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Community leaders and organizers from Alaska gathered in New Orleans today to tell ecologists about the impact of a previous oil spill on their communities, and to warn the local community about the devastating impact the Gulf oil spill could have on Louisiana.

Louisiana State University’s Center for Natural Resource Economics and Policy presented a panel discussion about the impact of natural and unnatural disasters on the coastlines in the United States. The session centered on the similarities between the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Prince William Sound near Anchorage, Alaska, and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Exxon Valdez spill contaminated 10,000 square miles of ocean and 3,200 miles of coastline. Some scientists now estimate that the Gulf oil spill has surpassed the Exxon Valdez oil spill as the worst in U.S. history.

Alaskan panelists said the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill destroyed the
state’s infrastructure. The impact, they said, can still be felt today.

“We’ve had no herring for 21 years,” said Patience Faulker, the fishermen’s representative for the Regional Citizens Advisory Council in Anchorage. “And this is the first year we’ve been able to shrimp since the spill.”

Faulkner said that two canneries in Anchorage that closed because of the sharp decline of the Alaskan seafood industry still have not reopened. The social impact on the community has been drastic as well.

“Alcoholism, child abuse, divorce, suicide —all of those rates skyrocketed,” she said.

Following the spill, there were multiple reports of increased depression and suicide rates in the town of Cordova, on Prince William Sound.

The spill also affected communities off the coastline.

“Our lands are drying, burning,” said Faith Gemmill, the director of Resisting Environmental Destruction On Indigenous Lands, a grassroots environmental protection group. “Our entire ecosystem is out of balance.”

Gemmill mentioned the vulnerability of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which was a main source of food for many indigenous tribes.

She said that the Gulf oil spill has also had an impact on Alaska.

“All the oil spilled out there will pressure our Alaska resources to replace that oil,” she said.

Organizers of the event said it was important to recognize the environmental similarities between what happened in Alaska and what is happening on the Gulf Coast.

“We want to get the perspective of people who worked, and lived through these disasters,” said Rex Coffey, the executive director of the Center for Natural Resource Economics and Policy.

Kristina Peterson, an ecology professor at the University of New Orleans and the moderator of the panel, said that local ecologists were working to connect local communities and leaders with counterparts in Alaska to prepare them for the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill. Illness was a particular concern. Peterson said thousands of the fishermen involved in the clean-up in Alaska had fallen sick or died from illnesses related to exposure to oil, and reports of fishermen in Louisiana who have gotten sick from clean-up efforts have recently started to rise.

In addition to the Alaskan panelists, members of native Louisiana bayou and coastal communities spoke about the effects of the oil spill and Hurricane Katrina on their communities.

Peterson said it was important for the panel to present perspectives from people who had lived on the coastline for a long period of time. She said the scientific community needed to take people’s lives and experiences seriously in order to get a comprehensive historical viewpoint.

Albert Naquin, the chief of the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians, said the damage to the coastline was pushing his tribe out of the bayou. With members moving away from each other, he said, their ability to be recognized as a community, a necessary part of getting federal tribal recognition, is hurt.

“Our tribe is going to die,” he said.

Teresa Dardar, a member of the Pointe aux Chennes tribe and a neighbor of Naquin’s tribe, said moving her community would hurt its recognition process, as well. Dardar, a shrimper, said that the shrimp in her area were already small because of poor weather earlier this year.

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