Betrayed by an oil giant

[hedgetrimmer]

~SNIP~

15 years after the Exxon Valdez disaster, the coast remains polluted and compensation is unpaid
By Andrew Gumbel
25 March 2004


Shortly after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, a senior Exxon representative visited the devastated fishing communities of southern Alaska and promised them the company would do everything in its power to restore their livelihoods and "make them whole".

"We're Exxon, we do it right," is the slogan that has stuck in the mind of Dune Lankard, a local Native American activist.

But 15 years to the day since a drunken sea captain drove his oil tanker on to a reef in Prince William Sound, covering one of the world's most pristine stretches of coastline with at least 11 million gallons of crude, the feeling among fishermen, environmentalist activists and the lawyers representing them is that Exxon has not only broken its original promise but has gone out of its way to betray them in pursuit of broader corporate interests.

Exxon, whose net income for 2003 is expected to top $21bn, has not paid out a penny of the $5bn (£2.7bn) in damages originally awarded to the fishing communities a decade ago, launching appeal after appeal and deluging the courts with paperwork. Despite intensive clean-up efforts, Prince William Sound remains polluted by large oil deposits that have destroyed its herring fisheries and wreaked havoc with the once-flourishing wildlife

... more ...

link: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=504799
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Forget about drilling in Alaska's wilderness, just go suck up some of that oil off the coast.

[aquart]

1. Filthy, heartless, greedy pigs.

What else can you say about them?

[TahitiNut]

2. And it's over 15 years since I bought a drop of Exxon gasoline.

I'll run the tank dry before I buy any more.

[T_i_B]

3. Front page of UK Indpendent

:kick:

[lostnfound]

4. Yet they have time to go after Greenpeace activists..

It's a good time to write letters to the editor to get some attention on them. I think that net income is the largest ever by any corporation in the world. Yet they won't pay their court-ordered fines after 15 years and they try to stifle peaceful protesters.