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Oil From the Exxon Valdez Spill Still Lingers On Alaska Beaches

Posted by samzenpus on from the sticking-around dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It's been 25 years since the Exxon Valdez dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound, and you can still find oil sticking to rocks. Worse yet, scientists say the oil could be around for decades yet to come. From the article: 'There are two main reasons why there's still oil on some of the beaches of the Kenai Fjords and Katmai National Parks and Preserves in the Gulf of Alaska, explains Gail Irvine, a marine ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and lead researcher on the study. When the oil first spilled from the tanker, it mixed with the seawater and formed an emulsion that turned it into a goopy compound, she says. "When oil forms into the foam, the outside is weathering, but the inside isn't," Irvine explains. It's like mayonnaise left out on the counter. The surface will crust over, but the inside of the clump still looks like mayonnaise, she explains.'"

10 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Consequences... by Thantik · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Consequences only exist for those too poor to fight them. Exxon should have been made responsible for taking care of the entire area until all the oil was cleaned up, but that would have driven them out of business...and we can't have that!

    1. Re:Consequences... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      to be fair, if you punished them so hard that they went out of business, then they wouldn't be able to clean up. ideally you punish them enough so they pay a lot while remaining in business a long time to continue to pay a lot.

    2. Re:Consequences... by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Asset forfeiture... Used on pot smokers all the time... Take it out of the board members' pockets.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    3. Re:Consequences... by Immerman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How about they pay half of all profits until the problem is *solved*. Make it *hurt* so that they *never* want to have such a thing happen again.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    4. Re:Consequences... by FuzzNugget · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just accept it? Tough shit? I don't think so.

      Punishment doesn't work on *individuals* because it's not reasonable to expect them to know all the nuance of laws affecting them in their daily lives.

      Punishment works for *corporations* because they are have the resources and training to know what laws affect them as they go about their business. I don't disagree that there should be strong incentives for good safety protocols and environmental protection standards, but that should not preclude the use of equally strong disincentives for violations.

      Regulatory control should not be so weak and subject to influence that gigantic corporations guilty of gross negligence actually have bargaining power in these situations; they need to be at the mercy of regulators and of the public.

    5. Re:Consequences... by Immerman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, but they seem to mostly get out of bed and say "Today I'm going to make a lot of money, and fuck anyone/thing who gets hurt in the process"

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    6. Re:Consequences... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Government does some things really well. For example, the Social Security Administration is almost unfathomably efficient, compared to other large national or private retirement systems. For example, the overhead of SS is less than 3%, compared to something like 30% for Chile's privatized retirement system, lauded by conservatives.

      The United States Post Office is also very economically efficient, especially considering how hemmed in they are by Congress. How people can both believe that post office workers are lazy, yet at the same time be so stressed out and overworked as to be the archetype for "going postal", I'll never understand. Cognitive dissonance at its finest.

      Of course, if all you listen to are the whining pundits and conventional snark, you wouldn't realize this. But disimpassioned academic studies have shown these and other systems to be stellar performers.

      OTOH, locating, recovering, shipping, and distributing oil and oil products is a very complex, capital intensive business with a rapid pace of development and subject to extreme market volatility. That's pretty much the opposite thing that government bureaucracies are good at. It's also why they find it hard to regulate such industries without unleashing a parade of unintended consequences. Nationalized oil companies are some of the most inefficient and corrupt bureaucracies ever established. To anybody who despises Exxon, Shell, etc, I suggest you take a look at companies like Pemex (Mexico), Petronas (Malaysia), etc, including their environmental impact. Many times when there's a spill they don't even bother trying to clean it up, let alone do a poor job of it.

  2. Re:why the surprise? by flyingfsck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Eventually, something will eat the oil. Oil is basically archaia bacterial poop originally made deep under ground.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  3. Re:A few suggestions so this does not happen again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Pipelines leak constantly. Not in huge spills, but they do leak constantly and often in considerable amounts before being noticed.

    I used to write software to help various agencies track leaks in pipelines.

  4. Re:A few suggestions so this does not happen again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not a fan of oil tankers. They tend to spill and waste a lot of oil. Moving oil by rail is better, they don't spill as often or as much when they do. Pipelines are the best means we have to move oil. They spill much less often and are much easier to fix.

    Really? Well, no and no.

    One must be careful not to confuse the frequency of spills with the quantity spilled, or the size of a spill with how much press it gets.