Going Rogue: An American Life (16 page)

SARAH

PALIN

Instantly, Alaskans thought of the fisheries. Most everyone in the Valdez-Cordova area relied on the fishing industry for livelihoods and subsistence. They supplemented their purchased groceries with clean, healthy organic salmon, halibut, and other seafood. The industry employs thousands of people-in fact, fisheries are the state’s top privatesector employer. More people wotk seafood jobs than oil and gas, tourism, mining, and forestry combined. The commercial fishermen in the Sound lived much the same lifestyle as our Bristol Bay fishing family.

I remember Todd used the wotd “heartbreaking” to describe whar he saw as he watched the coverage. The land and sea are sacred to Native

who seem instilled with a special

connection to God’s creation that can only be described as spiritual. “How?” Todd wondered aloud. “How will this ever be cleaned up?”

It was a good question. Ultimately, rhe tanker would spill 11

million gallons of oil into the water, which spread across 10,000

square miles of coastal seas-an area larger than Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island combined-and contaminated 1,500

square miles of shoreline. Many Americans remember the
Exxon
Valdez
spill as a series of tragic environmental images: Litters of dead seabirds slicked in shrouds of slime. Sinister black muck
surging against the rocks. Workers in fluorescent haz-mat suits
swabbing the

of oil-drenched ducks and sea otters. But in addition to being one of the wotst manmade environmental disasters in histoty, the spill was an economic and social disaster. And like the earthquake that had rocked the state on Good Friday exactly twenty-five years before, the spill would change Alaska fotever. Although the spill’s epicenter hammered communities along the Sound, the effects rippled through the state like aftershocks. Todd knew immediately that it would have an effect on all wild Alaska fish products, which today make up an $8 billion industry •

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Going Rogue

and produce more rhan 62 percent of all ,the United States’ wild seafood.

“There will be a taint on our fish, too, Sarah,” he told me, ferring to the harvest from Bristol Bay, as well as fisheries north. “Buyers will assume all Alaska salmon is oiled. Watch our price drop this summer.”

He, was right. Fishermen watched helplessly as fish processors posted the price they’d pay for our wild salmon caught that season; it plummeted by 65 percent, from $2.35 to 80 cents a pound. The fish srill fetched tel) times that much once it hit markets in the Lower 48 and overseas, but processors insisted they could pay the fishermen only minimal prices for a product perceived as “tainted.” With the polluted Sound unfishable and incomes dried up, banks repossessed scores

commercial fishing vessels,

ing hundreds of people jobless, unable to pay their mortgages and other bills. Entire cOlrimerciai salmon and herring fisheries closed after the disaster. And the fallout yielded more

only

bankruptcies and foreclosures, but (due to poor choices sometimes made in the face ofadverse circumstances) divorces, alcohol abuse, and even suicides.

Most everyone we knew was directly affected, knew someone directly affected, or went to help clean up the spill. Todd was just starting his fulltime Slope job with BP; we wondered if the job would still be there when the smoke cleared. The rumor was that Alaska’s oil production would shut down, which I believed would be an unnecessary, knee-jerk reaction that would destroy our state’s ability to recover. Molly, Chuck, Dad, and many of our friends headed to the Sound to drive skiffs and scrub shoreline rocks, steam down recovery vessels, and rescue and wash animals slicked in oil.

After a long clean-up effort, as days rolled into weeks, then months, then years, Alaskans’ frustration mounted as Exxon
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SARAH

PALIN

Mobile steadily refused to step up and pay the penalty the courts decided it owed for destroying the livelihoods and lifestyles of so many families and communities. And no one in local, state, or national government seemed able to hold the corporate giant accountable. ExxonMobil’s litigation compounded the suffering, especially for Cordova and Valdez fishermen. Court challenges stretched on for twO decades. It took twenry years for Alaska to achieve victory. As governor I directed our attorney general to file an amicus brief on behalf of plainriffs in the case, and, thanks to Alaska’s able attorneys arguing in fronr of the highest court in the land, in 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the people. Finally, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.

When the
Exxon Valdez
hit Bligh Reef, I was a young motherto-be with a blue-collar husband headed up to the Slope. I hadn’t yet envisioned running

elected office. But looking hack, I

see that the tragedy planted a seed in me: If I ever had a chance to serve my fellow citizens, I would do so, and 1’d work for the ordinary, hardworking people-like everyone who was a part of my ordinary, hardworking world.

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