Title: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill - HISTORY
Headings: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
Contents
Oil Spill Cleanup
Environmental And Economic Impacts
Oil Pollution Act of 1990
Fate of Exxon Valdez
Sources
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Content: A 2001 study found oil contamination remaining at more than half of the 91 beach sites tested in Prince William Sound. The spill had killed an estimated 40 percent of all sea otters living in the Sound. The sea otter population didn’t recover to its pre-spill levels until 2014, twenty-five years after the spill. Stocks of herring, once a lucrative source of income for Prince William Sound fisherman, have never fully rebounded. READ MORE: Water and Air Pollution
Oil Pollution Act of 1990
In the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the U.S. Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which President George H.W. Bush signed into law that year. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 increased penalties for companies responsible for oil spills and required that all oil tankers in United States waters have a double hull. Exxon Valdez was a single-hulled tanker; a double-hull design, by making it less likely that a collision would have spilled oil, might have prevented the Exxon Valdez disaster. Fate of Exxon Valdez
The ship, Exxon Valdez —first commissioned in 1986—was repaired and returned to service a year after the spill in a different ocean and under a different name.