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US, Alaska will not seek additional damages from Exxon for Valdez Spill

 U.S. and Alaska state officials have officially announced they will no longer seek an additional $92 million from Exxon Mobil Corp. to pay for environmental cleanup and restoration stemming from the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill nearly three decades ago.The Department of Justice and the Alaska Department of Law announced that they are bringing to a close the federal and state judicial actions against ExxonMobil Corporation and its corporate predecessors regarding the 1989Exxon Valdez oil spill.  The Prince William Sound, Alaska, harlequin ducks and sea otters thought in 2006 to have been impacted by lingering subsurface oil have recovered to pre-spill population levels.  Scientists have concluded that exposure to the subsurface oil is no longer biologically significant to these species.  Accordingly, the governments have decided to withdraw their 2006 request to Exxon to fund bio-restoration of subsurface lingering oil patches. The March 1989 grounding of the tanker vessel Exxon Valdez on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound spilled nearly 11 million gallons of North Slope crude oil that ultimately contaminated some 1,500 miles of Alaska’s coastline.  It affected three national parks, four national wildlife refuges, a national forest, five state parks, four state critical habitat areas, a state game sanctuary and ...

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Delayed effects of oil spill compromise long-term fish survival

 For 25 years, methodical research by scientists has investigated the effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 on Alaskan communities and ecosystems. A new study regarding the effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska shows that embryonic salmon and herring exposed to very low levels of crude oil can develop hidden heart defects that compromise their later survival, indicating that the spill may have had much greater impacts on spawning fish than previously recognized.The herring population crashed four years after the spill in Prince William Sound and pink salmon stocks also declined, but the link to the oil spill has remained controversial. The new findings published in the online journal Scientific Reports suggest that the delayed effects of the spill may have been important contributors to the declines."These juvenile fish on the outside look completely normal, but their hearts are not functioning properly and that translates directly into reduced swimming ability and reduced survival," said John Incardona, a research toxicologist at NOAA Fisheries' Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle."In terms of impacts to shore-spawning fish, the oil spill likely had a much bigger footprint than anyone realized."The research builds on earlier work by the Auke Bay ...

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