Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
Where to buy Not One Drop: Treachery and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill books online?
- ISBN13: 9781933392585
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
In the early 1970s, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens promised Cordova fishermen “not one drop” of oil would be spilled in Prince William Sound from proposed tanker traffic and the trans-Alaska pipeline project. Fishermen knew better. Spanning nearly 40 years, Not One Drop is an extraordinary tale of ordinary people who take on the world’s richest oil companies and most powerful politicians to protect Prince William Sound from oil accidents.
Leader Riki Ott, a rare combination of commercial salmon “fisherma’am” and PhD marine biologist, describes the firsthand impact of this broken promise when the Exxon Valdez oil spill decimated Cordova, Alaska, a tiny commercial fishing community set in 38,000 square miles of rugged Alaska wilderness.
Ott illustrates in stirring fashion the oil industry’’s 20-year trail of pollution and deception that led to the tragic 1989 spill and delves deep into the disruption to the fishing community for the next 10 years. In plain detail, she describes the human trauma coupled inextricably with that of the Sound’s wildlife and its struggle to recover.
Contrasting hard-won spill prevention and response measures in the Sound to treacherous conditions on the trans-Alaska pipeline, Ott critically examines shifts in scientific understanding of oil spill effects on communities and ecosystems, exposing fundamental flaws in governance and the officially authorized system. Her varied background, professional training, and liberal heart lead readers confidently and clearly through the maze of laws, back-tale, and government red tape as large as that of the five billion dollar lawsuit itself, instilling a new-establish sense of understanding of this environmental tragedy.
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Lacking a doubt, the Exxon Valdez oil spill was an environmental disaster of unimaginable proportions. This book goes into fantastic detail about the causes of the spill and the hurt that it caused. Sorry to say, it is a bit too polemic. I had the same sort of doubts reading this book as I would in reading a book place out by the PR department at Exxon: am I getting the objective tale? But, even if the leader’s bias does show clearly, the book is still worth reading for the amount of information that it contains about the oil spill. The leader does struggle a bit to make realistic narratives and conversations, but that is a minor quibble.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I didn’t get too far into this book. It got off to a rambling start, and I establish myself wondering when the leader was going to get to the heart of the tale. I didn’t get too far.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Appealing and informative info that conjures up this fantastic book. Mostly persons who are into environmental issue will swing to this. Not to be over looked.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
This book is about a very vital and overlooked topic, told in a first hand way that really brings home the Exxon Valdez tragedy as well as Exxon’s perfect escape from responsibility.
The book is written from the appealing perspective of a Cordova resident, who also happens to be a fisher woman, have a Pd.D. in marine biology, be a key liberal in trying to know and take up the spill disaster, and a victim of Exxon misdeeds. Thus, she brings a very appealing multisided perspective to the tale.
The book discusses what life was like in Cordova prior to the spill, including the fishing economy and the community feel. It discusses the fake promises made by the government and the oil industry (no spills, instant clean up) prior to the Valdez manufacturing accident.
It then covers the events of the Valdez manufacturing accident, and the endless efforts by Exxon, as well as many in government, to avoid accountability. This section discusses the chemicals used in the clean up — that were known to be ineffective and harmful to animals and people — but that were cheaper than additional techniques; the long term effects on the community; the long term effects on destroying life in the sound.
The book covers the endless years of officially authorized battles, including how Exxon arranged to get an 11% kick back from its own settlement, and in some cases billed persons who lost their businesses for the ‘benefits’ of the spill.
The book does occasionally meander into areas that are unrelated to the tale, such as when the leader talks about the mental break from a skiing trip, and it ends with a weaker conclusion than I would like. In particular, as a replacement for of ending with a list of concrete actions readers can take or ways to find out more information, it ends with a all-purpose discourse on how corporate power prevents justice. While this might be very right, it is too abstract and leaves too much of a sense that nothing fleeting of a revolution will prevent environmental disaster from reoccuring. Again, this might be right… but it would be nice to have a more concrete conclusion, especially since only a few lines are agreed to the Supreme Court’s slashing of the hurts from 5B to 500M dollars.
Overall, very appealing, sad and coompelling depite occasional drifts.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
ISBN 1933392584 – With oil and the fee we pay for it, in both dollars and planetary hurt, the center of so many discussions right now, Not One Drop appealed to my need for information. The copy I’ve read and am reviewing is an uncorrected proof, so if anything I write doesn’t apply to the copy you read, you know why.
Riki Ott’s family tree has a track record when it comes to seeing a incorrect and fighting to right it, so it should surprise no one that she jumped right in when her recently adopted and much loved new home in Cordova, Alaska is nearly ruined by the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. Her father (who, very weirdly, she never names throughout the entire book), among others, fought to get DDT banned. Their win, lacking a doubt, influenced Riki years later. After just one season fishing in Prince William Sound, she’s clearly in like and just as clearly heartbroken at the hurt that the spill caused – and continues to cause nearly 20 years later. Ott organizes and joins, makes and fights, learns and teaches, all to see justice done. The tale spans 20 years, including her one year in Cordova before the spill and the 19 years since, and covers officially authorized battles and the personal conflicts that arose for residents who lost their income, their businesses, and their hope.
This is not, by any stretch of my imagination, a flawless book. The first glaring problem for me was that there was no pointer in the back, so if (and when!) I became lost in the details, I had no simple means to find point information that I’d already read. There is a ten page timeline, 35 pages of notes and a 2 page glossary, so the lack of pointer is indefensible. Ott is obviously aware of language – once, she mentions people being taught to speak “Alaskan”; at several points, she mentions a speech she’d agreed during which she’d lost her audience by language in scientific terms to people unfamiliar with the terminology. Despite that awareness, the book starts with a lot of occupation-ese, language point to the world she lives in, with fishing terms, boating-speak and additional things that just don’t draw a reader in. You really have to push through persons pages to get to the heart of the tale, and it’s worthwhile, but it shouldn’t feel like work. Ott eventually starts to make the tale more personal, effective in incredibly awkward “conversations” that probably never happened but at least are simpler to follow.
The timing of this book feels nearly as awkward as the conversations. 2009, next year, is the twentieth anniversary of the spill and would have seemed a more expected publication date for this book. Lacking tying it to that anniversary, it feels a bit like a lost opportunity to use the publicity from either event for the additional. Most of the country probably thinks this is history, a done deal, over, in the past – and the fact that it’s not deserves more attention. Two things in particular highlight the horrific aspect of the way this has dragged on and on: one, the small kids at the beginning of the book are adults by the end and this is still not over; an entire lifetime has gone by. Two, in 1999, the tanker Erika spilled millions of gallons on France’s southern coast – within 90 days, French oil companies, ship owners and charter companies signed an agreement that would start to change things for them. 90 days, when Exxon has kept this case going for two decades in the U.S.
- AnnaLovesBooks
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5