01.00.00

Beauty shots of Alaska; beaver in stream, snowy mountain, icy river, men doing tasks on docks 

02.04

02.25 (v/o)

Family at dinner table, singing religious song

The Kopchek family live in Cordova, on the shores of Prince William Sound, Alaska. It's one of the most beautiful places on Earth. They're fishermen who live a hard but idyllic life.

02.39

Mrs. Kopchek speaks

Mrs. Kopchek: This is a unique place on Earth. There are plenty of places that have roads and McDonald's and what have you, but we live in a town where we know everybody else. There's no lock on our door. My car key is in the ignition, truck key is in the ignition. There's no road in or out, so it's just our community.

And it's a very simple equation, you know; the world is hungry and we feed them good food, the best (laughs). And that's really precious, too.

03.12

03.25

Fishermen on dock and on boat

Footage of tanker on water

But the lives of these people and their community- their businesses, and those simple equations- have been forever changed, when shortly after midnight on March 24 1989, the oil tanker Exxon-Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef, in Prince William Sound.

03.29

Oil washing up on shore

American reporter v/o

11,300,000 gallons of crude oil have spilled into the calm waters of Prince William sound off of Alaska. An oil tanker trying to dodge huge chunks of ice... (fades out)

03.39

The Kopcheks speak

Mrs. Kopchek: It was a gorgeous day. Couldn't be happening. And yet all over town, when you went out, people said, "Did you hear? Did you hear? It's on CNN! You can check, I mean it's for real!" And you could look over perfectly blue skies and know that just on the other side of the mountain something was happening.

Mr. Kopchek: There was, I mean, there were slicks absolutely everywhere. It was- the whole western end of the sound was inundated with giant ribbons of oil. I mean just huge- beaches and bays were just full of it. It was, I- More than you can imagine.

Mrs. Kopchek: We were concerned, so that with a friend we chartered a plane to go look over the sound and... we were in tears by the end. That we'd heard the Exxon representative saying they had 20 skimmers out there cleaning up oil, but we were out there. There were three of them. And that was it. And... we knew they were lying.

04.36

Exxon representative at press conference

Exxon Rep: On behalf of Exxon, wish- I wish to express our regrets for the anxiety and inconvenience caused by the grounding of Exxon-Valdez. I want to assure everyone that Exxon is mobilising all available resources to mitigate the impact from this incident-

04.52

Mr. Kopchek speaks

What was happening, actually, is one of the greatest pieces of eyewash that probably this country's ever seen. You had these glib spoken, tall, good-looking Texas and Louisiana executives from Exxon shipping and Exxon oil, and these people were telling you that everything was in order, because they- that's their job.

05.11

Exxon executive with Texas accent speaks at press conference

Shot of Kopchek in audience, shouting

Exxon Exec: You have some good luck, baby, and you don't realise it. You don't have a glacier, baby- you have Exxon. And we do business straight.

05.28

05.39

Aerial of Prince William Sound

More shots of Prince William residents in press conference

But this was not the case. While the oil spill was four years ago, Prince William Sound and its community have been dealing with the environmental and economic consequences ever since, locked in a bitter battle with the world's largest corporation, and the way they do business.

05.42

Kopchek on boat

K: Hi Rob, how you doing?

R: Oh, just feeding them away.

K: This the end?

R: No, what do you think- last hope there?

K: For me- I'm gonna go make a round tour and be home for kickoff. (both laugh)

It's the last day of the 93 fishing season. It's been another disastrous year for Cordova's fleet. But RJ heads out into the gathering gloom of the sound one more time to do what he loves best- to cast his nets to the sea. Each year men die out here, in an occupation that's regarded as the most dangerous in all of America.

06.30

Reporter speaks from boat

These men have been bringing their boats into the sound for generations, chasing the king of fish- salmon. And often quite on their own out here, they've had to brave 100 mile an hour gales, 20 foot swells, and all that's been for naught, because now they face an enemy against which they're totally helpless, and that's oil. And many of the men out here since the spill of March 89 have found themselves going slowly bankrupt.

06.52

Kopcheck speaks

K: It's been a slow death rather than a fast death. We're still able to catch some fish, but we haven't had the kind of numbers of fish, and the kind of price that it takes to stay alive. So a lot of people are losing their boats and have their homes in jeopardy now.

R: Are many of the people now, who fish this sound, has over the years, what's happened has finally sunk in? Are many of them bitter or angry about what's happened?

