Exxon Ex-Skipper Cleans Up

Joseph Hazelwood, infamous after contributing to one of the nation's worst oil spills, is now in the cleanup business.

Hazelwood, ex-skipper of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez, this week started serving his sentence for a 1990 conviction for illegally spilling oil in Alaska's pristine Prince William Sound.

He spent Monday loading up a truck with abandoned auto parts and assorted junk thrown along the roadsides of Anchorage. He worked with one other man and a supervisor.

The work was the beginning of his month in Alaska doing litter patrol and other cleanup tasks as punishment for his part in the nation's largest-ever oil spill.

"He'll be doing different things each day," said Fred Fulgencio, who heads Anchorage's community work-service program. "Tomorrow he could be cleaning parks."

This is the first of five summers Hazelwood will spend laboring in Alaska. His sentence calls for 1,000 hours of community work, broken out as 200 hours each year through 2003.

An Anchorage jury found Hazelwood guilty of negligently discharging oil in the waters of Prince William Sound in March 1989, when the Exxon Valdez drove up onto a charted reef.

The grounding dumped an estimated 11 million gallons of oil into the Sound, coating 1,000 miles of shoreline and killing tens of thousands of birds and marine mammals.

Hazelwood was acquitted of several misdemeanors, including operating a tanker while drunk, and one felony count of second-degree criminal mischief.

The judge who sentenced Hazelwood said his community service should include scrubbing rocks oiled by the Exxon Valdez, but beach cleanup efforts wrapped up years ago.

The sentence had remained on hold during more than eight years of appeals.

Hazelwood, who lives in New York, was unavailable for comment.

Fulgencio said he spoke to Hazelwood before work started, and his demeanor was nothing memorable.

"Normal — just like the others," he said. "He just wants to come in and get it over with."