14 DAY TRIAL // Seventeen years after Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, researchers have concluded that the ecosystem has fully recovered. The study was conducted by Dr. Mark Harwell and Dr. Jack Gentile and appears in the upcoming July 2006 issue of Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (IEAM).
After examination of thousands of pages of ecological and environmental investigation documents, Harwell and Gentile concluded that residual petroleum hydrocarbons from the oil spill no longer represent an ecologically significant threat to Prince William Sound. The authors maintain that there is no evidence of any residual effects from the oil spill on aquatic invertebrates, fish, birds, mammals, or on the habitat and surrounding wilderness. With the exception of reduced numbers of animals in one pod of orca whales and one subpopulation of sea otters, the authors concluded that the Prince William Sound ecosystem has effectively recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
The authors further maintain that there are other ongoing challenges to the ecosystem, including climate change, increased tourism and shipping, invasive species, and over-exploitation of marine resources that appear to pose more significant challenges to the environment than the oil spill.
The study is important and timely in light of the 17th anniversary of the oil spill and recent legal questions raised by state and federal environmental agencies addressing concerns that effects attributed to the oil spill are still evident. In May, the Alaska state legislature went on record as supporting the use of the "reopener" provision in the original settlement with ExxonMobil, allowing the state to pursue an additional $100 million in damages at any time between 2002 and 2006.
In the original settlement signed in 1991, ExxonMobil paid $900 million over a 10-year period ending in 2001 to state and federal governments for damages resulting from the grounding of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker on March 24, 1989.
Image: Map of oiled shoreline in Prince William Sound, AK, USA, attributed to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. Credit: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: Fate and Effects in Alaskan Waters