Environment: The Stain Will Remain On Alaska

Men toting dark green duffel bags were filing off ships in Valdez, Alaska, last week and heading toward the phones, Mike's Pizza Palace or the bar at the Pipeline Club. Final paychecks were burning holes in thousands of pockets. The work force that spearheaded Exxon's $1 billion effort to erase the largest oil spill in U.S. history was calling it quits before the winter-storm season descends on Prince William Sound. Six months after the Exxon Valdez ran hard aground on Bligh Reef and dumped 260,000 bbl. of crude oil into one of the most scenic bodies of water in the world, the ship's owner was declaring the great cleanup of 1989 complete.

But not so fast, Exxon. While workers were filling planes and buses on the way home, Alaska Governor Steve Cowper and state environment commissioner Dennis Kelso called a press conference in Valdez. They named the "dirty dozen" beaches that they charge are still fouled with oil and announced their own modest $21 million winter cleanup program, at least part of which will be paid for by Exxon. The message to the company was clear: You didn't get the job done, and you're leaving too early.

Whether or not that is fair, everyone agrees that the damage from the catastrophic spill could not be undone so quickly. Much of the oil has been removed and much has been diluted beyond detection, but quite a bit remains. Though the area's wildlife populations will survive, their ranks have been reduced and are still suffering. No one knows how many years or decades it will take the land and water -- and the psyches of Alaskans -- to recover fully. The only certainty is that Exxon still faces a long siege of recriminations, lawsuits and expense as the company tries to atone for one of the most colossal corporate blunders of all time.

The most indelible image of the spill is that of dead and dying creatures. The body count so far includes 34,000 birds (among them were 139 bald eagles) and 984 sea otters. (One man also died, crushed in the dumbwaiter of a ship in the Exxon cleanup fleet.) Scientists believe the actual wildlife toll is much higher. Recovered bird carcasses, for example, may represent only 5% to 10% of the victims. Many dead otters disappeared under the water, and searches for other animals were limited to the high-water marks on some of the affected islands to respect the wishes of the Native Americans who own the land. The good news is that no species appears threatened with extinction because of the spill. Indeed, the area's otters had multiplied so rapidly in recent years that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was thinking about thinning them out before the spill did it, however horribly.

The commercial salmon catch in the sound this season was only 61% of the average for the past two years. Says Raymond Cesarini, president of Sea Hawk Seafoods in Valdez: "It's been a hideous year for us." Cesarini, who filed a lawsuit against Exxon, says he had expected to process 14 million lbs. of fish but got only 3 million. On a positive note, the three large commercial fish hatcheries in the spill's path were protected, and millions of salmon returned in late summer to spawn in glacial streams along the sound.