THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9406240003
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
DATELINE: 940626 LENGTH: Medium
Exxon's first response to the spill was a these-things-happen shrug and a minimum showing of remorse. In a series of newspaper ads, the company postured victims, including itself, as having been struck by blind fate - a bolt out of the blue.
{REST} A casual reader might have assumed a submerged reef struck the tanker instead of the tanker striking the reef. And not a word, of course, about the ship's captain - a known boozer - being below decks with several drinks of vodka under his belt. Perhaps the skipper, Joseph Hazelwood, thought he was sober enough. He would testify later that he was once able to consume double-strength alcohol drinks followed by wine at dinner and one or two ``doubles'' without being ``blotto.''
Let it pass. Hazelwood, in any event, was in charge of the tanker; Exxon put him there; the reef was charted; Hazelwood had put the ship into the hands of an inexperienced junior officer at the most critical moment possible.
The jury sensibly was unimpressed when Exxon's lawyer equated the resulting disaster with a driver in a simple car accident failing to make a right turn. Such arrogance is startling. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe this is a case that demonstrates that the preachment of ``values'' and assumption of responsibility should have a wider audience than the wretched of the underclasses.
Exxon is the model of a modern corporation capable of first-order examples of citizenship. It was not operating its supertanker in some stinking backwater but in pristine waters that were home to huge populations of whales, otters, seals, fish and birds, including the largest remaining group of bald eagles in the world.
Thousands of fishermen, natives, property owners and small entrepreneurs were dependent on those waters for their livelihood. To them and to Americans generally, Exxon and other oil companies had made solemn promises. In exchange for permission to move Alaskan oil over water rather than over land through Canada, the companies had vowed eternal vigilance against spills and quick-response measures in case vigilance failed. But four years before the tanker was driven upon the reef, a 20-man round-the-clock emergency crew was disbanded. Vigilance, it's fair to assume, was diluted by complacency as well as vodka.
Shrugging continues. One think-tank says there is no irrevocable environmental damage from oil spills, an argument with the-more-the-merrier aspects. But The Wall Street Journal quotes officials of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as saying: (1) This year's run of pink salmon in the sound is expected to be less than 7.4 million compared with the 38 million average before the spill. (2) Herring laid eggs along only 500 yards of beach this year compared with the normal stretch of 50 to 100 miles of beach. The New York Times reports that ``new scientific data collected by the state and the federal government indicate that the environmental damage from the spill endures.''
To a large degree, the argument over endurance is pointless. As Alaskans know firsthand, temporary damage can be devastating enough. The damage is not mitigated by cries of ``accident'' when the accident was preventable by elementary prudence and a decent respect for promises made in exchange for privilege to put the nation's wilderness at risk. by CNB