Oil Spill Spawns Alaskan 'Science Rush'

When the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on the rocks of Bligh Island on March 24, the more than 10 million gallons of crude oil it carried, invaded every nook and cranny of Alaska’s Prince William Sound, polluting the air, fouling the beaches, and staining the water for miles around. Within hours, while the stricken yessel remained on the rocks that had sliced it open like a tin can, a second invasion began: the scientists. They included fisheries biologists, oceanographers, veterinarians, and chemists, and they arrived on the scene to ply their expertise for government agencies, industrial finns, universities, and, in some cases, for the pure pursuit of sceince. Now, nearly three months later, hundreds— some say thousands—are still using Prince William Sound as a research platform, and it’s a safe bet that some of them will still be there years from now, when, it is hoped, the last apparent signs of the spill will be long gone. Not surprisingly, most of the scientists arriving first at the scene of the ecological disaster—and the majority of those now working there—have been preoccu ed with the cleanup effort. While Exxon Corp. is footing the bill for many of these scientists, very few are full-time Exxon employees; the company has instead contracted several environmental consulting firms, including Dames and Moore and Amehca North, both Alaskan companies, to do the bulk of the work. Exxon’s first priority was animal rescue, and the company began bringing in scientists and animal experts while the tanker was still leaking oil. For example, Rodvik says, “Alice Berkner of the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Berkeley, Calif., arrived on March 24, and she has not left the state since. Berkner has set up bird rescue and rehabilitation points in Valdez, Seward, Kodiak, and Homer, where teams of volunteers have been working long days to de-oil sea birds caught in the spill. “Every dime spent on animal and bird rescue and rehabilitation after the spill comes from Exxon,” Rodvik stresses. Naother expert brought in by Exxon is Randall Davis of the Sea World Research Institute in San Diego. Davis, along with two other scientists—a physiologist and a veterinarian-toxicologist—has run an otter rescue center in Valdez. Rodvik says that since arriving in Prince William Sound, the vet, Venkata Chalam, has developed a technique using activated charcoal that has helped cut mortality among otters brought to the Valdez center. " Al Maki, a fisheries biologist, is Exxon’s man in charge of the environment in Valdez. His ecology program was launched on the fourth day of the spill. “There are more than 300 people in my ecology program,” says, Maki, “including sediment chemists, waterfowl ecologists, and marine biologists.” His 300 or so charges also include nonscientists, such as boat captains and animal collection experts. Exxon has not, of course, been alone in sponsoring the rescue work carried out since the spill. Hundreds of scientists and officials from dozens of federal and state agencies have also converged on Valdez. But their responsibilities extend far beyond the immediate problems of " dying animals. Three federal agencies and the’ state of Alaska are coordinating a massive effort to carry out the terms of the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). This act—which also created the federal government’s Superfund program to clean up toxic waste dumps—is used routinely by the government to assess the damage caused by toxic waste dumping, oil spills, and other accidents that damage the environment. Under CERCLA, every federal or state agency or Indian tribe that “owns” a piece of the area damaged by such a spill can make claims against the company or individual responsible. Research conducted with the approval of CERCLA trustees is intended to help assess the extent of immediate and long-term damage. Charles Ehler of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is one of the four trustees under CERCLA for the Valdez spill. “The trustees come from the Department of Commerce, which appointed NOAA; the Department of the Interior, which appointed the Fish and Wildlife Service; the department of Agriculture, which appointed the Parks Service; and the state of Alaska, which appointed its Fish and Game Department.” Each of these four agencies then named an individual employee to be its trustee. Ehler himself is dividing his time between Washington and Juneau—where the trustees or their deputies are meeting—while getting constant news reports from two NOAA scientists on the scene. Hundreds of Researchers What the trustees are doing is expected to affect the careers of hundreds of-researchers for at least the next five years. By the middle of May, the trustees had more than a hundred proposals from scientists in their hands (see box below). By the. middle of this summer, Ebler says, they will evaluate these proposals decide which deserve to be funded, and come up with a preliminary estimate of what this work will cost, plus what the total damage to the environment may be. This bill, which could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, will then be ‘presented to those responsible for the spill (Exxon and Alyeska, the consortium owning the pipeline, in all probability). Exxon, says Ehler, has already provided $15 million to the trustees to pay for scientific work under way, but this is just a “down payment” on the total amount. Once the CERCLA trustees have come up with their damage assessment figure, says Ehler, “Exxon will try to match this with its own estimate, and both parties will seek to agree on a figure.” If