patth@ccnysci.UUCP (Patt Haring) (09/21/89)
/* Written 12:18 am Sep 9, 1989 by gn:greenlink in cdp:gp.press */
/* ---------- "EXXON LEAVES BEHIND OIL, GARBAGE, D" ---------- */
Date: September 16, 1989
Via GreenLink:
==============
By JEFF BERLINER
KNIGHT ISLAND, Alaska (UPI) -- When Exxon left its last beach,
it left behind considerable oil, scattered garbage, dead fish and
Alaska officials who were very unhappy Friday about the state of
the shoreline at Pt. Helen.
"It just amazes me how much oil there is," said Dennis Kelso,
the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Environmental
Conservation. "I guess I'm a little surprised."
Exxon ended its Alaska oil spill cleanup Thursday, washing 1,089
miles hit by 11 million gallons of crude from the March 24 Exxon
Valdez wreck. After it was all over, Kelso, the state's top
environmental official, visited key beaches.
On Knight Island and Green Island, a glum Kelso found so much
oil that he said he would have asked Exxon to return if the oil
company had not already ended the cleaned before its self-imposed
deadline.
As he walked the two beaches, where human visitors were rare
until the spill, Kelso and his group picked up what the cleanup
crews had left behind - someone's helmet, rope, an unopened can
of 7-Up apparently from a worker's lunch, a cup, a container of
Dawn dishwashing liquid and other cleanup debris and garbage.
"It looks to me like this shoreline could have had a little more
attention, a lot more attention," Kelso said at Pt. Helen on
Knight Island in Prince William Sound.
The rocky beach reeked of Inipol, a chemical fertlizer used to
encourage the growth of oil-eating micro-organisms that speed up
the natural process of breaking down the oil. Inipol sat in
pools, often on top of very oily rocks.
"I think there was a rush to finish by the made-up date of Sept.
15," Kelso said.
Exxon acknowledged that Pt. Helen was still an oily beach. But
the oil company painted a somewhat better picture of the
shoreline and said the fertilized bacteria will finish the job.
Exxon Valdez general manager Otto Harrison said the company was
leaving all the oiled Alaska shoreline environmentally stable.
"This beach is not environmentally stable," Kelso said, digging
around in the gooey rocks soaked in brown crude oil just below
the surface. "If we had any wildlife here, you'd have a pretty
good chance of new oiling."
One sea lion swam by, but there was no other sign of life and
Kelso said, "You may notice we don't hear any birds."
Kelso said his chief worry at Pt. Helen was that oil would wash
off the beach and sail on the currrents around the corner of the
island to "clobber the fish hatchery we worked so hard to protect
all spring and summer."
Every few yards, Kelso stopped and inspected the beach. Using
his rubber boot to push away the top layer of rocks and gravel,
Kelso turned up dense crude oil just below the surface.
"It goes 4 feet down on this beach," said Joe Bridgman,
Department of Environment Conservation information officer.
At a large rock outcropping, thickened tar-like oil already
hardening into asphalt coated the side of a boulder up to 7 feet
high at low tide, and Kelso said, "That's in its original
condition," meaning that it looked no different than it did right
after the spill.
At one point on the beach, small dead silvery fish were found
scattered around. Kelso put a half dozen of the 4-inch long fish
in a plastic bag and said, "I'll take them back with me and we'll
see if we can get an evaluation and see what's contributing to
the die-off."
"Pt. Helen looks like hell and they're gone," Bridgman said.
On Green Island, which Exxon has used as a showcase to tout a
successful cleanup, Kelso inspected a segment of beach where
Exxon does not take visitors and where the rocks are coated with
crude.
Kelso used a pocket knife to scrape off the tarry stuff and
said, "You can scrape it off with a penknife and it doesn't even
come off the knife."
Green Island showed some improvement over the pictures of the
island that he showed to Congress after the spill, Kelso said.
"It's somewhat better," he said. "The point of this is not that
Exxon did a bad job. They just had more to do."
---
Patt Haring | United Nations | FAX: 212-787-1726
patth@sci.ccny.cuny.edu | Information | BBS: 201-795-0733
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--
Patt Haring | United Nations | FAX: 212-787-1726
patth@sci.ccny.cuny.edu | Information | BBS: 201-795-0733
patth@ccnysci.BITNET | Transfer Exchange | (3/12/24/9600 Baud)
-=- Every child smiles in the same language. -=-