2008: Supreme Court slashes Exxon Valdez oil spill damages

The U.S. Supreme Court cuts the damages that Exxon is required to pay for the Exxon Valdez oil spill, from $2.5 billion to $507,000. In 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez grounded on Bligh Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, rupturing and spilling nearly 11 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude oil, destroying fisheries that Alaska Natives had depended upon for generations. Cleanup crews used hoses to blast the oil-soaked beaches with water, destroying archaeological objects buried in the sediment—objects used by ancestors of contemporary Alaska Natives.

The Exxon Valdez release of nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into the remote, scenic, and biologically productive Prudhoe Bay was the largest single oil spill in U.S. coastal waters, killing untold numbers of fish and other wildlife. The spill stretched more than 500 miles south to the Alaska Native village of Chignik on the Alaska Peninsula. A 2004 study by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council found that while some species of Prince Williams Sound birds and fish had recovered others had not.

Theme

Federal-Tribal Relations, Land and Water

Region

Subarctic