Exxon Valdez 'survivor' promotes ‘local power,' tells crowd not to buy into BP ‘reality'

More than 150 people crammed into South Walton’s Coastal Branch Library last Saturday to hear Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist with a specialty in oil pollution, speak on her first-hand experience as a scientist and salmon fisherman during the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Upon hearing about the Gulf spill “I literally hid from the media for a week,” Ott said of the “traumatic” memories that surfaced. But then “…I came out of me and thought all those people are not going to know what to do, they are going to be like we were in Cordova [Alaska].”

The 1989 oil spill, considered the worst man-caused environmental disaster in the U.S. until the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, dumped 32 million gallons of oil the covered 1,300 miles of coastline when the tanker struck the Bligh reef.

“…Within three days that oil was washing up on our beaches,” Ott said. “We didn’t have this Hollywood death scene” that is going on here.

On the fourth day Exxon Representatives told the town of 2,500 fishermen and service-industry workers packed in the high school gym, ‘If your nets don’t fill up, if your motels go bankrupt, bring us your claims, we will make you whole’ and we were dumb enough to believe them,” Ott said. “’Legitimate claims’ means we will see you in court.”

People trusted the Exxon commitment for about four years “before they came to their senses,” Ott said. “It took four years, because that is when our ecosystem collapsed.”

In Alaska‘s ecosystem, herring are a key forage fish. If you take out that thread the whole system collapses, Ott said.

“Here you have 15,000 species that are getting dinged, the young life forms are getting hammered right now,” Ott said. “Is it enough to collapse the whole ecosystem? I don’t know and I don’t think anybody does until it actually stops spilling the darn oil.”

Ott urged people to “apply common sense” and warned against what she said was “two versions of reality”

 There is “The BP version of minimal spill, minimal damage, workers aren’t really sick, they are seasick and heatstroke,” Ott said “This is hazardous waste we are dealing with here”

“The other version, what do they really have? Chemical poisoning!” she said. “Sound Truth.”

 In the book “Sound Truth and Corporate Myths,” Ott chronicled the devastating effects on the ecosystem, fisheries and people living in Alaska during and following the disastrous oil spill. Typically, she gives the book away to non-profits and schools for the cost of shipping, an offer she extended to Gulf Coast inhabitants.

It was an offer that Hurricane Oyster Bar owner Dave Biegler accepted. He was so impressed with Ott’s presentation that he agreed to pay shipping for 500 copies for Walton County.

District 4 Commissioner Sara Comander, attended the forum and was also impressed.

“We need to bring a common sense approach to the oil spill — look at it from all sides if we hope to solve the big problem.”

“Dr. Ott is very knowledgeable and informed,” Comander told the Sun, when asked for her take-away on the meeting. “I’m trying to look at every aspect and learn from this, to gather as much data, so I have a baseline to go to.”

After the ecosystem collapsed, national attention had shifted to other parts of the globe. Ott told the crowd that Exxon told citizens it’s “not our problem, prove it is our problem,”

Cordova proved it with “a community-wide act of civil disobedience,” Ott said.

It involved “100 percent of our fishermen, and you guys know that anytime you can get 100 percent of fishermen to do something — a miracle has happened.”

 “We took our fishing boats and blockaded the Valdez Narrows. Now picture 100 fishing boats strung across a geographic bottleneck, and we held up oil tanker traffic,” Ott said. “We had nine tankers doing doughnuts in the Gulf of Alaska at $10,000 bucks an hour.” 

The primary purpose was to get the federal government’s attention to compel them to do ecosystem testing.

The main message Ott promoted was the idea of “community networking” to make decisions on what is important and “banding together and building a bigger voice.”

“This is not about Riki Ott, it is about building local power in your own community, to exercise democracy to make it work,” She said. “One Gulf, one voice, one future — from Texas to Florida.”

OIL ROUNDUP:

Walton County attempted to hold back the tide as tar balls continued to wash ashore and Hurricane Alex complicated protection plans this week. Below are oil spill related highlights.

•The Walton County Health Department issued a health advisory Thursday, for beaches from the Lake Stallworth outfall to the western edge of Topsail Hill Preserve State Park, following a report by the Walton County Emergency Operations Center of oil substances coming ashore along a section of Walton County beaches.

•Results from water testing conducted in Walton County June 22-24, by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection are still out. Currently, Walton County officials are researching companies to do independent testing.  Air quality testing results, which fall under the Federal Environmental Protection Agency canopy, “continue to be consistent with values typical for this time of year and no obvious influence due to the oil spill is evident.”

•The county relieved Eastern Lake, by opening the sand berms and are planning to do so for many of the lakes in the dune lake system which are bulging from the recent rain fall. Eastern Lake water levels rose over a foot from noon to around 7:00 pm, yesterday, potentially affecting structures.  Public Works and CW Roberts will be working Thursday to open Western, Camp Creek and Morris Lakes to allow them to drain.  Crews are continuing to monitor all lakes to ensure their protection. The Lakes’ outflows were plugged with sand to prevent oil from Deepwater Horizon from entering the lakes during the periodic exchanges between the Gulf and many of the lakes.

•The beach-berming project that got underway last Friday, was placed on hold until the tide level and surf conditions improve. County consultants researched and discussed possible modifications that could be made to improve the plan; many of the berms, constructed through the weekend were washed away due to the tide.

•The county purchased a machine, Beach Tech 2000, to assist in clean-up of tar balls and other oil products on the beach. The machine is expected to be delivered soon.

•South Walton Fire District reached a decision and will now provide emergency management support for the BP contracted beach clean-up crews.