OIL SPILL OPENS WALLETS
ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS REPORT BOOST IN DONATIONS

By SAM BISHOP
Daily News reporter

ANCHORAGE- Environmental groups should be added to the growing list of those who made millions of dollars because 11 million gallons of oil washed across Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska this summer.

Most major environmental groups have conducted or are conducting financial appeals that play on the oil spill. The halfjoking speculation heard this spring that the wreck of the Exxon Valdez could be "the best thing since James Watt" for the environmental movement has become, at least in part, a reality as the dollars pour in.

While that fact has embarrassed some people in the groups, most are comfortable with the money because they believe it will either help fight the direct effects of the oil spill or change the situation that let it happen. They make no apologies.

The National Wildlife Federation, the largest environmental group in the country, collected $1 million from its members with one mailing this spring. The money went into an "Alaska Fund" administered from Washington, D.C.

"We did that one internal mailing and the result was astounding," said Ann Rothe, Alaska regional representative for the group.

"It's clear to us that the spill touched a chord in the American public," said Robert SanGeorge, a vice president in the National Audubon Society's New York headquarters. "Number one was the TV images, combined with the story of the drunk captain and the laxness before that."

Audubon raised about $900,000 this spring from a mailing to selected members and nonmembers. That set an Audubon record for a single mailing, SanGeorge said.

Although the wildlife federation and Audubon dominated the fundraising efforts, several other national groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York, the San Franciscobased Sierra Club and Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, The Wilderness Society of Washington, D.C. and the Defenders of Wildlife, of D.C. have collected or plan to collect between $100,000 and $200,000.

The Defenders, with 80,000 members one of the smaller national groups, broke its past fundraising record with the $200,000 that members donated after the spill, according to Carol Waite, director of development.

The money raised by all these groups will be spent for lobbyists, lawyers, researchers and spokesmen whose goals are to stop oil development in parts of Alaska and to make sure any activity that does occur meets stricter standards. Their principal opponents are the oil companies, most of which hire their own Washington lobbyists and maintain a wellfunded political and research arm, the American Petroleum Institute.

Joseph Lastelic, an institute spokesman, said his group does not budget separately for Alaska issues, so it's difficult to compare how much the oil industry is putting into the Alaska fight with the amounts raised by environmental groups. But the oil industry is unlikely to be outspent. API already has six lobbyists in the nation's capital, and its annual budget is about $50 million, Lastelic said.

Lastelic said environmental groups use their money on Capitol Hill the same way that the petroleum industry does for lobbyists and lawyers.

"Those groups work the same way," he said. "One of the big differences, though, is that the environmental groups have enormous numbers of members."

Some groups saw dramatic jumps in their membership this spring. The Wilderness Society, for example, gained 27,794 members in May, according to Ben Beach, a Washington, D.C., spokesman. Members create clout in Washington because they write letters to their congressmen, Lastelic said.

"In the month of May we got the largest increase in membership that we've ever had," Beach said. "Who knows why we had that jump. We didn't go out and say to people, "Because of what happened in Prince William Sound, you should join The Wilderness Society.' But the logical guess is that the Exxon Valdez accounted for a good bit of that."

Other groups also avoided membership drives linked to the oil spill. That's at least in part because their ranks already are growing at a healthy rate without such drives. The Wilderness Society tripled its ranks during the past three years.

The 575,000member Audubon Society actually has tried to limit its growth in recent years, according to SanGeorge. The society produces a thick, glossy magazine and maintains a large network of local clubs, both of which are expensive, he said.

The largest environmental group in the country, with 5.2 million members, is the National Wildlife Federation. It was also one of the first to get its fundraising letter out to members this spring.

On April 13, the federation's president, Jay Hair, signed a letter asking members for $10, $25 or $50 to combat the oil industry in Congress. The federation's letter said it wants to make spill fines higher and to close the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

In the letter that raised $1 million, Hair said 4,000 people and their families would lose their livelihoods as a result of the spill, many because they would miss payments on their fishing boats and have them taken away.

