In Alaska, Louisianans learn from Exxon spill

Husband. Father. Fisherman.

Philippe and about a dozen other Louisianans traveled more than 4,400 miles last month to talk to Alaskans such as Beedle. They expected advice. Less anticipated was how often it came with confessions.

As Philippe and Evans talked in a parking lot, he told her that after the spill his wife left him and took their child with her, and how he went from being a man who never doubted he’d be a fisherman to one who grudgingly created a life away from the waters where he grew up.

“They tell you, ‘Move on,’ ’’ Beedle said. “But when this is all you know, how do you move on?’’

Twenty-one years have passed since the Exxon Valdez oil tanker, under the neglectful command of an inebriated captain, rammed into a reef off the southern coast of Alaska, releasing an estimated 11 million gallons of oil into pristine Prince William Sound. For more than two decades, ExxonMobil has been paying for that night. In the years after the spill, it spent $2.1 billion for the cleanup effort, which included hiring locals who were dubbed “spillionaires’’ for the paychecks they pulled in. In 1991, the company paid $1 billion to settle criminal and civil lawsuits brought against it by the state and federal government. Most of that money went toward the acquisition and protection of ecologically critical habitat.

Just last year, a drawn-out class action suit launched against the company by 32,000 fishermen, Alaska natives, and landowners ended with the company ordered to pay $507.5 million in punitive damages, much less than the $5 billion initially rewarded.

But in Cordova and other Prince William Sound communities — where harsh living conditions are the cost of snow-capped mountain views — life is still spoken about in uncertain terms.

The group from Louisiana — professors, politicians, and community leaders — spent a week in Alaska, looking to learn from those who’ve been where they’re headed. They discovered that spills have a way of lingering long after the water is declared open and beaches deemed safe. If Alaska is any indication, the first year after a spill is not the hardest. It’s the years afterward when the environmental, cultural, and societal consequences really surface.

Cold rain falls outside. John Platt doesn’t care. The pink salmon are popping. And for this fishing boat captain, that’s all that matters.

He needs this catch.

Platt was 28 when the spill happened. Now he is pushing 50 with no health insurance, no retirement fund, and no college savings for three sons.

“I am no better off than that 20-some-year-old kid,’’ he says.

Platt’s undoing didn’t come the year of the spill or even the year after it. Herring, a fish the natives call “the grass of the ocean,’’ was still abundant in 1990 when Platt bought a herring permit for about $230,000.

No one knew that the herring were dying.

John Renner, a man whose fingers carry the calluses of a veteran fisherman, used to catch herring and collect their roe, a delicacy in Japan. He was able to observe the fish closely after the spill.

In 1990, he says, they began behaving oddly. Instead of laying their eggs in a row, the herring would leave them in pyramids or in stacks. A year later, they started reabsorbing their eggs. “We were freaking out because they weren’t spawning,’’ Renner says. In 1992, he noticed lesions.

“And then they died,’’ Renner says. “So we quit herring fishing and that was devastating to this town.’’

With the fishery closed all but one year since 1993, permits lost their value and fishermen such as Platt could do little but watch their incomes fall and debts rise. Renner recalls one who couldn’t make the payments on his permit and committed suicide.

Renner stares at the kitchen counter in front of him for a long minute after saying this. He was diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder after the spill — he knew something was wrong because he “couldn’t quit crying,’’ he says — and so he doesn’t allow himself to talk about certain subjects.

“That’s one reason I can’t talk about the animals,’’ Renner says.

While it’s unknown how many animals died after the spill, the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, which was formed to oversee the ecosystem’s restoration, lists these as the best estimates: 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, 22 killer whales, and billions of salmon and herring eggs.

“When we say there is no herring here,’’ fisherman Torie Baker says, “that’s like Louisianans saying there is no shrimp.’’

What, if anything, will be the Gulf of Mexico’s herring — the creature that dies off en masse years from now? Oil breaks down more quickly in warm water and the government has said about three-quarters of the estimated 205.8 million gallons of oil that fouled the gulf have been removed by man or are being broken down by nature. But scientists say it’s difficult to predict the environmental damage because of the volume of oil released and the unknown long-term impacts of the dispersants used to break it up.