The Valdez and Prince William Sound Twenty-three Years Later

20 March 2012
7:04 PM

Sunrise at	7:49 AM	in direction	88°	East
Sunset at	8:09 PM	in direction	273°	West

Duration of day: 12 hours, 20 minutes (6 minutes, 43 seconds longer than yesterday)

I found this excerpt in the online version of the Anchorage Daily News:

Cargo ship formerly known as Exxon Valdez sold for scrap

The former oil tanker made infamous in the 1989 Prince William Sound oil spill has been sold to a scrap dealer for $16 million and is headed to India for dismantling. 12:39 PM

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/#storylink=cpy

In 1989, the Valdez hit the Bligh Reef in the Prince William Sound spilling between 260,000 and 750,000 barrels of crude oil.  It's fascinating that the exact amount is not known.  You'd think it would be calculable based on what was in the hold at the time of departure.  The Valdez Oil Spill is still considered one of the most devastating disasters due to acts of man.

On the map below, Prince William Sound is the body of water that is protected from the Gulf Alaska by two large islands at its southern entrance.  The words Chugach National Forest overlap some of the Sound's waters.  Only two ports serve the Sound that are reachable by car, Whittier and Valdez.  Every other shore shown in the intricate landscape below can only be reached by boat, helicopter or plane.

Looking closely at the map above, follow the road from Anchorage down toward the Kenai Peninsula (Highway 1).  Below the words, "Chugach State Park" is the long finger of Turnagain Arm.  Where it ends a portage connects it to the closest finger of water across the land.  Whittier port is in that arm.  It's main function is to provide access to the ports of the Sound from Anchorage or Kenai.  Toward the upper right hand corner is Valdez.  This map does not show that a road connects Valdez to the rest of the state's road system.  This in fact was the first road north to Fairbanks and follows the Pipeline.  Cordova in the right mid-section of the map has no road from outside the city.  Even with roads connected to Whittier and Valdez, the only routes in from the Outside are across Canada.

Now look at the intricacies of the fjords, islands and inlets.  If you were to expand this map, you would see a myriad of tiny islets dotted through out the north reach of the Sound.  One year after the spill, 1990, the census reported a population of 550, 043 dispersed throughout the state.  Getting anyone to these remote and complex waterways was a logistical challenge in itself.  The difficulties in attempting to clean the spill are described briefly in this Wikipedia article, "Exxon Valdez Oil Spill".  It also cites statistics for the loss of animal life due the event and the impact on the economy of local fishermen who claim to this day that Exxon did not fairly compensate for the loss of income due to their negligence.

Several changes came from the spill.  On a personal level, a friend of ours, Dale Gardner, came up to work temporarily on the spill, was put into a position of leaderships and remained.  He is an Environmental Specialist with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

On a national level, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was enacted by Congress the following year.  It led to the shift from single hulled transports to the double hull design now in use by the majority of oil tankers.  Double hulls are to be used exclusively by oil tankers in U.S. waters by 2015.  The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that spillage could have been reduced by 60% had hulls like this been in use at that time.

Within Alaska, legislation requires that every tanker be escorted from Valdez to the Hinchinbrook entrance of Prince William Sound.  The personal impact on the lives of those who depended on the rich harvest from the Sound is still felt among certain families.  In a State governed almost entirely by the exploitation of its natural resources, there is a surprisingly strong anti-oil sentiment.

A simple Google search could easily show many horrific images from the spill and its clean up.  Those of us alive at that time have them emblazoned in our memory.  I would rather show photos of the Sound as I saw it on our Ferry trip from Whittier on the Kenai Peninsula to Valdez.  The clouds were low hanging and the overriding impression was of subdued greens, blues, and browns under a grey sky reflected in grey water, grey islands looming on either side of the ferry's path.  I loved it, but it is not the typical photograph of the Sound.  Prince William Sound Photos taken by Janine Niebrugge has wonderful sunlit images, and several of Columbia Bay which hint at the hues we experienced that day.  Patrick J. Endres put together a vibrant collection that can be viewed as a slide show.  Both sets of photos reveal the placid nature of the Sound, a dramatic contrast to the rough and dangerous waters of the Gulf of Alaska.

As an aside, the 2010 census shows that Alaska's population is now 722,718, increasing by less than 200,000 in two decades.