As it turned out, hundreds of fishermen rented their boats to Exxon's cleanup contractor for as much as $3,500 per day. Oil cleanup jobs and direct compensation payments from Exxon helped others, although stories of people who got neither have been reported.

"I wonder if an oil lobbyist went to Prince William Sound and watched a sea otter die of hypothermia would that person seek other employment?" Hair said.

Several other groups opted for a similar approach dramatic, pageslong letters from VIPs in the organization. Most letters linked the spill with the arctic wildlife refuge. Work on legislation to open the refuge to oil drilling stopped after the spill. But environmental groups, in their fundraising letters, asked members not to drop their vigilance, because the issue will be back as soon as Congress has finished toughening transport and spill laws.

"You may have heard that S406, the Senate bill that would open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to oil development, has been shelved," Audubon president Peter Berle said in his letter. "The truth is, it has only temporarily been put on hold."

Still, some groups acknowledged that Bligh Reef probably grounded more than just a tanker on March 24.

"Maybe now we will succeed in our effort to prevent the proposed exploitation that threatens the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge," an April 6 letter from the Defenders of Wildlife said.

The Wilderness Society sent out a letter in July calling Exxon's cleanup effort a hoax. The cleanup crews are removing only the worst of the oil, the size of the crews has not grown during the summer and indications are that they won't be back next summer, the letter said.

Exxon and state and federal agencies have agreed that the first goal is to remove "gross contamination" of the beaches. The number of people on the cleanup grew steadily through the end of July and is just beginning to fall off. Exxon has said it will shut down cleanup Sept. 15, but is making no guarantees it will be back cleaning next year.

The Wilderness Society letter, signed by its president, asked readers for double their normal contribution. The organization's goal is $150,000, according to its Washington, D.C., fundraising office.

Greenpeace, the 1.5millionmember group well known for its publicity oriented protests, dedicated the back page of its bimonthly magazine to an appeal for money. Over a photograph of Capt. Joseph Hazelwood, the headline said: "It wasn't his driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours." The appeal focused on the need for tighter auto efficiency standards and funding of renewable energy research.

The Sierra Club placed a fullpage appeal for money in the April 16 New York Times, featuring a photo of a dead duck on a shoreline and the headline "Without your help, the call of the wild will remain silent."

The Sierra Club collected $85,000 from the effort and passed it to a special account created by the Alaska Conservation Foundation.

The Anchoragebased foundation, which was formed in 1980 by prominent Alaska environmentalists and has distributed $1.7 million in grants, started the separate fund to help cleanup and watchdog efforts.

The fund has benefited from some of the most creative collection schemes to date. A Los Angeles organization called American Green Cross is coordinating a Sept. 16 benefit rock concert in Orlando, Fla., for the special Alaska account. Several nationally known rock stars may play, although organizer Pat McCune said commitments are still tentative.

The concert, the Green Cross' first such undertaking, would raise about $25,000, but McCune expects much more from a tollfree number to be broadcast on cable TV coverage of the show.

A Hanover, Mass., company donated the cost of creating "800" and "900" numbers for people to call to make donations to the fund, according to Sher Canady, administrative assistant with the foundation. The 900 number, available only in the Lower 48, charges the caller $10 for every connection and the money is sent to the fund. On the 800 number, the caller can punch in a credit card number and the amount of the donation.

The foundation had collected about $200,000 as of last week 80 percent of it from Outside. The fund board, which has parceled out more than $140,000 already this summer, includes representatives of environmental, tourism and education groups.

The Trustees for Alaska, another Alaskabased group that specializes in lawsuits, also conducted a national mailing after the oil spill. Enclosed was an endorsement letter from David Brower, the former director of the Sierra Club who left to found Friends of the Earth.

Local Greenpeace worker Hild Sandsted said she was uncomfortable with the fundraising letters that highlight the oil spill (her organization hasn't mailed any so far). She said she didn't believe it was right to seek to benefit from the disaster.

