drunken sailor

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Hazelwood's Approach

From the Alaskan Abroad.

1978 Jokebooks

If pain and sorrow have a price tag these books are worth billions. They are the Oil Spill Contingency Plan for Prince William Sound published and copyrighted by the Alyeska Pipeline Company in August of 1978.

Incredible find at the Second Hand store. I bet this information isn't on a computer or micro fiche some where. If anything we can learn from the past.

What knot to do.

18 Years Later

I couldn't let today go by without posting something about the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill disaster.

New York Times

April 1, 1989

Quotation of the Day

LEAD: ''I'm a slick-licker. I'm going to make as much money as I can cleaning up this mess for Exxon. And then I'm going to leave Alaska for good and go someplace where there ain't so much snow and the water's cleaner.'' - Russell Roetman, a Valdez fisherman.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DEEDA133FF932A35757C0A96F948260

18 Years Later - Russell Roetman still lives in Valdez although no longer a fisherman. He works as Head Mechanic for the city's maintenance shop.

Atom.Smasher

This is a fake sign. I made it here at ATOM.SMASHER.ORG . Exxon does not operate a gas station in Valdez. Our local gas prices at Tesoro, the only game in town, are 270.9, 276.9 and 282.9 respectively.

I'd been living in Valdez about 3 years when in March '89 the Exxon Valdez hit the chartered Bligh Reef. That summer was like taking a trip around the world and never leaving Valdez. Everybody came here.

That was when I came up with the imaginary boat, the FishTaxi. Anybody with any kind of boat made a ton of money in the effort of cleaning up the sulphur rich thick Alaska crude. I was in Lower Herring Bay when it filled up with oil. We helplessly watched as the tide came in. The next day it looked to me like what the morning after being nuked would look like. No life.

I was surprised when I saw Exxon gas stations all over on my trip outside. I thought everybody cut up their Exxon gas cards. I have not written here about the spill before but I still think about it. Especially when I see Exxon gas stations.