By Janet Long
Turnagain Times Correspondent
Oil spill cleanup coordination is not a new task for former Whittier resident, Richard Long, currently of Valdez. Long, 56, his brother Ed, 57, owner of Long’s Marine in Whittier, and their nephew Larry Hawkins, 38, of Kasilof, were among the first responders on the Exxon Valdez oil spill in March of 1989 as they formed the crew of the 68-foot landing craft, M/V Blue Fox, owned by DOJER LLC, also of Whittier.
Richard once more finds himself on the scene of one of the country’s worst environmental oil disasters in history staged in yet another pristine clime of exotic wildlife and ocean bounty. Called into service in Grand Isle, Louisiana by his former supervisor during the Exxon Valdez tanker grounding off of Bligh Island in Prince William Sound, he is again in a command position as one of the vessel program coordinators in Jefferson Parish, approximately 40 miles from the site of the April 20 explosion site of the Deep Water Horizon oil rig, which killed 11 and spewed over 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Now with the leaking well plugged and under control, there is still a great deal of clean-up work ahead, which keeps Long and his team working around the clock.
“The dynamics now are very fluid,” said Long from his post on the Gulf. “I am currently scheduling off the vessels that have been on for a very long time to get new boats on; it’s a very dynamic situation, as we gradually move from the recovery effort to clean-up. Of course, it is all being very closely monitored.
“More than my experience as the vessel coordinator in Whittier for the Exxon Valdez spill, I think that they were looking for coordinators with Master’s Licenses.”
Long holds a 500-ton license and is a veteran mariner who owned a charter fishing boat in Seward in the early 80s. He has logged hundreds of hours at the helm of service vessels throughout Alaska, and is currently a pleasure boat owner and an avid sports fisherman, as well as the owner of his own business, Long’s Marine Consulting, in Valdez.
Of the 6,000 “vessels of opportunity” called to assist with the oil recovery, Long is in charge of recruiting from 65-80 boats from Grand Isle, a small community of 1,500 year-round residents whose main sources of income are fishing, oil industry jobs and tourism.
In the humid tropical recreational season, 12,000 tourists stream across a toll bridge on the LA 1 Expressway to play along the shores of the long, thin island, neighbor to numerous barrier islands, which stretches like a one-and-a-half by seven-mile finger into the rich Gulf of Mexico. This summer, however, the local state park’s lagoon is closed, except to camping; bird watching, surf casting, skiff rentals, sun bathing beside the palms, scuba diving, water skiing, Cajun crab feasts and the annual Tarpon fishing “rodeo” have come to a halt.
Ravaged by Class 5 Hurricanes Rita and Katrina in 2005, activity in the tiny town of one grocery store and two gas stations, centers on the bustle of coordinators and government figures, workers and vessel owners. Ranging in length from 14-98 feet, the boats vie for positions in the oil recovery effort, to supplement their lost wages from fishing closures, tourism, and the moratorium on oil production in the area.
When asked how the Deep Water Horizon disaster compares with the Exxon Valdez spill, Long said that they are similar in many ways. However, since the Gulf spill is 18 times larger than the spill in the Sound there is a “disconnect.” “My read is that this one is coming out better when you look at the size,” he said.
Long said there is also a large contingency of Alaskans on the scene in the Gulf from Cordova, Kodiak, Homer, Kenai, Soldotna and Valdez, as well as the Coast Guard boats from Alaska.
“Response workers are housed in what are called ‘camps’,” he explained, some of which are comprised of “recreational cabins and cottages built on stilts. Many are owned by urban families as vacation getaways.”
Long shares a four-bedroom, three-bath cottage with three or four others, depending on shifts. Though he admitted that he is often homesick and wants to return to his family and summer in Alaska, he is holding out, and as a former city council member in both Whittier and Valdez, he will find his way home to the fall municipal elections, where his name will be on the ballot for mayor of Valdez.
In the meantime, Long and the indefatigable oil spill clean-up workers will stay on the job, helping to heal the waters of the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