Other groups have not been so hesitant. SanGeorge, with Audubon, said groups shouldn't feel guilty about raising the money. He compared the surge of public support after the oil spill to the early 1980s "when the antienvironment nuts took over the federal government" under President Reagan. Membership in and donations to environmental groups grew rapidly in response, he said.

"The federal government became a wrecking crew. People were responding to the feeling that the federal government had gone out of control," SanGeorge said.

People began giving more to environmental groups after the spill because they feel a need for vigilance, he said. "There was massive public outrage," SanGeorge said.

The Audubon Society needs money to make its voice heard, he said. "It's gotten pretty nasty out there, and by that I'm talking about the political situation."

Besides, environmentalists say, most of the money will be used on Alaska oil issues, whether that means fighting for tougher oil spill fines and safety regulations or stopping drilling in the arctic refuge.

The National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit against Exxon last week. Also, the federation will expand its Alaska office by hiring several staff, according to Alaska representative Rothe. Douglas Miller, the federation's senior vice president for research and education, has quit his job in Washington, D.C., to run it.

The Sierra Club, whose Alaska membership is the secondhighest per capita among the 50 states, gave its $85,000 from The New York Times ad to the Alaska Conservation Foundation's Prince William Sound fund. In addition, the group is keeping close track of developments in the oil spill. For example, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund wrote a letter recently opposing the use of Exxon's Corexit as an oil cleaner, according to Jack Hession, the club's Alaska representative.

The defense fund and Trustees for Alaska lead the lawsuit against Exxon filed by nine environmental groups Wednesday. Eric Jorgensen, an attorney with the defense fund in Juneau, said the suit would try get a court order telling Exxon how to conduct its cleanup. Jorgensen said the groups are considering another lawsuit seeking a fine for Exxon. The defense fund has raised about $120,000 from an appeal in May to past donors, according to Joanne Kliejunas, director of development in San Francisco.

The 117,000member Natural Resources Defense Council hopes to raise about $200,000 for its Alaska program, according to Jack Murray, director of development in New York. Besides participating in the spill lawsuit, the council plans to lobby for protection of the arctic refuge. It also is completing a spillresponse and prevention study of major U.S. ports, Murray said.

Audubon president Berle, who was in Alaska last week to survey the spill, said the next issue of the society's magazine is entirely dedicated to the disaster. The $900,000 raised by his letter will support the lawsuit, other activities in the Alaska office, lobbying on oilspill liability bills and efforts to stop drilling in the Arctic refuge, Berle said. Protecting the coastal plain of the arctic refuge, which Berle hiked across last summer, is one of the society's five national priorities.

Allen Smith, Alaska regional director for The Wilderness Society, said his group is keeping pressure on Exxon and government agencies to clean up the shores. Representatives are visiting the spill and talking with agencies, and the society may join the lawsuit.

The oil spill also has dominated the activities of Alaskabased environmental groups. The Alaska Center for the Environment joined the lawsuit. Earlier this summer, it got a contract from the state Department of Environmental Conservation to coordinate spill volunteers. Most other groups have been busy talking with government agencies and spreading information and arguments.

Even the answering machine at the Northern Alaska Environmental Center in Fairbanks, another plaintiff in the suit, has a message: "If Exxon says it's unsafe to work in Prince William Sound after Sept. 15, how come they get to drill yearround in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas where they claim they can clean up an oil spill? Think about it."

MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS

Profiles of membership, budgets and funds raised for Alaska work

Group Members Annual Budget Alaska funds

National Audubon Society 575,000 $32 million $900,000

Natural Resource Defense Council 117,000 $12 million $200,000 goal

National Wildlife Federation 5.2 million $69.6 million $1 million

Sierra Club 498,000 $28 million $85,000

Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund 110,000 $6.5 million $120,000

Wilderness Society 317,400 $13 million $150,000 goal

Defenders of Wildlife 80,000 $4 million $200,000

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