Still Digging Up Exxon Valdez Oil, 20 Years Later (TIME)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Bryan Walsh / Prince William Sound Tuesday, Jun. 02, 2009

Twenty years since the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in southeastern Alaska on March 24, 1989, spreading an 11-million-gallon crude-oil inkblot into Prince William Sound, the once-pristine coastal waters once again appear clean and untouched.

Birds like the arctic tern and the endangered Kittlitz's Murrelet can be seen skimming the astonishingly beautiful Alaskan coastline, while sea otters backstroke through the cold, clear waters of the Sound. It is a remarkable turnaround since the Exxon spill, the worst manmade environmental disaster in U.S. history — the immediate shock of which killed hundreds of thousands of shorebirds that made their home in the Sound, along with sea otters that choked on the crude. Over the long term, populations of orcas, killer whales, herring and other species would be injured by the accident.

Today, the coast is clear and clean. But clean is not the same as pristine. Decades ago, some of the spill found its way to a beach on Knight Island, in the Sound, a site that scientists studying the accident would designate KN-102, but which during the multiyear clean-up would earn another name: Death Marsh.

Here, on Death Marsh, Mandy Lindberg, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Alaska's Auke Bay, turns over a shovel of sand and broken rock to reveal a glistening pool of brackish oil. The crude can be chemically typed to the Exxon Valdez, and more oil can be found beneath the beach at Death Marsh, and at a number of islands around the Sound. "I wouldn't have possibly believed the oil would last this long," says Lindberg. "Studying the spill has been a great learning experience, but if we had known in the years after the spill what we know now, we would have been looking for oil much earlier."

What scientists like Lindberg know now is that the legacy of the Exxon Valdez is still visible — physically, on the beaches of Prince William Sound, and in the animal populations in these sensitive waters that have yet to rebound fully. Using funds that come from the original settlement over the spill between Exxon and the state of Alaska, scientists from NOAA have carried out major studies that show oil still remains just beneath the surface in many parts of the Sound — close enough for animals to be affected by it. "The oil may not leak out in quantities that are immediately visible, but that doesn't mean its not there," says Jeep Rice, a NOAA scientist who has led the studies. "We thought the clean-up would be a one shot deal — but it's still lingering."
****
more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1902333,00.html?xid=rss-topstories-cnnpartner