Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991 TAG: 9103240059 SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: TAD BARTIMUS ASSOCIATED PRESS DATELINE: JUNEAU, ALASKA LENGTH: Medium
"We as a people are ready to put this tragedy behind us," Hickel said on statewide television.
But many Alaskans, while praising their governor's bold negotiations with Exxon, also believe the damage caused by the wreck of the Exxon Valdez two years ago has left lingering scars on the psyche of his beloved Great Land.
Hickel is trying to use the settlement - and the anniversary - to break up what he perceives as the malaise left behind by the thick black crude spilled March 24, 1989.
When the huge tanker ran aground on Bligh Reef, it soiled a thousand miles of shoreline with nearly 11 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude.
With no hope of ever cleaning up all the oil, Alaska officials say this summer's cleanup effort will be limited to areas essential to wildlife habitat and human use.
Yet the fragile ecology of Prince William Sound is not the only casualty in need of mending: The delicate social fabric of hamlets dependent on subsistence hunting and fishing for their livelihoods was rent asunder in the catastrophe.
In the wake of the Exxon Valdez, the mitigating millions of dollars Exxon spread on troubled waters in cleanup hires and business recompense have turned fisherman against fisherman, natives against bureaucrats, the "did gets" against the "never gots."
Thousands of lawsuits still are pending against Exxon, its shipping subsidiary, and Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., the umbrella consortium for the seven oil companies that pump oil from North Slope wells to the port of Valdez.
Those lawsuits represent the hard feelings of hard times since Capt. Joseph Hazelwood's ship ran hard aground in an iceberg-pocked sapphire sea.
Many Alaskans take issue with Hickel's straight-up, straight-ahead development attitude, and continue to glance back over their shoulders at the greatest man-made environmental disaster in the state's history.
"The Exxon Valdez seared our souls in ways it will take a long time for us to realize," said Byron Mallot, president and chief executive of Sealaska, one of 13 native-owned regional corporations. "We won't ever be the same again. . . . After Exxon Valdez, there can't be business as usual for the oil industry, or any other industry."
by CNB