Exxon's Clean Up Efforts Called `Reluctant'

VALDEZ, Alaska--Alaska's top environmental official testified yesterday that a "reluctant and myopic" Exxon stalled efforts to clean up the nation's largest oil spill by largely ignoring damage outside the immediate spill zone.

Dennis Kelso, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, told a congressional panel the spill has caused "550 miles of oil, filthy foam and tar balls."

He said that on the East Coast, it would be the equivalent of oil washing up on beaches from Boston south to the mouth of Chesapeake Bay and possibly to the Potomac River.

"The industry's response was reluctant and myopic, chacterized by stalling techniques, disinformation, and a refusal to pay real attention to damage outside of Prince William Sound," Kelso told the five-member subcommittee of the House Interior Committee.

The congressional panel planned two days of hearings in Valdez, with testimony scheduled from state, federal and Exxon officials.

Both Harvard and Radcliffe are stockholders in Exxon--as of June 30, 1988, the oil company was Harvard's seventh largest holding at $25 million. Radcliffe also holds Exxon shares, with a market value totalling $58,000.

In another development yesterday, a state official said Exxon's decision to pull cleanup crews from an oil-stained beach caught authorities by surprise, but a spokesperson for the oil company defended the decision.

The oil company removed its workers Saturday from a pebblestrewn beach on the north edge of Smith Island, a site described only shortly before by the ranking federal official in charge of the cleanup as "far from clean." The site was one of those visited last week by Vice President Dan Quayle during his stopover in the state.

Crews remained on the island, but at another oil-fouled landfall nearby, Exxon said. The island is considered crucial to the annual seal pupping cycle.

"The people who were here last night from Exxon didn't know anything about this," Pete McGee, a scientist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said yesterday. Exxon, state and federal officials have been conducting nightly meetings on the progress of the cleanup.

McGee said state and federal officials were surprised that the beach cleanup was halted because "the beach was not adequately clean."

Exxon spokesman Pete Stilling said the cleanup crews were moved off the northern beach in order to attack more heavily soiled areas nearby.

"I think we fully intend to come back to that beach. I won't tell you we'll be back on that beach tomorrow," Stilling said, adding, "[Exxon's] best judgment at this point is that it's time to move on."

Al Ewing, an assistant regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said he was on the north beach Saturday morning and found it still "very difficult to walk on" because of the oil.

Exxon faces a Wednesday deadline to have the worst of the oil cleansed from several islands in Prince William Sound, and has promised to clean some 364 miles of coastline by Sept. 15.

The tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in the sound on March 24 after filling its storage tanks with crude from the trans-Alaska pipeline. More than 10 million gallons of oil poured into the sound.