Environment: Joe's Bad Tripon the Exxon Valdez

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It was too late. "We are in trouble," Cousins told Hazelwood over the phone. Moments earlier, the captain had felt the first shock of his ship -- and his career -- hitting the rocks. Hazelwood bolted onto the bridge, slowed the engines and took other steps to keep the ship from sliding off the reef.

Coast Guard investigator Mark Delozier, who climbed aboard the Valdez more than three hours after the accident, says he found a "very intense" smell of alcohol on Hazelwood's breath. But Delozier also says Hazelwood did not appear intoxicated or impaired. "He was very professional," he says. "He didn't appear to be at a loss of any capabilities." No one who was aboard the Valdez has contradicted Delozier.

Beyond the issue of Hazelwood's sobriety, there is the question of whether Cousins was qualified to be in charge of the ship while it was in Prince William Sound. The answer hinges on "pilotage endorsement," a certification from the Coast Guard that entitles a licensed officer to steer ships in certain federal waters. In 1977, when the Alaska pipeline opened, such approval was required all the way down to the entrance of Prince William Sound -- past Rocky Point, Busby Island and Bligh Reef. But since then, the rules have been liberalized several times.

In 1986 the Coast Guard, anticipating that Congress would soon ease the rules, issued a directive stating that, provided visibility exceeded two miles, pilotage endorsements were no longer mandatory after a vessel passed a certain point in the sound. But the point at which the new rule applied is unclear. The Coast Guard argues that only certified officers could command ships down to the Bligh Reef area, where the Valdez ran aground. Hazelwood's attorneys insist that the point of freedom was the established pilot station at Rocky Point, some seven miles north of the reef. Hazelwood's position appears to be bolstered by a 1986 memo from Alaska Maritime Agencies, a Valdez shipping agency that serviced Exxon. That memo states that the Coast Guard had waived pilotage requirements from the pilot station to the sound's entrance.

The Coast Guard's commandant, Admiral Paul Yost Jr., has done little to clarify the pilotage issue. In June he declared in a speech at a federal maritime academy that Cousins was "fully qualified" to pilot the vessel. But in an interview with TIME, Yost hedged his statement by saying Cousins "was competent, but he was not technically qualified."

Another question is why the Coast Guard did not monitor the Valdez after it veered outside normal shipping lanes. Following the last radio transmission by Hazelwood, the Coast Guard did not communicate with the Valdez until after the grounding, nearly an hour later. Nor did it track the tanker by radar. The Coast Guard has cited possible weather conditions, poor equipment and the change-of-shift preoccupations of a watchman to explain why the ship was not picked up on radar. More important, although seamen insist they rely heavily on Coast Guard monitoring in the entire sound, Coast Guard officials maintain they are not technically required to track ships as far as Bligh Reef.