K: Oh there's a- there's a tremendous amount of bitterness. It's like the stress shock that a lot of combat troops felt. It's just this slow attrition of people's emotions. It didn't happen all at once, but we're all wound up tight- that's real hard.  It's real hard. 

07.50

Man locking up boat

Phil Leon is on the brink of financial ruin. His boat is designed to solely work the sound, but the fish that were there are gone.

07. 52

Phil speaks

Phil: It has put everybody basically out of business. I mean, everybody's scrambling to try to hang on to what they have. If they had a little bit of cash in the past, that's been all used up. The banks are looking hard at foreclosing on, I would think, over half the fleet is in that trouble.

R: Now, you're a sailor, which means that basically all you do fish is the sound. So how has it affected you?

Phil: Well, I can't make a living. I mean, I've got three small children, I'm, you know, I'm trying to figure out how I can put food on the table. I mean, I'm scrambling just the same as everybody else, in trying to get refinanced and talking to bankers, and talking to lawyers, and tax accountants, and, you know it's very, very stressful. You live this day after day after day. There's no end to it.

08.46

Shot of boats in harbour

Bloody fish dying

A number of boats here have already been seized. In 1989, a fishing permit was worth $300,000- you could get one now for $85,000. In 1988, Cordova was the nation's eight largest seaport- it's now slumped to 28^th, and as far as this community's concerned, it's all due to the spill.

Since 1990 in dollar terms, the catch has dropped from 46 million to just five. Last year, only 30% of the salmon returned. This year, only 20% came home, and the herring season was cancelled. The few fish found were diseased.

09.31

Ricki Ott speaks

Ott: Fishermen had never seen fish acting like this before, and still we're having problems with birds and we're having problems with otters, so if you look at all these different pieces, suddenly the puzzle starts coming into focus, and it looks like we're having long term damage from the oil spill four years ago.

09.46

Archival footage of the pipeline, the pipeline being built

Stretching some 800 miles across the wintry wilderness of Alaska from the oil fields on its northern shore is the Alyeska Oil Pipeline. It's owned by the giants of the oil industry, and was built despite trenchant environmental opposition. Approval passed the US Senate by just one vote. When the billion dollar project, its terminal, and its tanker traffic through Prince William Sound was first proposed 20 years ago, it was the community of Cordova that led the opposition.

10.20

Tini Anderson speaks

TA: Not fought- Stopped the oil pipeline but fought to get the highest standards possible. In place for the ships, the way pipeline was constructed, how they were gonna transport it out, everything. It's in the record.

10.40

Tini Anderson at home

Tini Anderson has an electronics business in Cordova. He's a Native American whose family have lived on the sound for generations. But he's not the only one who's angry, who remembers the promises.

10.50

Ricki Ott speaks again

Ott: Well, I would say straight off that you have to really question everything they say, take nothing that they will- Exxon, or Alyeska, the consortium of companies that operate the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, say for truth.

Ricki Ott is a commercial fisher, who also has a Ph.D in marine pollution.

Ott: We were promised that there would be safe transportation of oil. We were promised that the oil companies would have the state of the art cleanup equipment. We were promised that there would be trained people, and everything would be operated as safely as possible, one of the safest operations in the world.

11.33

Shot of oil plant, large power generator

Oil is the power that runs Alaska. There are no state taxes, courtesy of its oil bonanza. The Alyeska consortium, and its pipeline, deliver 25% of the US domestic oil production to its terminal at the port of Valdez on Prince William Sound. The whole operation has been the source of numerous environmental breaches and complaints. But the biggest scandal is that whatever regulations were waived or breached, whatever guarantees they gave, Exxon and its Alyeska partners knew that as the Exxon-Valdez left this terminal for the last time, they could not contain its toxic cargo.

12.17

Exxon press conference

Shots of said paperwork

Exxon representative: We have had prior discussions with the state of Alaska...

In meetings conducted eight months before the spill, Exxon and its fellow pipeline owners discussed what they could do about a spill in Prince William Sound. Documents obtained by the ABC reveal that they knew that they did not have the capacity to deal with a spill, and decided not to spend the money to acquire that capacity, despite their legal responsibilities, and they decided to keep that situation secret. They said "Further efforts in the Prince William Sound would be limited to the use of dispersants, and any additional effort would be the responsibility of the spiller."

12:57

Outside an Exxon corporation building

OH speaks

We informed Exxon of these areas of interest before we interviewed Otto Harrison, Exxon's representative with Alyeska, who was also general manager of the spill cleanup.

