ESKIMOS OUTRAGED BY PUSH FOR EXXON VALDEZ'S RETURN.Byline: Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. Exxon Corp. wants the Exxon Valdez This article is about the tank vessel Exxon Valdez. For the spill, see Exxon Valdez oil spill. Exxon Valdez was the original name (later Sea River Mediterranean and eventually Mediterranean to again navigate the Alaska shores it fouled with millions of gallons of crude oil in 1989. Some Alaskans are outraged. Attorneys for the corporation were to ask a U.S. District Court judge here Thursday to strike down federal legislation that barred the vessel, since renamed the Mediterranean, from Prince William Sound Prince William Sound, large, irregular, islanded inlet of the Gulf of Alaska, S Alaska, E of the Kenai peninsula. It has many bays and good harbors; the large Columbia Glacier flows into Columbia Bay, in the N central portion. . ``It is impossible to overstate the depth of Exxon's insensitivity to the Alaskan natives,'' said Gary Mason
Gary Mason (born December 15, 1962 in Jamaica) is a retired British boxer who fought out of Chatham, Kent. He fought at heavyweight and became British heavyweight champion in 1989. , an attorney representing a group of Eskimos. In a brief, Mason and colleagues Michael D. Hausfeld and Lloyd Miller argued that Exxon's proposal is not only offensive to residents of the affected region but could again imperil im·per·il tr.v. im·per·iled or im·per·illed, im·per·il·ing or im·per·il·ling, im·per·ils To put into peril. See Synonyms at endanger. the fish and fowl that are still recovering from the tanker accident. The Oil Pollution Act, a provision of which is at issue in the case, ``was plainly intended to prevent rusty buckets such as the Exxon Valdez from plying the waters of Prince William Sound again,'' the attorneys wrote. A representative of Exxon's shipping company said it was challenging the ban because Congress improperly punished the ship's owners retroactively. In March 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground a·ground adv. & adj. 1. Onto or on a shore, reef, or the bottom of a body of water: a ship that ran aground; a ship aground offshore. 2. in Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil. Exxon was ordered to pay $5 billion in punitive damages Monetary compensation awarded to an injured party that goes beyond that which is necessary to compensate the individual for losses and that is intended to punish the wrongdoer. to commercial fishermen, Eskimos, property owners and others harmed by the spill. It also was ordered to pay $287 million to fishermen for actual losses. The Oil Pollution Act, which was passed in response to several problems that occurred around the time of the Valdez spill, barred any tanker that had spilled more than 1 million gallons from navigating Prince William Sound. In a complaint filed against the Transportation Department, SeaRiver Maritime Financial Holdings, a subsidiary of Exxon, argued that the act's exclusion was unconstitutional. ``Basically you're finding the vessel guilty of something (when) you passed a law after it happened,'' said Pete Rupp, a SeaRiver vice president. ``It's retroactively applying a law, which is not permissible; that was not in effect at the time of the Valdez incident.'' |
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