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Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

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Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
EXXON VALDEZ OIL SPILL

Relevant Facts

On March 24, 1989, there were several ruptured tanks of the Exxon Valdez that allowed approximately 11 million gallons of crude oil to pour into the Gulf of Alaska. As soon as this happened, it started what would be described as one of the most dreadful environmental disasters in the history of oil drilling. A few months after, there were enormous surges of wind and waves that caused the oil to spread further out into the shorelines of Prince William Sound Region .

The cleaning process was said to have been very difficult in many ways. The workers that were in charge of the clean up ran across several problems that ranged from the frequent changes of the tide; covering the rocks with more oil to the long term damages of the fish marine and wildlife.

Ethical Issue / Conflict

In this case you will find that there was a great deal of ethical concerns that ranged from the companies late response to the oil spill to the way that they choose to deal with the compensation that was agreed upon between the company and the victims involved .
Even though Exxon argued that they handled the matter responsibly by acting in a timely manner and paying each claim in the amount of nearly $3 billion dollars, there were a whole host of scientist and environmentalist who believed that the company should have paid even more.

Affected Parties

There were a great deal of human communities as well as wildlife and marine that were affected by this oil spill. Several years after the oil disaster there have been reports that most of these communities have not fully recovered from the damage. With this kind of disaster, affecting such a mass environment , the economy and other industry related jobs collapsed into a failing ecological ruin. Consequences and Reforms

Shortly after the oil spill, Congress passed the Oil Pollution



References: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council . Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Restoration Plan . Anchorage, Ala.: The Council, 1994. Keeble, John. Out of the Channel: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound. 2d ed. Cheney: Eastern Washington University Press, 1999. Lebedoff, David. Cleaning Up: The Exxon Valdez Case, the Story Behind the Biggest Legal Bonanza of Our Time. New York: Free Press, 1997. www.worldnews.about.com Owen, Brian M., et al. The Economics of a Disaster: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books, 1995. www.kosmic.com/oilspill

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