Exxon Valdez Spills Millions: An Environmental Catastrophe

Captain Joseph Hazelwood had been drinking. At 12:04 AM on March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, ripping open eight of its eleven cargo tanks and spilling approximately 11 million gallons of crude oil into one of the most pristine marine ecosystems in North America. The tanker had deviated from the shipping lane to avoid ice, and Hazelwood had left the bridge, placing an unqualified third mate at the helm. The response was catastrophically slow. Exxon's contingency plan called for containment booms to surround the tanker within five hours, but the nearest equipment was in the town of Valdez, and a barge that should have been pre-loaded with boom sat empty in dry dock. By the time response efforts began in earnest, storms had spread the oil across more than 1,300 miles of coastline. An estimated 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, and 22 orcas died. Exxon deployed 10,000 workers and spent over $2 billion on cleanup, using high-pressure hot water that in some cases caused more ecological damage than the oil itself by sterilizing shoreline organisms. Hazelwood was acquitted of operating a vessel while intoxicated but convicted of negligent discharge of oil, a misdemeanor. His blood alcohol was tested more than ten hours after the grounding, and the results were disputed. The spill transformed American environmental policy. Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which mandated double-hulled tankers in U.S. waters, established a billion-dollar cleanup trust fund financed by oil companies, and barred the Exxon Valdez herself from ever returning to Prince William Sound. Traces of oil from the spill remain in the Sound's sediment more than three decades later.