Hickel is the new wild card in almost two years of Byzantine infighting between lawyers, environmentalists, and state and federal oil spill officials over how to measure the damage, set the blame and pay for the recovery of the Exxon's 11 million-gallon oil spill of March 24, 1989. The main issue in the struggle is how much Exxon must pay and what must be done to make Prince William Sound the way it was before the spill even though most environmentalists say fixing nature is impossible. Under federal law, a crowd of state and federal bureaucrats are responsible for determining the damage and the method of repair. The two governments have never agreed on how to do that. Their mutual suspicion has been so great that they are duplicating some of their studies at a cost of millions of dollars a year, keeping the results secret from each other and from everyone else.
Some environmentalists are worried about the restoration work starting next summer.
They say the program is the product of political machinations in Washington, D.C., intended to quickly complete a token restoration before President George Bush runs for re-election in 1992. Wally Hickel has unexpectedly become their champion. I'm optimistic about Hickel in one sense. He thinks big, he likes to do things in a big way, and a lot of this is sitting there waiting for him. Besides, Hickel is known for his willingness to tangle with the federal government, and Steiner and other environmentalists see the federal government as their enemy in forcing Exxon to pay big for restoration.