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  Teshuvah and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

  Winner of the HUC-JIR Lorraine Helman Rubin Memorial Prize for Scholarly Writing

  Introduction

  On March 24, 1989, just after midnight, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, an inlet in the Gulf of Alaska, on its way from Valdez, Alaska to California. Due to delayed efforts to contain the spill and stormy conditions, 11 million gallons of North Slope crude oil dispersed into the waters eventually polluting 1,300 miles of shoreline and adjacent waters. This was the largest environmental disaster in US history up to that point in time. At risk was “the delicate food chain that supports Prince William Sound’s commercial fishing industry… ten million migratory shore birds and waterfowl, hundreds of sea otters, dozens of other species, such as harbor porpoises and sea lions, and several varieties of whales.” In the end an estimated 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, as many as 22 killer whales, billions of salmon and herring eggs were killed. More than 25 years after the spill the killer whale population, the herring population (once a life source for the region), several bird species had not recovered, and pools of oil were still found under and between rocks along the shore line. 

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