CORDOVA, ALASKA — A little less than 20 years ago, Mike Webber was king of his own watery world. He was 28 years old, with three herring fishing boats. He leased another long-line boat for halibut, and gill-netted the fat salmon that made Prince William Sound one of the most legendary fisheries in the world.
Then came the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Overnight, it was all gone: Fish prices plummeted. People started selling their fishing permits to pay their mortgages, and then lost their houses anyway. Salmon rebounded, but the $12-million-a-year herring fishery all but disappeared.
On Friday, Webber and more than 200 other residents of this rain-soaked fishing town began getting the first round of punitive damage payments from ExxonMobil, closing the book on one of the nation's most epic battles over environmental destruction and corporate responsibility.
Over the next year, more than 32,000 plaintiffs from around the globe who once made their living fishing in and around Prince William Sound will collect their shares of the $507.5 million ExxonMobil was ordered to pay. The corporation spent nearly two decades appealing an initial $5-billion court order.
"My heart's not into receiving this money because, in reality, we're getting nothing," Webber said. "Even if we got the full $5 billion, we still wouldn't come close to what we would have made in 20 years of fishing." Webber said he will get about $180,000, compared with the $2.5 million he might have received under the initial judgment.
"One good thing is that this case is coming to an end. . . . It's been an open sore," Webber said. "But are we going to be able to heal from it? I don't know."
At a time when national attention is focused on opening new sources of oil and gas from Alaska's substantial reserves, the Exxon Valdez disaster -- which occurred when North Slope oil production was in its adolescence -- stands as the most devastating oil spill in the nation's history.
Commanded by an alcoholic captain who had returned to his cabin as the tanker threaded its way through treacherous icebergs and reefs, the Exxon Valdez went off course and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into a pristine wonderland of orcas, sea otters, bald eagles and glacial peaks.
Two decades later, oil -- an estimated 55 tons of it -- still oozes a foot or so below the surface of many beaches. Shellfish in the western sound have never come back, nor have the otters that depended on them.
