Healing. Forgiveness. Rebounding. Support. Connection. Hope. These are words that have taken on deeper meaning for Cordovans over the past three decades. The Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck Bligh Reef on March 24, 1989 and released over 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. With the spill came uncertainty, job loss, and stress; just a drop in the bucket of the hardship faced by impacted coastal communities. Read their stories below.
“We have done something to make the world better and to prevent future spills and I think we can do more.”
Rev. Belle Mickelson
Emotion overcame Belle as she recalled speaking with a counselor and a group of Cordovans in 1990, roughly one year after the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.
“Alaska Conservation Foundation brought a counselor here to help us,” she said.
The counselor had an agenda, had questions, had a plan.
“Those of us that experienced it, it’s a bond that, you know, runs so deep,” Belle said.
The roughly 30-or-so people that sat at the Masonic Lodge that day took it into their own hands to share their struggles, their pain and their anger.
“We’re gonna sit here one by one and tell our stories,” she said. “I’m crying, just talking to you 30 years later.”
Belle called for continuous environmental protection for places such as Bristol Bay and the Arctic Wildlife Refuge which is currently in an ongoing battle over the potential opening of oil and gas drilling in the protected area.
“We have done something to make the world better and to prevent future spills and I think we can do more,” she said.
Belle recommends using bicycles and walking to limit car usage, in hopes that people will do their part in conserving energy.
“I’m very happy that I’m in Cordova and I’m really proud of…Cordovans…how they were resilient and came together,” she said. “It’s not only the forgiveness but seeing that we have made a difference by speaking out. That we have made a difference for other people.”
“When I got over there and saw…I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. The magnitude was just unbelievable.”
Police Chief Mike Hicks
Roughly 60,000 gallons of jet fuel is used in a typical season for the U.S. Coast Guard air station, said Cordova Police Chief Mike Hicks. In 1989, 180,000 gallons were used during the oil spill cleanup effort. Within three days of the spill, they had used all of the usable oil boom in the world, Hicks said.
“Nobody was really prepared like they are now,” he said. “When I got over there and saw…I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. The magnitude was just unbelievable.”
Environmental activist and singer/songwriter John Denver even made a visit to Cordova to show support. He held a concert for a couple hundred people at the USCG 13-mile hangar.
“It really was a nice break to all the pandemonium,” Hicks said.
At the time of the spill, Hicks was stationed in Kodiak with orders to the Cordova USCG air station as the maintenance supervisor. He was in charge of logistics in making sure the fleet of helicopters and fixed-wing airplanes were up to code and able to fly. He also helped with communication and logistics as congressmen, senators and supervisors flooded Cordova.
A Coast Guard crew from Cape Cod, MA flew to Cordova to assist with the cleanup and used its infrared radar unit to map the spill.
Hicks recalled flying 2,000 feet above the spill, the fumes stinging the air, “your eyes would burn.”
Coast Guard units from across the country came together, working in sync to assist in the cleanup in addition to those in town, fishermen, agencies and companies across the state.
“Everybody came together,” he said. “I think that’s just part of living in Alaska.”
“Twenty-five to 30-year-old kids that were raised in Cordova … that are oil spill babies, that are coming back and raising families in Cordova, to me, that’s rebounding.”
Commercial Fisherman Mike Webber
Mike began fishing full time when he was just six years old. By the time he was 29, the veteran commercial fisherman was assisting in the oil spill cleanup, protecting hatcheries, and being told to leave the fishing industry.
“I was in the prime of my life,” he said while sitting at his shop in front of an unfinished wood carving. “I had a lot of opportunity and that opportunity was lost.”
On the morning of March 24, 1989, Mike was headed to the Reluctant Fisherman Inn to get coffee with another fisherman. “My dad stopped me at the door, he said there was an oil spill,” Mike recalled. He told Mike to save his money as there were tough times ahead. “He was absolutely right about that,” Mike said.
He proceeded with his plan to build a new gillnetter but eventually had to sell it.
“Ten years after the oil spill was really the darkest times for commercial fishing,” he said.
Unable to pay and keep professional crewmembers, people turned to children, wives and husbands to help run their fishing operation.
Values of boats dropped, price per pound of fish dropped, as did permits, by a loss of over 90 percent of their value.
“Fifty-one, 52 days into the oil spill, we quit,” Mike said. “I didn’t have any capacity to stay there and witness anymore of the destruction that was going on.”
Prince William Sound is a sacred place for Mike and his family, who have subsisted in the Sound for years.
“It upset me a lot more in a different way that this has been our back yard or front yard for thousands of years,” he said. “Through carving and understanding the culture and the history, I was able to connect with my ancestors.”
Today, Mike sees hope and a future for the fishery and Cordova.
“Twenty-five to 30-year-old kids that were raised in Cordova…that are oil spill babies, that are coming back and raising families in Cordova, to me, that’s rebounding,” he said.
“It has been 30 years since the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and I (didn’t) really want to talk about the spill itself, but wanted to talk about some of the legacies that now exist because of the oil spill.”
Research scientist Scott Pegau
On March 26, 2019, Prince William Sound Science Center Research Scientist & Program Manager Scott Pegau held a presentation during the PWSSC Tuesday Night Talks program.
“It has been 30 years since the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and I (didn’t) really want to talk about the spill itself, but wanted to talk about some of the legacies that now exist because of the oil spill,” he said.
Scott is the coordinator of the herring research and monitoring program and is the research program manager for the Oil Spill Recovery Institute.
In his 12 years of research, plus the nearly 30 years of research since the spill, he has found that scientists and researchers are trying to understand how the Prince William Sound recovered from the spill.
To this day, lingering oil makes up less than one percent of the original oil in the beaches.
“It’s still there,” Scott said. “Scientists would not have predicted that it would have remained but it is deep enough into the sediments, and deep enough being only a foot or less.”
It is not getting enough oxygen for the microbes to degrade the oil and the chemical composition of the remaining oil is what it would have been just 11 days after the spill, he said.
“It’s hard to find and we’re not finding any evidence that that oil is still coming out and affecting the ecosystem.”
Although the spill was devastating for the Sound’s ecosystem, the environmental disaster provided an opportunity to improve response capability, oil shipping safety and the further understanding of how the sound’s ecosystem works.
See all of our 30 Years of Healing: Reflecting on the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill coverage here.
