in 1989, alaska suffered the exxon valdez spill.environmental impacts are still being monitored and assessed in the waters of the prince william sound. effecting the lives of many who waited decades before seeing justice in the courts still feel impacts of the trauma of which the spill caused in their communities. the effects of both spills are tragic, the greatest tragedy in both could and should have been avoided. in each case, the responsible parties cut corners and took unnecessary risks for the promise of greater profits. although risk taking and the risks made were reckless, a response to it must be thoughtful and measured. identification has to put itself firmly on the path to energy security, and we can't do that while increasing our supply of oil. it must be part of any balanced energy plan whether in the gulf or the arctic waters of my state. we need to rededicate ourselves by taking the prudent steps to ensure those kills never happen again. we need to implement better standards and best practices, and regulators must kee

cleanup over eight hundred twenty five million dollars this spill is ten times larger than the exxon valdez spill in alaska and is believed to be america's largest environmental disaster to date we're throwing away the next generation's most valuable resource and that is water one of the best sources of water anywhere in the world and maybe the best source of freshwater in proximity to one of the world's largest fastest growing populations. you know with all the and all the lawsuits and all the carrying on that goes on in the in the press and you know the vanity fair's and. u.s. news and world reports. that where the authors are warning people to believe that there were absolutely scripts in appalachia downs and nothing. in order to get the mineral is patently untrue it's patently untrue when you look around at the forest of mountains that we have a recent environmental impact statement from the e.p.a. estimates over eight hundred square miles of mountains have already been destroyed this includes the permanent destruction of over four hundred fifty individual mountain summits across the re

hundred nine million gallons taking over fifty miles of a major river system a spill bigger than the exxon valdez we took six samples the occurrence that happened in kentucky. was simply one where you had one built over old. underground ones and they gave way in the bottom and that's what happened the structure itself. in ringgold county west virginia within sight of massey energy c.e.o. don blankenship whom carmelita brown has been battling for clean want to see. twenty some years ago. no not a lot of time but like shrike an asteroid harness crying going to mass has been got up and asked and asked me what was wrong he came here and he said when he looked at it he said i'll find god he said that's postcard. we went and looked at fifteen wells. said the samples off to the laboratory got the test results back and did some analysis on those results and it was pretty compelling that we needed to do more research down there i've never seen water quality that poor. are pretty good compared to what it was this morning these documents from the west virginia department of natural resources researched by m

among many other things i served as executive director of the exxon valdez oil spill trustee council and led the effort to develop and implement a conference of restoration plan. i later became chief of staff for a supported that plan and move forward with preparedness including issues that were mentioned earlier by senator cantwell like shipping and continue preparedness and prevention. in short, we are not prepared. we are not yet committed to prevention and the oil pollution act of 1990 though it has done a lot of good, had significant holes and in particular with regard to response. here are my recommendations on how to fix the problem. first we must integrate spill prevention and preparedness into the oil and gas decision-making process. congress should mandate the baseline science and an understanding of the marine ecosystem in which we intend to drill as fully understood that an informed decisions about if we should drill, when, where and how are based on science. it also means giving a stronger role to the expert industries like noaa and coast guard and the aforementioned ins

was it something about the exxon valdez oil spill that changed their fate? >> that's exactly right.re -- these were designed as fuel ships to carry jet fuel and diesel for navy fleet and after the exxon valdez spill, it was determined that single hulled ships were not appropriate for that use and so they were sent into -- into storage. no one could exactly figure out what to do. too much to retrofit them. no one can make a decision. so these ships just kind of sat there. look, the lesson is and anybody who has served in the military or covered the military can tell you this. as vital as it is, there is some waste. i mean, let's be honest about it. the government is not good at all about anticipating new technologies unlike the private sector. private sector is not always good at it either but congress is terrible at it and they made a massive mistake in this case. >> that's the lesson here. what's the fix? this is just we chalk this up to government lack of foresight or bad timing? >> well, let's just put it this way. there's got to be a better use for two enormous, more than 600 fo