When the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council meets this week, it has some important unfinished business it should address. After 25 years, government studies confirm that many of the fish and wildlife populations, habitats and resource services have yet to recover from the 1989 spill, and some are not recovering at all.
A take-home lesson is that, after a large marine oil spill, we simply cannot "restore" an injured ecosystem. The most (and least) we can do is to protect the ecosystem from additional harm, allowing it the best possible opportunity to recover. And on that, the state of Alaska and U.S. government have fallen short, and have a lot of unfinished business.
1. Today, thousands of gallons of Exxon Valdez oil remain in beach sediments, almost as toxic now as it was 25 years ago. To address this lingering oil, in 2006 the governments presented Exxon with a claim for another $92 million and a restoration plan, under the Reopener for Unknown Injury provision of the 1991 settlement. But Exxon hasn't paid the claim, and the governments haven't taken Exxon to court to collect, making this now the longest-lasting environmental case in history. Today, the governments still have $219 million in available funds with which they could begin the shoreline bioremediation work, yet they are over six years behind schedule. They need to expedite this work, and take Exxon to court to collect this long-overdue payment.
2. The council is proposing to upgrade the status of herring from "Not Recovering" to "Recovering," yet their own science shows this to be premature. Calling the crash of the Sound's herring "unprecedented," the council states today that "the herring population has never rebounded," that "no trend suggesting healthy recovery has occurred," and "health indices indicate that herring in the Sound are not fit." While there were hopeful signs from 2009-2011, the population since declined once again. Clearly, herring should remain in the "Not Recovering" category. And as proposed in 2002 and again this year, the council should consider implementing a herring fishery permit buyback as a restoration measure, so that if and when herring do recover, the biomass can remain in the ecosystem to support the many species that rely on it. As the council states, herring "are central to the marine food web; providing food to marine mammals, birds, invertebrates, and other fish."
3. While the council sponsored many useful studies, the same agencies failed to apply many of the research results to better manage the ecosystem. This should be remedied.
4. The most significant achievement of the restoration process has been the protection of hundreds of thousands of acres of privately owned critical fish and wildlife habitat, but the council has yet to acquire the subsurface estate beneath these protections. This too should be remedied.
5. The designated boundary of the oil spill region should be expanded east of the Copper River Delta to encompass the Bering River/Katalla area. This region is clearly an important part of the impacted ecosystem, as birds, fish, and marine mammals migrate between the areas. And the Bering River area offers tremendous opportunities to offset some of the fish, wildlife, subsistence and wilderness values lost in the spill. The council should make it a priority to work with Chugach Alaska Corporation and the Korean coal owner to permanently retire this spectacular region from coal and timber extraction.
6. Finally, the trustees should initiate a comprehensive process to identify protections needed on public lands and waters in the spill region. To date, the habitat protection program has focused solely on private lands, while ignoring comparable protections on state and federal lands and waters. As these areas are already in public ownership, such protections would cost little or no money. This should become a council priority, and should include recommending additional marine protected areas in state and federal waters, and designating additional wilderness areas on federal lands (notably the Nellie Juan-College Fjord Wilderness Study Area).
Hopefully the council can transcend its traditional political inertia, and complete the restoration work necessary.
Rick Steiner was a marine conservation professor with the University of Alaska from 1980 – 2010, and stationed in Cordova from 1983-1997. The Trustee Council meeting begins at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday at 4210 University Drive (APU), and will take public comment.
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