Twenty years after the tragedy: monitoring of Prince William Sound continues.

• Author: Bohi, Heidi
• Position: OIL & GAS

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Twenty years after the Exxon Valdez oil tanker dumped 11 million gallons of crude into Prince William Sound, scientists, activists and industry representatives will authoritatively tell whoever is sitting on the other side of the desk what the state of recovery is and what additional effects on the environment Alaskans can anticipate hearing about in the next 20 years. Although on all sides of the discussion their answers are so well-crafted as to seemingly be beyond refute, the reality is that when discussing what the remaining levels of pollution and biological effects are, aside from agreeing that it will never be 1989 in the Sound again, it all comes down to two words: it depends.

IT DEPENDS

"Recovery, therefore, is in the eyes, the context and the special interests of the beholder," says Gary Shigenaka, a marine biologist with the Emergency Response Division (ERD) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

It depends on the resource: is the point of discussion the effects of the spill on killer whales, or plants and animals along the shoreline? According to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council (EVOSTC), a State and federal group formed to oversee restoration of the Sound's ecosystem through the use of the $900 million civil settlement, it is not clear what role oil plays in the inability of some populations to bounce back. Ecosystems do rebound in the long-term, but each species comes back at a different rate depending on the ability to reproduce and migrate.

By official counts, more than 500 miles of remote wilderness shoreline was oiled and the spill killed 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles and 22 killer whales. Numerous other species including salmon, clams and herring also suffered casualties and are continuing to be monitored and studied. In its 2006 Injured Resources and Services Update, EVOSTC recognizes 31 resources or species injured by the spill that are divided into five categories: "not recovering," such as pacific herring and pigeon guillemot; "recovering" such as Barrow's golden eye, black oystercatchers, clams, harlequin ducks, intertidal communities, killer whales (AB pod), mussels, sea otters, sediments and wilderness areas; "recovered," which are considered to have met recovery objectives including the bald eagle, common murre, common loon, dolly varden, harbor seal, river otter, pink and sockeye salmon, mussels and archaeological resources; and "recovery unknown," where there is limited data on life history and the extent of the injury or the current research is inconclusive or incomplete, including rockfish, subtidal communities, cutthroat trout, Kittlitz's murrelets and murrelets. The fifth category, called "human uses," covers the lost opportunity from human services that depend on...