they ‘cannot agree, the matter will go to court; but Peter Escherich, a biologist in the Environmental Contaminants Division of the Fish and Wildlife Service, points out that every case so far has been settled out of court. The job of damage assessment, which will include the costs of research, will be long and immensely complicated. “There will be significant job opportunities for scientists, economists, and lawyers,” Ehler says.. They will have to add up the salaries and lab costs for research; tabulate the costs for necessities such as helicopters, boat rentals, and the like; and, trickiest of all, estimate injuries to the environment. Phil Schempf, a raptor-manage ment expert for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, will almost certainly be one of the scientists getting money from CERCLA. “I have written half a dozen eagle proposals so far,” he reports, “and I would be the principal investigator for most of them.” If and when they are funded, “it would mean lots of seasonal work for biologists and technicians’, some new hiring of people with masters or B.A. ‘s in biology." His proposals incorporate surveys as well as hematology and pathology studies.”I have heard that they have recovered 20 dead eagles out of a prespill population of 2,000 for Prince-William Sound, plus six or seven weakened birds,” says Schenipf, illustrating some of the problems facing the CERCLA trustees and their advisers in Juneau, who are trying to calculate the extent of the destruction. First of all, no one knows how many unrecovered dead eagles, bears, otters, and so forth lie rotting in a distant forest, nor does anyone know how many more will die in the coming months from liver damage caused by toxic residues they ingest when eating contaminated prey. And, even if the biologists could count every dead animal or shellfish, how can a dollar figure be attached to the loss? Another major player in the post-spill science activity has been—and will continue to be—the University of Alaska. The university system, with its three main campuses in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau, and smaller institutions around the state, has been involved since March 24. The staff of Prince William Sound Community College, for example, got to work cleaning birds and otters while researchers made plans to rush to join them in Valdez. When the Exxon Valdez went aground, the Alpha Helix, a ship belonging to the Institute of Marine Science (IMS) of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, was undergoing repairs in Seattle. It was pulled out of dock and sailed north to become the first research vessel on the scene. The ship has made three more voyages into the spill waters since then, taking samples and gathering information. According to a university spokesman, there were at least 50 people from the Fairbanks campus in Valdez in mid-May, representing the IMS, the Geophysical Institute, the Institute of Arctic Biology, and several departments. Brian Rogers, the university’s vice president for finance, estimates that the system will spend $1.5 million on spill-related research in fiscal y ear 1989, which ends next month. Rogers estimates that this will jump to $4.5 million for the fiscal year 1990, and stay at that level for four more years—meaning a total budget of $27 million over five years. University researchers had sent in more than 30 proposals to CERCLA by mid-May, the spokesman said. Although Exxon will ultimately pay for much or all of the rescue, clean-up, and damage-assessment work, many researchers say they are working on a “deficit-financing” basis. Vacations were canceled, plans put on hold, and work was begun at once “because you can’t wait till you have the money to start work when there’s oil on the water,” as one Alaska Fish and Game worker put it. Not all of the scientists who have grabbed this opportunity to observe the first significant spill in Alaskan waters came from Exxon, the government, or academia. June Siva, a marine biologist at Atlantic Richfield (ARCO)—another petroleum giant—is an oil spills specialist who has dedicated 15 years to such accidebts. “I have been up there three times, and I will go back,” she reports from her office in Los Angeles. “I went to offer help, talk with the Exxon people, the Coast Guard, did an overflight on a helicopter, and saw quite a few beaches, including some very heavily oiled ones. Since ARCO Alaska is our biggest operation, we are interested in seeing how oil penetrates into sediments. Siva says that the last major spill in U.S. waters was off Santa Barbara, Calif., more than 20 years ago. “People have grown complacent, and I know that every aspect of spill prevention is being reassessed. Everyone at the Petroleum Institute [a trade " organization] spill task force has been up there. I believe that many within the industry may hire new people. I could see more environmental people being needed in a variety of areas—we may strengthen our program.” She lists all the aspects of the problem she intends to investigate: “basic work on dispersants; following the weathering process of dispersed oil; what dispersed oil does in sediments; how well do skimmers work? can we scale them up? do gelling agents work? There was a big flurry of activity after Santa Barbara, and now there’s going to be another one. Or, as a NOAA official in Valdez put it: “I think we are going to end up knowing more about, this spill than any other.” Jonathan Beard is a freelance science wruer based in New York City.

Oil Spill Spawns Alaskan 'Science Rush'

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June 1989

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