"IT'LL NEVER BE THE SAME"

Twenty Years After the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

Scott Threlkeld - The Times Picayune

From NOLA:

CORDOVA, Alaska

On a recent chilly, drizzly June afternoon, the fisherfolk of Cordova gathered for an announcement.

An official from Alaska Department of Fish and Game emerged with a flier and tacked it to a bulletin board. The news was good: Sockeye salmon were plentiful enough to be harvested for a 12-hour period.

Soon, boats were chugging toward the Copper River delta against a backdrop of snow-covered mountains. By the next morning, Cordova Harbor was nearly empty. At an evening softball game, a gaggle of small boys chased every foul ball but few parents were present: many were out on the water.
....

But mention the word "Exxon" to anyone here, and the idyll evaporates. Men break down in tears describing what they lost when 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled into Prince William Sound in 1989 from a grounded tanker named Exxon Valdez. Twenty-one years later, the herring that once signaled the start of the summer season are largely gone, rendering $300,000 permits worthless. Losses are tallied in divorces, suicides, repossessed boats, depleted college funds, friends who moved away. Cynicism has lodged permanently in people's craws, receiving a fresh injection two years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court whittled down to $500 million a punitive-damages judgment against Exxon that started out at $5 billion.
....

"Don't believe anything the oil company says. They have huge PR departments whose job it is to minimize the collateral damage," said Mike Lytle, a Cordova fisherman. "I hope you have better luck than we did with the oil companies."

An Alabama charter boat captain, William Allen Kruse committed suicide.

Here in Louisiana, members of families who have worked for generations catching fish, shrimp, and crabs and in the seafood processing business are sick at heart to see their way of life disappear. The consequences of the oil gushing from the Horizon well are likely to be felt for generations, and no one knows if the waters of the Gulf of Mexico will ever be the same.