36 years ago today, on the night of March 24th, 1989, the Exxon Valdez, a gargantuan oil tanker, found herself run aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. From the trauma sustained from the impact, her cargo holds within were punctured and 11 million gallons of crude oil leaked out of her hull. As catastrophes go, this incident was no ordinary careless mistake or harmless screw up, it became known as one of the largest and most damaging environmental disasters in the history of the United States, later topped by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. Unlike the Deepwater Horizon spill, no human beings died as a direct result of the impact, though the once unspoiled arcadian landscape was violated by the toxic crude and over 253,000 animals of the sea and air were taken by the disaster. In a testimony by a local, received by NPR, it was reported that in the aftermath, “There was no fish, no birds chasing fish. You could sit there and it’d just be dead quiet. So everybody called it the dead zone.” Aside from the ecological destruction, the consequences for the locals of this region were immense as local economies were disrupted and lives were upended by the reverberations of this disaster. 

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A man-made disaster, the Exxon Valdez incident owes its grim fate to negligence on the part of Exxon and the incompetent crew of the vessel itself. The supertanker, en route from Valdez, Alaska, to Long Beach, California, was steered off course to avoid icebergs, but tragically ran aground on Bligh Reef – an obstacle that should have been avoidable. Its presence was well known to local fishermen as it was a prime area for the fishing of shrimp, not to mention that this area had been well-traveled by tankers for many years prior. Therefore, the presence of this geological formation should not have come as a surprise, yet surprise, or perhaps stupefaction, abounded. The ship’s captain, Joseph Hazelwood is rumoured to have been intoxicated during the incident as according to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, testimony before the National Transportation Safety Board afterwards, Hazelwood drank, “a number of alcoholic drinks late that afternoon while relaxing in a Valdez bar, and at least one more drink at a bar.” This sort of thing may have been acceptable for an 18th century pirate, drinking rum like water or for your father crushing Moose Lights on a summer’s day at the cottage, but this is not at all acceptable for somebody who is about to go into work. Work that involves steering a leviathan of a ship through ice infested waters. Though, at the time of the grounding, it was the more inexperienced (and overworked) Third Mate Gregory Cousins who was left in charge, which apparently violated company policy. There was clear complacency the crew of the Exxon Valdez, they grew inattentive as there was likely very little in the way of oversight by Exxon, which unfortunately led to incredibly unprofessional conduct by certain members of the crew.  

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After the collision with the reef, the spill spread through the waters and corrupted more than 2,000 km of the coastline. In addition to the aforementioned living animal death toll, billions of precious salmon and herring eggs were annihilated. These eggs were the lifeblood of these coastal communities as this region primarily survived off the commercial fishing industry. This destruction of eggs meant far less fish would spawn, though by 2002 the salmon population was considered to be “recovered”, this is not the case for the herring as their population is still considered “not recovering”. The social fabric of these communities was forever altered in even the cleanup efforts as both skilled and unskilled employees were hired from the local populace and abroad at competitive wages of $17.69/hour, to scrub rocks and deploy containment booms (Palinkas et al., pp.1). This was a spectacle that disrupted local economies as it proved exceedingly difficult for many local shops and fish processing plants to keep or attract new employees. Small towns, particularly primarily Indigenous villages like Tatitlek, found themselves overrun and profoundly disrupted by a massive influx of workers from abroad, which caused massive strain on social, familial, and community bonds. Lawrence Palinkas obtained direct testimony from various individuals affected by the aftermath of the spill, “Yes, as a family we kind of lost it… my husband… we were so close. Then the oil spill came and he is drinking more and [we] separated.”, (Palinkas et al., pp. 6) “[The cleanup] contributed to my break-up with my fiancée. The spill caused lots of pressure for me to keep my business going. I was stressed and it affected my relationship.”. (Palinkas et al., pp. 6) The cleanup itself was meant to restore the natural order in Prince William Sound, but paradoxically it imposed its own chaos, embedding deep psychological wounds into affected communities as economic pressures ripped families apart.  

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Despite a bevy of settlements and fines paid out by Exxon and even the creation of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 or OPA, which allowed for government to hold companies like Exxon accountable, the financial penalties seem meager when one sees the damage inflicted. The rape of the landscape by the corrupting ooze has left lasting trauma as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that “waters have warmed, ice has receded, and populations of fish and mammals have declined.”. This incident is a testament to the carelessness of corporations like Exxon, who view this planet’s natural spaces with rapacious eyes, their gaping vacuous maws salivating like some chthonic beast as they imagine the profits to be made from our Mother Earth.