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A project of Common Dreams

For Immediate Release
Contact: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Alaskans in the Gulf: Lessons from Exxon Valdez

WASHINGTON

RIKI OTT, via Lisa Marie Jacobs
Martin is political director of , one of several groups urging
President Obama -- who is meeting Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai
today in Washington -- to say "yes to President Karzai's request for
the U.S. to support peace talks now to end the war."

Currently on the Gulf coast, Ott is author of Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Spill,
a marine toxicologist and former commercial salmon fisher in Alaska.
She questions the ongoing use of dispersants by BP. Ott said today:
"The industry needs dispersants because they need to show some way of
spill response. ... By getting the EPA to list dispersants [as
permissible] -- even if the products are toxic to the environment, the
industry has a green light to operate." Since the industry plans are
"rubber-stamped [by the EPA], there is no incentive to develop products
that actually work to contain and clean up oil rather than disperse it
into the ocean -- out of sight, out of mind. ... BP is saying that the
chemicals are less harmful to the environment than the oil. That is a
false or at best very misleading statement. The EPA only requires
standard 48-hour or 96-hour bioassays. ... These bioassays are
extremely dated (40 years or so)."

RICHARD STEINER
A marine biologist and former University of Alaska fisheries extension
agent, Steiner just returned to Alaska from working at the site of the
BP oil spill and on the Louisiana coast. He said today: "BP has
committed several very serious environmental crimes over the last 10 to
20 years, a couple of them right here in Alaska that led to major oil
spills on the North Slope, the nation's largest oil field. ... Every
time there's a breakdown, BP promises that they will change their
corporate culture and manage risks better and make a major
restructuring within the company so that these things don't happen, and
yet they continue to happen. ...

"We still have some amounts of Exxon Valdez oil in the beaches
here [in Alaska], 20,000 or 30,000 gallons down deep in the beaches,
which is still relatively toxic. The injured ecosystem is far from
recovered." See interview.

A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.