On top of the shock and disgust felt by everyone, conservation professionals and environmental advocates bore responsibility in urging penalties to the fullest extent of the law to be paid by the world’s largest corporation and a behemoth integrated oil and gas producer and refiner to boot.

With economic damages and coastal clean-up being handled in separate lawsuits eventually totaling $4 billion, the environmental damages case rested on the success of criminal and civil prosecutions of Exxon by the George H.W. Bush Administration Department of Justice and Governor Walter Hickel’s Department of Law.

As months rolled on, no one knew how hard the Bush and Hickel teams would push or even whether they would jointly sue or instead choose separate paths. The active litigation status of the case allowed both agencies to maintain silence which added to the frustration of those seeking a just resolution to the then largest pollution incident case in history.

Exxon’s guilt was never an issue.

But no one had dealt with a case as large as this and one that offered a “bright lights” test of the legal clout and penalty bite of the Clean Water Act, Natural Resources Damages Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and the Rivers and Harbors Act as well as Alaskan natural resource laws.

In the meantime, agonizing public outcry went from despair at the time of the ‘oil spill summer’ to a rousing boil getting hotter by the month. The broad public pressure was so intense in the oil spill aftermath that the Bush Administration voluntarily withdrew their plan to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That move disgusted Governor Hickel and the Alaska delegation over what they viewed as their best ever chance for expanding arctic drilling into the refuge’s coastal plain. In another setback for ANWR drilling advocates House Speaker Jim Wright who had committed to passing Arctic refuge drilling that year resigned when his spiraling ethics crisis dominated congressional media coverage.

Finally, around the first anniversary of the oil spill Governor Hickel broke the state federal standoff by merging the governments’ lawsuits and insisting on $1 billion settlement from Exxon or ‘they’d see them in court.”

The historic, and then largest, environmental fine in U.S. history at $1 billion was reached in October 1991, a year and a half after the spill. Public reaction was largely favorable although how the settlement would be spent was unknown and some voices urged far harsher penalties.

The $1 billion represented 20% of Exxon’s one-year profit. The state and federal governments would each receive $50 million in the criminal settlement that they alone would control.

The far larger $900 million civil settlement was to be spent by a six-member trustee council. Alaska’s three trustees represented the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and the Department of Law. The three federal trustee agencies chosen were the U.S. Department of Interior, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In a novel move, federal Judge Russel Holland’s civil fine terms included a provision that any and all Exxon Valdez Trustee Council spending had to be unanimously approved with a 6-0 vote.

From the organizational baby steps of the council at the end of 1991 to slow walking at the start of the 1992 presidential election year, every imaginable public and private stakeholder circled the $1 billion. Everyone had an opinion with dialog and media jousting often turning heated in the Alaska frontier style.

Packed town hall meetings punctuated the third anniversary of the spill, straining public patience. By summer, the preoccupation with the election led to a full year of inaction since the October 1991 Exxon settlement.

Bill Clinton and Al Gore won the three-way presidential race with 43% of the vote leading to a musical chairs switch out of the three federal trustees.

Bruce Babbitt grabbed the federal team’s reins after replacing Manuel Lujan as Interior Secretary to the delight of conservation advocates hoping to maximize the outcomes of Exxon’s $1 billion penalty.

That hopeful mood soured when Alaska Governor Hickel threatened on the fourth anniversary of the spill to wait out Clinton’s first term barring more middle ground on a wide range of Alaska development issues involving federal lands. Such a standoff would prolong inaction for four more years. Hickel’s threat was real because the three Alaskan oil spill trustees were cabinet appointees serving at his pleasure. Similarly on the federal side, the chain of command ended at President Bill Clinton’s desk in the Oval Office.

To widespread disbelief, all advocates in the oil spill community saw the state federal fault line likely going from crevice to chasm.

The fourth anniversary of the spill passed but during an August 1993 visit to Alaska, DOI’s Assistant Secretary for Fish Wildlife and Parks George Frampton proposed a grand bargain with Alaska Attorney General Charlie Cole.

