Today marks 25 years from a day that changed the lives of many people in Alaska and heavily impacted the oil industry.
The Exxon Valdez oil tanker hit a reef and spewed 10.8 million gallons of toxic crude oil into Prince William Sound.
ABC’s Alex Stone recaps.
Stone: “Twenty five years ago, fisherman who made their living in Alaska’s Prince William Sound had no idea the impact of 11 million gallons of crude oil would have on the environment. ‘Scares us to death, totally to death. Today the effects of the Exxon Valdez disaster are sill being felt, oil remains in some areas. Kevin Hanna is a professor at the University of British Columbia: ‘The oil has not degraded as quickly or thoroughly as it was anticipated when the spill originally happened.”
Juneau Representative Cathy Munoz has a measure being put in place that looks to bolster the spill response fund.
She says the measure came out of the work of the House Budget Committee on the Department of Environmental Conservation and specifically the division responsible for oil spill response.
Rep. Munoz: “There’s two accounts, there’s a response account which is put in place by statute to respond to major oils spills currently it has a balance of $49 million. And there’s a prevention account which pays for the prevention activities, the oil spill plans, the education, all of the work of the division. Because of the decline in oil production the money going toward the prevention activities is expected to be in deficit mode within one year. By FY16 that division will face a $6.5 million deficit. So this bill attempts to solve that by adding a three cent surcharge to the crude per barrel charge, currently it is at four cents, to help fund those activities.”
House Bill 325 is pending action by the House Resources Committee.