Alaska News

Todd and Sarah Palin listed among Exxon Valdez spill fund claimants

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, are among 947 claimants qualified for a piece of about $1 million in remaining settlement funds from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in the waters of Prince William Sound.

A list of unpaid claimants who are qualified for a share of the settlement funds was published Wednesday. See the list here (PDF).

The Associated Press reports, courtesy The Oregonian, that the latest push to find claimants who have not collected dispersal from the Exxon Qualified Settlement Fund will likely be the last: Any leftover money will then be turned over to the states in which the claimants were last known to have lived.

And it's a veritable Diaspora of claimants across the country, scattered from Wasilla and elsewhere around the 49th state, to Oregon and to Texas, Colorado and Connecticut and beyond.

The Palins are claimants No. 655 and 656. How much of a claim they may be due is unknown.

Their place on that list is colored by the former governor's assertions in the 2009 book "Going Rogue: An American Life" that her administration helped those impacted by one of the country's worst environmental disasters.

In 2009, a lawyer for the Exxon Valdez plaintiffs told Reuters that the former governor's claims of aid were mostly "cockamamie bullshit."

That lawyer, Dave Oesting, remains lead attorney for Exxon Valdez plaintiffs, and may soon find Palin among those claimants who come calling to collect.

Craig Medred

Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2015.

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