Frampton said that Secretary Babbitt’s top priority for the $900 million shared civil settlement was ‘conserving habitat with purchases or easements of every private inholding with a willing seller in the 1.8 million Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge.

The inholdings totaled over 350,000 acres. Alaska Native corporations owned over 90% of the inholdings and were willing sellers of fee title or conservation easement of about half of their federal refuge inholdings and some large coastal rainforest areas on Afognak Island to be considered later.

One firm Native condition on the Kodiak bear refuge inholdings was that high value salmon river riparian areas had to be paired with other low commercial value mountainside tracts that they were forced to select under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

The Alaska delegation strongly objected due to the “no more” clause prohibiting federal land expansion in the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). Some opposed Native Alaskans in the spill region getting a disproportionately large amount of the funds. Public access rights to the conserved areas was the tradeoff Babbitt’s plan offered. Other critics felt buying land with money from a marine disaster 240 miles away was hairbrained.

But Kodiak Archipelago was inside the 1200 miles of oiled coast due to the Alaska Gyre currents in the Gulf of Alaska. Babbitt’s plan was bolstered when habitat assessments of oil spill injured wildlife and their habitat within the whole spill region demonstrated that the Kodiak Archipelago scored 75% of the top ranked habitat parcels.

In addition, national opinion counted because the American people were injured parties in the Exxon Settlement deserving a 50% share of the settlement and public comment from the Lower 48 states backed habitat protection by 85%.

The legal basis for using oil spill funds in an area least impacted and furthest away from the Exxon Valdez wreck site in Prince William Sound relied upon the Natural Resources Damages Act (NRDA) ‘link to injury’ and ‘potential for benefit of injured resources and human services.’

In exchange for the Alaska trustees’ support of Kodiak habitat acquisitions, the federal trustees would vote for Governor Hickel’s Seward Sea Life Center intended as a cruise ship tourism attraction but with just enough Gulf of Alaska marine research to qualify for NRDA under the ‘link to injury and potential for benefit’ legal guidelines. Hickel said Alaska needed its own ‘Woods Hole’ marine science center and clearly wanted to boost the spill region’s economy.

When the proposed dual agreement went public, environmental groups favoring forest acquisitions from Native corporations in the Chugach National Forest sharply attacked it. The Sea Life Center was a “whale jail” which represented brick and mortar restoration designed to funnel NRDA funds meant for the damaged Prince William Sound environment into Alaska’s tourism economy.

It was at that moment that a phalanx of sportsmen’s conservation groups backed Babbitt’s plan 100%. This ‘throw down’ of support in a highly publicized organized fashion occurred after a four-year courtship by Kodiak Native corporations to recruit sportsmen’s groups with large or impactful memberships and that were well positioned to become a ‘Greek Chorus’ of support for Babbitt. While the ‘camo vs green’ dialogue progressed, Alaska politically dominant development interests were off balance because Alaska’s own large, impactful sportsmen’s constituency wanted future access rights to Kodiak protected.

Hunter and angler groups argued forcefully for breaking the EVOS impasse in favor of investing oil spill funds for habitat acquisition, especially on treeless Kodiak because 70% of the salmon rivers in the Kodiak bear refuge were within the private Native inholdings. If the inholdings were developed as private property, priceless resources would decline following development and legendary public hunting and fishing would be lost forevermore.

The sportsmen groups won over enough of the environmental leaders to create a clear pro-habitat consensus and made the case that “The Exxon Valdez spill settlement must be rescued now or large-scale conservation as a mission would lose public faith. Kodiak offered outstanding habitat protection and firmly established acquisition and easements as a proper use of the largest environmental fine in U.S. history. Kodiak advocates also pledged support for all the forest resource conservation possible within Prince William Sound.”

The following year, in 1994, the first Kodiak refuge habitat purchases occurred assuring public access to the spectacular Kodiak refuge, and the subsequent train of inholdings deals rolled north into Prince William Sound and the Kenai Peninsula setting records for refuge, forest, and park conservation.