Denny Takahashi Kelso

Staff Writer

Lessons Learned From The Valdez Disaster

The Exxon Valdez dumped 11 million gallons of oil into the sea.

Sometime after midnight on March 24, 1989, I was awakened by a phone call. Within hours I was climbing a rope ladder to the deck of the Exxon Valdez. The grounded tanker would drain 11 million gallons of crude into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The oil would eventually reach parts of some 1,200 miles of coastline—enough to span California’s coast and Oregon’s, too. Twenty-one years later, oil remains in the beaches of Prince William Sound.

Continue Reading →