Anchorage Daily News

CORDOVA -- For many in this coastal town, the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster was an event so crushing that hard-bitten fishermen still get teary recalling ruined livelihoods, broken marriages and suicides.

But mostly, people in Cordova talk about their discouraging 19-year wait for legal retribution for one of the worst oil spills in U.S. history.

The town of 2,200 is looking anxiously to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear arguments Wednesday from Exxon on why the company should not have to pay punitive damages at all, let alone the $2.5 billion a federal appeals court awarded in 2006.

Scores of Cordova residents are among roughly 30,000 plaintiffs.

Steve Smith, a 69-year-old Cordova fisherman, worries that big business will prevail.

"I really wonder, what do you do if you don't get a just decision out of the Supreme Court?" he said on his boat Prince William. "I mean, there's no other court to take it to. What do you got left, really? Anarchy?"

Cordova, 45 miles from Bligh Reef where the Exxon Valdez ran aground, was not directly touched by the slick. But residents say the spill was a crippling blow for a town so dependent on commercial fishing, particularly for herring, whose numbers plummeted several years after the spill and have yet to return.

One of the mayors who served after the spill later killed himself, leaving a long suicide note that mentioned Exxon.

Mike Webber, a 47-year-old Native artist and fisherman, said his marriage did not survive the strain; he and his wife divorced two years after the spill. With the fishing industry in shreds, he also began drinking heavily, finally checking himself into rehab in 1998.

He said he has been sober since but that others kept drinking and abusing drugs and sank into severe depression and, in some cases, suicide.

Webber carved a "shame pole" last year to commemorate the spill and will be in Washington this week with the 7-foot carved piece of cedar, which depicts former longtime Exxon chief executive Lee Raymond with dollar-sign eyes and a Pinocchio-like nose. An oil slick pours from Raymond's mouth along with the words uttered by a top Exxon official soon after the spill: "We will make you whole."

"Well, they didn't," Webber said, his voice breaking. "They just put a hole in us is what they did, right in our hearts and it hurts. And they took part of our soul."

Exxon says the claim of severe, continuing environmental damage to the Sound "is simply untrue."

"The environment in Prince William Sound is healthy, robust and thriving," Exxon spokesman Tony Cudmore said. "That's the conclusion of many scientists who have done extensive studies of the Prince William Sound ecosystem."

To the casual observer, the Sound's stunning beauty has been restored, its many islands, fjords and glaciers a photographer's dream. But residents in Cordova and other communities say the region is still a long way from healing. It took years for salmon to rebound, and sea otters and harlequin ducks are still below pre-spill numbers.

Most devastating to Cordova residents, the once-lucrative Pacific herring fishery has not returned in significant numbers since 1993, a failure precipitated by the spill, according to researchers at Prince William Sound Science Center in town. Exxon maintains there is no link between the spill and the virus that reduced the number of herring.

The herring catch used to kick-start the entire town after the quieter winter. Herring gave fishermen quick cash for boat insurance, equipment repairs and gear. For many, it represented a half year's earnings.

"A whole lifestyle has gone," said restaurant owner Libbie Graham. "Life was great. I mean, you worked hard but you were rewarded for it."

Steve Picou, a sociologist with the University of South Alabama who has been researching how the spill affected Cordova residents, said that reports of stress and depression initially were linked to job losses for fishermen and damage to the environment crucial to Natives who hunt and fish for their food. Later, he said, the stress increased because of the drawn-out court case.

"I find it not only ironic but tragic that the very process that is supposed to resolve the social impacts of the Exxon Valdez spill -- that is, litigation -- has, over time, become a source of stress and disruption itself," Picou said.

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