Exxon-Valdez oil spill

If you guys follow the national news at all, one of the big headlines yesterday was the Supreme Court ruling on the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill. While this is national news, its particularly interesting to be here in the midst of it.

The 1989 Exxon oil spill dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, making the accident the worst oil spill in North American history. As an aside, it's sort of fortuitous to me to be here while all this court stuff is going on, because when I was really small, I had a book about this particular oil spill...I don't remember much of it, but I remember a little boy saved a harbor seal pup, and I remember the pictures of the otters and cormorants coated with oil. I'd completely forgotten about that book until now, but thinking back on it, I think that was one of the first environmental issues I was aware of.

At any rate, nearly 33,000 people have been waiting almost 20 years for the courts to come to a decision about this case. The Washington Post article covering the story says that they estimate that 20% of the plaintiffs on the case are dead by now. For one, I think it's utterly ridiculous that it took so long to settle the case. Not only was the spill so environmentally destructive, but the majority (if not all) the fisheries in that area were essentially shut down for at least one season. And when fisheries are such a huge part of the state's economy (the fish and seafood industry is the largest private employer), thats affecting a LOT of people. Not only fishermen, but packagers, processors, charter boat captains...I'm sure there are a lot more.

The Supreme Court's final ruling on the case cut Exxon's punitive damages from $2.5 billion down to $5 million. And actually, initially the damages were slated at $5 billion. And people here had definitely been looking forward to the case being settled. I talked to some people who were saying that even though they weren't going to get any direct money, so many people were that it was really going to help boost the Alaska economy. The WaPo article was saying that a lot of people were banking on using that money for retirement funds. But now, the damages Exxon is actually paying will result in an average award of $15,000.

But I think the most shameful thing about the whole case is that Exxon reels in $5 million in profits every 4 days. And apparently the company was arguing that "it had been punished enough" in paying the $3.4 billion in cleanup costs. Cleanup costs don't really cover peoples' livelihoods being ruined.

Before this court ruling, I didn't know what punitive damages were, so I looked it up on the ever-so-trusty Wikipedia. I found out that the purpose of punitive damage is sort of like a fine, essentially a monetary means of discouraging unfavorable behavior. But given this definition, shouldn't the fee be determined on a sliding scale? If Exxon can recover these punitive fees in four days, I don't feel like that is an effective enough price to pay. It's pennies.