Harrison: David, I only arrived there on the twelfth day- actually I was in Australia when that occurred, and there's a lot of information about what happened in those first few days, and I'm just not the right guy to comment on that. What I do know is that we had government approved contingency plans, contingency plans under which Alyeska and all the shipping operations were involved, were proved by the government at that point.

13:36

Reporter talks to camera

But it was the way Exxon and its oil partners operated that became the subject of an investigation by a committee of the US House of Representatives. That committee found that the Alyeska group, including Exxon, had breached the undertakings they had given under the oil spill contingency plan, and that they'd broken the law by filing misleading information.

14.00

Chuck Hammill walking down dock

Chuck Hammill knows only too well how the oil industry operates. An oil executive himself, he blew the whistle on many environmental breaches committed by Alyeska and its oil company owners.

14.17

Chuck Hammill speaks

Hammill: At the time of this meeting, eight months before the spill, Alyeska owners- Exxon, ARCO, BP alone, just those three owners- were earning in excess of 8.9 million dollars a day... after taxes, from their activity in the North Slope and the oil moving in the pipeline to Valdez. Now that's a lot of money, and you're talking about greed here. They didn't want to put a nickel back into their promises. They were just milking this thing for all they could get.

14.46

Otter covered in oil, shots of the damage and the cleanup effort- hosing the oil off etc

The failure of their initial response meant that Exxon was now facing a huge task: chasing the slippery ribbons of oil miles across the sound. But they did try, even if the methods were primitive and conceived in desperation. Individual rocks were cleaned by hand. The bay was hosed down with boiling water, killing what remained of the delicate ecosystem. In their helplessness, Exxon threw vast amounts of money at the problem. At one stage they had 500 boats and 11,000 workers chasing the ooze.

15.45

Kopchek speaks

Kopchek: One has to admit that after the damage was done, that Exxon's contractors did a, did a commendable job in trying to diligently clean up the oil that was available on the surface. But for the first two months, chaos reigned, and that's when the damage was done.

16.07

Reporter speaks

While their financial survival is a very important part of the story for the people of Cordova, what they're really fighting for is their life. While the Exxon-Valdez spill has become the most studied accident of all, the locals have no doubt it's the oil that's spoiled their world.

16.23

Phil speaks

Phil: I mean, I've been fishing out here for over 30 years, and I think I know- I just got a feeling that things are not the way they used to be. There's no plankton in the water, there's no jellyfish, I don't think there's a food source for the fry that are being released from the hatcheries, or the fry that are coming out of the wild streams. I think they're dying before they hit the ocean, and that's why we're having these run failures.

16.45

Woman at desk

Woman: Fishermen's claims. Good morning, how are you?

The world that's now invaded this place is one of lawyers and legal procedures. The people of the sound, in pursuing damages claims, find themselves mired in a sea of paper, as Exxon's hundreds of lawyers seek the most minute financial records. 

17.06

Tini Anderson speaks

TA: The last four years, we're just- weekly and monthly, we've been having to come up with more records. And they've been putting people through depositions. So, you're not allowed to forget it. They're not allowing us to forget it. They're just constantly wiping your face and you- "you mess with us, and I'll teach you a lesson." And that's exactly what they're doing. 

17.30

Harrison speaks

Harrison: They elected to sue us. We didn't sue them- they sued us. They're the ones who moved the whole process into litigation. It was a decision on the part of the fishermen to move it over into court cases.

17.45

Shots of boats on harbour

Fisherman in his boat

A little over a month ago, the fishermen of the sound became so frustrated that they stopped tanker traffic with a blockade.

Fisherman: Yeah, roger, we know we're gonna get asked to move- that's a given. Yeah, that's right- well, we've come this far, here, guys, you know, I vote that we stay here till we bring this thing to a head. They're gonna have to send a tanker in or out sooner or later here.

18.10

Phil speaks

Phil: We were all gonna make a statement- that's all it was. We want to say, "Hey, we're dying." We want to get Exxon to the table to talk to us.

18.22

Shot of dock

Otter playing in the water

But the only talking that's being done is by lawyers, and the court case is not scheduled until April 1994. For some, that will be too late.

18.41

19.13

Kopchek speaks

Shot of glacier, wolf running, sunset, boat

Kopchek: It's like a, a farmer's field that's been poisoned, after years of making it work. That's the hardest part. Are you gonna catch a fish again? Is there gonna be a chance, erm, I- that's the hardest part.