Abstract:
From a helicopter, the Alaskan beach appears untouched by the worst oil spill in US history but hundreds of gallons of oil are locked up under the surface. A year after the wreck of the Exxon Valdez, dead birds no longer wash up onto the beach but thousands were killed earlier. Exxon notes that the spill did not wipe out any species and that surviving animals can rebuild populations. But the US Fish and Wildlife Service says that could take 70 years. Joseph Hazelwood is on trial for drunken driving of the vessel as captain. Criminal indictments have been issued against Exxon and they also face more than 150 civil lawsuits.
Introduction:
   From a helicopter, the wave-washed
beach looks as if the worst oil spill in U.S. history had never
touched it.
   Silvery sticks of driftwood poke through a deep blanket of snow,
and smooth gray pebbles roll in the surf under the gaze of a bald
eagle perched in a shoreside spruce.
   But the view doesn't impress Joe Bridgman of the Alaska
Department of Environmental Conservation. Dashing out as the
chopper lands, he digs into the cobble beach and quickly finds what
he knew he would.
   ``Oil,'' he says. ``Smell it?''
   The pungent odor of petroleum wafts through the air as the hole
turns black with crude oil, an oozing remnant of the 10.8 million
gallons spilled into Prince William Sound last March 24 by the
tanker Exxon Valdez.
   Bridgman scoops up a shovelful of gravel, lugs it to the water's
edge and dumps it in. A rainbow sheen of oil spreads across the
water.
   ``Hundreds of gallons of oil are locked up under this beach,''
he says. ``And this isn't isolated. There are hundreds of beaches
all over the sound that are still oiled, and the oil is slowly
bleeding out.
   ``The beaches can look beautiful at the surface, but you can dig
down, in this case just a few inches below the surface, and find
lots of oil. Now, is that a threat or isn't it?''
   A year after the wreck of the Exxon Valdez, the question clings
like the oil under this Perry Island beach. Certainly, the worst is
over; thousands of dead birds no longer wash up on shorelines as
they did last summer.
   But assessing the continuing damage wrought by the nation's most
extensive _ and expensive _ oil spill has just begun. As a growing
slick of lawyers haggles over who is to blame, Exxon Corp. and
government agencies debate how to clean up what's left and
scientists track wildlife populations' first steps on the long road
to recovery.
   Any hope of a quick solution faded last summer as oil from the
Exxon Valdez spread across 1,100 miles of Alaska's wild southern
coast.
   A cleanup army of 12,000 workers polished rocks by hand, blasted
beaches with hot water and sprayed fertilizer to promote the growth
of oil-eating microbes.
   But when Exxon suspended its $2 billion cleanup in
mid-September, it had recovered only 5 percent to 9 percent of the
oil spilled, state officials estimate. About 20 percent to 40
percent is believed to have evaporated. That leaves 50 percent to
75 percent of the oil in the water, on the ocean bottom or on
beaches.
   Some was soaked up by unwilling sponges: the seabirds, eagles
and sea otters whose carcasses now lie frozen in five vans in an
Anchorage storage yard, awaiting their day as physical evidence in
court.
   Workers found more than 1,000 dead otters, a sizable chunk of
the spill area's total population of 15,000 to 22,000.
   Many of Prince William Sound's 3,000 bald eagles also suffered;
at least 151 died, most poisoned by scavenging the oily remains of
some of the 34,400 dead seabirds recovered.
   Those numbers alone make the Valdez spill the most lethal ever,
but scientists say the actual death count is much higher,
estimating that up to 90 percent of the seabirds caught in oil sank
from sight or drifted out to sea.
   Exxon notes the spill did not wipe out any species and says
surviving animals and birds will rebuild populations. But that may
take up to 70 years for some hard-hit seabird colonies, U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service researchers say.
   ``We never claimed that the spill put any animal on the
endangered species list, but that's missing the point,'' said Fish
and Wildlife spokesman Bruce Batten. ``It's still the greatest
human-caused wildlife disaster that this agency knows about.''
   Oily carcasses were an obvious measure of the spill's impact,
but victims also included less visible members of the ecosystem,
such as young salmon and tiny intertidal creatures.
   Assessment studies for these populations are not finished, and
even preliminary findings are hard to come by _ researchers have
been told by lawyers to save their findings for court, where it
seems nearly everyone involved in the spill is headed.
   Capt. Joseph Hazelwood, skipper of the Exxon Valdez, is on trial
this month in Anchorage on charges including criminal mischief and
drunken driving of his vessel, and a federal grand jury recently
issued criminal indictments against Exxon, starting a case that
could take years to finish.
   Exxon already faces more than 150 civil lawsuits.
   Fishermen sued because of lost seasons. Tour-boat operators sued
because fewer people wanted to cruise an oiled sound. The state
sued, claiming the company was negligent in responding to the
spill, only to be countersued by Exxon, which claimed state
officials hindered the use of chemical dispersants that could have
broken up large quantities of oil early on.
   Information about the spill is filtered through this litigious
atmosphere, making much of it suspect. Exxon distributes
before-and-after pictures of cleaned beaches; Bridgman and other
state officials, accusing Exxon of ``myth-making,'' eagerly make
room for journalists on flights to oiled beaches.
   State officials cite an October survey that showed 117 miles of
shoreline remained moderately or heavily oiled, with oil more than
two feet deep in some spots. They say observers flying over the
sound still report 15 to 20 oil sheens bleeding off beaches daily.
   Exxon officials, meanwhile, say their winter monitoring of 64
sites shows wind and waves have scoured away, on average, more than
half the surface oil left in September, and up to 80 percent of the
buried oil.
   ``From a layman's point of view, what's left out there is really
insignificant,'' said Exxon scientist Andy Teal.
