Editor's note: 老澳门六合彩开奖记录资料 Climate Action Network (CAN) member Ana Santos provides Chief readers with her observations during an expedition to study the impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on the Prince William Sound, 21 years after its devastation.
Part two of the Prince William Sound summer 2010 survey is out of Chenega, a small village with a big history on the southeastern shores of Evans Island.
In his book about the people of Chenega, We are the land. We are the sea. (2007), John Smelcer tells us about the villagers' dependence on their surroundings.
Their subsistence practices were reliably maintained by the richness that Prince William Sound historically offered them herring, seals, otters, sea lions, clams, porpoise, deer, bear and ducks. But the spill changed this, and many have now moved away from the little village of Chenega.
Don Kompkoff is one of them. According to him, the Exxon Valdez oil spill ruined his retirement plans. His idea was to retire in Prince William Sound and live off the land. He knew "where to hunt for deer or bear, where to find clams or cockles, but they are not there anymore. There's still oil on the beaches. It's still there."
Forced to sell his fishing and boat permits, he found no reason to stay.
Kathryn Kompkoff was in high school when the Exxon Valdez ran aground. She recounts how subsistence practices are disappearing since the spill as subsistence foods are now scarce.
Those who, unlike Don, decide to stay necessarily face the high prices of foods ordered from the outside or sharp fuel costs as they ride their boats to other communities to get the groceries themselves.
As usual, however, I find another side to the story. Gary Proctor, owner and operator of a fishing lodge in the area, tells me that "at least from his white man's perspective, there is nothing wrong with the resources here. There is plenty to live off the area."
Chenega was home to 85 to 90 people when Gary arrived in 1997. Today, there are 35 people left in the village. In his opinion, the reason for the population decline has nothing to do with the spill. "The elders are passing away and the youngsters want to get out and explore the big wide world, that's all," he said.
But Gary's business and livelihood are based mostly on salmon and halibut, while the native way of life is linked to species which, in some cases, remain severely impacted to this day.
Why? Well, to find out the answer we have to look no further than the shoreline. Gary himself is quick to point out that some of the coast stretching away from Chenega still holds a good amount of oil and you don't need to dig very deep to find it.
The species that the people of Chenega depend on have been and are heavily impacted by this lingering oil.
According to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, at the time of the spill, nobody anticipated the oil would persist for so long, neither did they think it would be as toxic as it still is today. Ten years after the disaster, the beaches appeared clean on the surface.
There were several wildlife species that were not recovering, but it was not expected that lingering oil would be the reason for this. Instead, it was thought that the oil would decrease over time and that it would soon enough lose its toxicity due to weathering.
But here is what we overlooked - following the spill, oil often lay in some of the bays for days to weeks, going up and down with the tides twice a day.
The cleanup efforts and natural processes cleaned the oil out of the top two to three inches, where oxygen and water can flow, but did little to affect the large patches of oil farther below the surface.
Hence, in places, this intertidal zone, the area where mussels, clams, and other marine life are found in greatest abundance, contains a vast amount of oil that can still be easily found today, over 20 years later.
Sea otters and harlequin ducks, among many other species, feed in the intertidal, so they are highly exposed to the toxic dangers of oil.
The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council reveals that all this remaining subsurface oil can be fingerprinted back to the source oil of the Exxon Valdez. Exxon Valdez oil is decreasing at a rate of zero to four per cent per year, with only a five per cent chance that the rate is as high as four per cent.
At this speed, the remaining oil will take decades and possibly centuries to disappear entirely. Unfortunately, it already seems that the village of Chenega cannot wait that long.
