Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 4, 1994                   TAG: 9404050136
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

EXXON VALDEZ

Surely not the need to wean itself from its heavy dependence on oil, a nonrenewable resource with the potential to wreak environmental havoc if anything goes seriously wrong in its transport. Considering the amount of oil consumed by industrialized nations and the distances it is carried by ship, pipeline and truck, it is amazing not that there was a Valdez-scale spill, but that there are not more of them.

Spills do occur pretty regularly, of course, but few that cause the level of damage inflicted by the 11 million gallons of oil the Valdez hemorrhaged into Alaska's pristine, ecologically delicate Prince William Sound.

Nature has a wonderful ability to heal its wounds. But five years after the notorious spill, scientists, Alaskan native Americans, other coastal residents and state and local officials say all is far from well with the wildlife whose habitat was devastated. Oh, the Sound has been cleaned up, at a cost of more than $2 billion to Exxon. But there are no seals on its shores. Wildlife that is there is showing signs of mutation, disease and reproductive failure.

Such evidence of continuing repercussions has generated lawsuits by a slew of business people, residents and entire communities seeking compensation. Exxon already has paid $1 billion into a trust fund, on top of its cleanup costs, to settle with the federal and state governments. It will defend itself against further claims by pointing to the oil-free Sound and introducing scientific evidence of its own that habitats have returned to normal.

Reports in the Christian Science Monitor show just how hard it is, though, to put things back the way they were, once complex ecological systems have been damaged. The Sound may be clean now, but the spill killed off its population of sea otters. One marine scientist noted that the number of sea urchins has risen dramatically enough to threaten to overgraze the environment. Their natural predators are sea otters.

Whatever the outcome of the remaining claims against Exxon, both the company and the nation have and will continue to pay a price for the environmental mess that resulted from a mixture of ineptitude, carelessness and lack of needed regulatory safeguards. Legislation, such as mandates for tankers with double hulls and for tug escorts in areas where navigation is difficult, is slowly being implemented to fill the cracks in the system.

It's understandable that, like turning a ship 180 degrees, any large-scale change takes time. Meanwhile, though, government studies show serious management and maintenance problems on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. A disaster along this pipeline, which carries 1.7 million barrels of oil a day, would rival that of the Exxon Valdez.

Cleaning up huge messes is an expensive way to run a business - costly to business, to taxpayers, to wildlife, to the environment. Perhaps when the human players in these dramas have to pay a high enough bill, prevention will become a priority, and nature's portion of the cost will go down.