Good Riddance Exxon Valdez
Some time this week, the ship formerly known as the Exxon Valdez (now the Oriental Nicety) will come to a controversial end. We would expect nothing less of the vessel, now known as the Oriental Nicety, that spilled in excess of 11 million gallons of oil into the formerly pristine waters of Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
Its final resting place? As reported by Bloomberg News:
…an oil-stained beach in Alang, India, where it’ll be recycled in the world’s largest and most notorious shipbreaking yard.
The ship was sold for $16 million, and will be dismantled piece by piece. The ship is more than 70% steel, but it’s the rest of it that has environmentalists up in arms. From a fascinating article by Bloomberg’s Adam Minter:
…like almost all ships scrapped in India, is filled with hazardous substances including asbestos and PCB-laden oils. Under Indian law and international treaties to which India is party, that should render it illegal to import. And yet, not only is it being imported, it’s one of hundreds of ships that are brought into Alang every year for recycling. Despite an order from the Indian Supreme Court on this week requiring that the Valdez be the last such ship imported into India, nobody — except, perhaps, anti-shipbreaking activists outside of India — believes that’s going to happen.
Why? Because India is growing, and it needs cheap steel. And recycled steel is cheap. Not only that, it provides India with 8 percent of its current annual supply of steel. So, by the end of the year, the former Valdez will be holding up buildings and bridges half way around the world.
Hopefully, it will do some good in its new lives. Alaska is still feeling the effect of its past one.
~An oil-filled footprint on the shore of Knight Island in Prince William Sound on July 4, 2010 – 21 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Oriental Nicety. Pfftttt! Do they really think we’re that stupid? (Yes, they do.)
Big Oil…big problems…big ripples…Exxon Valdez, BP Deepwater Horizon and so many more, and all the dirty not-so-little-secrets they try to hide, the suffering they have unleashed in their greed. Meh. It doesn’t have to be this way. But we have to keep telling the stories if we ever hope to Make It Better.
Speaking of shipbreaking, Paolo Bacigalupi’s book Ship Breaker is dystopian science fiction set in the near future on the Gulf Coast, and it is all too real to me. It won YALSA’a Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature in 2010 and was a finalist for a National Book Award, also, too.
I highly recommend it for teens and adults; it’s great for opening all kinds of discussions with readers. I’m back to school in just another week, so am back/still in Librarian Mode…but No Shushing, please…no What did you do this summer? but rather… What did you Read this Summer? My summer reading list is 24 books long and counting… until the students return August 20.. We’ll have lots to talk about. 🙂
Here’s a link to Paolo Bacigalupi’s webpage:
http://windupstories.com/
thatcrowwoman
I’m all for recycling, but not like this.
It’s all the hazardous materials, that bother me the most… those workers! They’ve not an ounce of protective gear on –not even masks!– and yet they’re clanging and banging away on the ships to dismantle them. That’s what their employer hired them for,
Hell, here, if the ship were being, literally, screapped, the workers would be all outfitted in ‘space suits’ with the latest-technology respirators, hazmat multi-bags for disposal of the materials, and triple wrapped duct-tape around their glove and boot tops. On the beach in India? Loincloths. Possibly a pair of sandals. Period.
It just aches my heart that money –good money– is being made off of these ships and yet the people who do the actual work, are paid barely enough to keep body and soul together. beth.
Acch!! [where’s the “edit” button when I need it?]
To add:
Not only are they paid diddly, there is, apparently, not an ounce of regard for their health. Jeeze, Louise, ever read the ‘warning’ on the back of an aerosol can of tub and tile spray? — us consumers in the US are given more ‘care and concern’ about the dangers of not paying attention as we use a couple spritzes of foam cleaner, than they are for mega-dangers /health-destroying effects of their day-in, day-out work. Yes, certainly tears in my hear for them. beth.
**heart, not: hear… b,
AKM- thanks, I think , for the link to the long and thorough shipbreaking story.
Kinda muddies up the end of the %@#!@$^&-Valdez thinking about the damage it will do in being dismantled along with knowing there is still too much of the spill oil left out in places we would like to think of as pristine, which aren’t.
Oh bleah