organism if one single cell was affected by cancer, no matter how small or isolated.
The cancerous presence of the Exxon Valdez oil spill can still be detected throughout the Sound, but it initially cost the lives of 300,000 seabirds, 3,500 sea otters, 300 seals, 250 eagles, and 22 orcas. The collapse of the fisheries would be revealed later, along with the human impact, an aspect that may not have received the attention it deserves.
The inhabitants of Prince William Sound first went into a prolonged state of shock and confusion, exacerbated by the deafening silence that took hold of the area.
As Valdez tour boat operator Stan Stephens puts it in "The Spill" (Epicenter Press, 2009) after realizing he hadn't seen a living creature for several hours: "It was like there had been a nuclear attack, with cities still standing but not a living soul to be seen. Something broke inside of me then."
The psychological turmoil that Prince William Sound residents went through was not helped by the vast array of physical ailments they suffered in connection with the spill.
Those involved in the clean-up operations also saw themselves involved in experimental clean-up methods, like the use of Inipol, a highly toxic substance that causes, among other things, irreversible liver and kidney damage.
The experiments used were made all the more harmful by the glaring lack of the most basic safety standards, which had workers on boats and beaches without adequate lung protection day in day out.
Exxon's own medical data shows that 6,722 workers filed respiratory illness claims during the 1989 clean up alone. One can only guess how bad things got after that, as the company managed to get the Alaska State Court to bar public access to its records, currently sealed until 2023.
Those that stayed away from the clean-up operations did not fare much better. The people of Valdez, for instance, saw their village of 3,500 grow into a town of 12,000 almost overnight.
The high and sudden influx of workers, environmentalists, government officials, and media people raised severe public health concerns as the sewage treatment plant overflowed and untreated sewage was discharged into Port Valdez.
Waste became a problem of gargantuan proportions, but even here there was room for irony, as the crazily busy hordes of people had no time to sit down to eat and food was catered to them in millions of petroleum-based Styrofoam trays and cups that covered every inch of the landscape.
For the villages and towns affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, physical and psychological trauma ultimately translated into family and community breakdown. The rates of depression, suicide, crime, divorce, alcohol and drug abuse to name but a few shot up through the roof.
The litigation that these communities have been put through during endless disappointing court battles seeking compensation for damages and losses has carried the effects of social disruption to the present day.
As we look back more than 20 years later, the road to recovery looks far from straight. Wildlife communities along the beaches are recovering at the same slow pace as the buried oil disappears.
Sea otters, for instance, reliant on the intertidal zone, have been recovering in parts that were lightly oiled, but do not seem to have returned to more heavily impacted areas.
Harlequin ducks, guillemots, seals, and mammal-eating orcas have proved unable to replace the individuals lost during the spill and are considered not to be recovering.
A diagnosis of "terminally ill" also seems to apply to fish in cases like the vanished herring. The issue of human recovery is even more convoluted and complex, as it is inextricably linked to our unwillingness to take in the doctor's advice and follow through with prescribed medication.
"Be prepared" was the simple message that Kelley Weaverling, Mayor of Cordova at the time of the spill, gave me to take back home. To that, I'd add "be aware."
Technological man-made disasters like the Exxon Valdez oil spill 21 years ago and the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico today hit us particularly hard because they stem from our dependence on oil and our unquenchable thirst to consume.
Like the fiddler crab in Wild Harbor, under the influence of oil, we seem to move erratically and react slowly. The question is, as the future requires more drastic change, will we simply be content with learning to dig sideways?
This concludes my four-part series from Prince William Sound, Alaska. Special thanks to the US Fish & Wildlife Service for the opportunity to participate in the study, The Chief for the space, and the readers for their interest.
It has been an amazing learning experience; sharing it has made it even more rewarding.
