| Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill | 
 enlarge | Author: Riki Ott
Creator: John Perkins
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 224302
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 1933392584
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.7382097983
EAN: 9781933392585
ASIN: 1933392584
Publication Date: November 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New Soft Cover, Never Been Read Pristine Condition, Not Remaindered, Delivery Confirmation
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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 worlds richest oil companies and most powerful politicians to protect Prince William Sound from oil accidents.Author 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 small 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 vivid 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 dangerous 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 legal system. Her varied background, professional training, and activist heart lead readers confidently and clearly through the maze of laws, back-story, and government red tape as large as that of the five billion dollar lawsuit itself, instilling a new-found sense of understanding of this environmental tragedy.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill December 10, 2008
ISBN 1933392584 - With oil and the price we pay for it, in both dollars and planetary damage, 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 has a track record when it comes to seeing a wrong 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 destroyed 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, without a doubt, influenced Riki years later. After just one season fishing in Prince William Sound, she's clearly in love and just as clearly heartbroken at the devastation that the spill caused - and continues to cause almost 20 years later. Ott organizes and joins, creates and fights, learns and teaches, all to see justice done. The story spans 20 years, including her one year in Cordova before the spill and the 19 years since, and covers legal 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 index in the back, so if (and when!) I became lost in the details, I had no easy means to find specific 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 index is inexcusable. Ott is obviously aware of language - once, she mentions people being taught to speak "Alaskan"; at several points, she mentions a speech she'd given during which she'd lost her audience by speaking in scientific terms to people unfamiliar with the terminology. Despite that awareness, the book begins with a lot of occupation-ese, language specific to the world she lives in, with fishing terms, boating-speak and other things that just don't draw a reader in. You really have to push through those pages to get to the heart of the story, and it's worthwhile, but it shouldn't feel like work. Ott eventually begins to make the story more personal, working in incredibly awkward "conversations" that probably never happened but at least are easier to follow.
The timing of this book feels almost 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. Without tying it to that anniversary, it feels a bit like a lost opportunity to use the publicity from either event for the other. 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 little 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
 Spill baby, spill December 7, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is about a very important and overlooked topic, told in a first hand way that really brings home the Exxon Valdez tragedy as well as Exxon's complete escape from responsibility.
The book is written from the interesting perspective of a Cordova resident, who also happens to be a fisher woman, have a Pd.D. in marine biology, be a key activist in trying to understand and address the spill disaster, and a victim of Exxon misdeeds. Thus, she brings a very interesting multisided perspective to the story.
The book discusses what life was like in Cordova prior to the spill, including the fishing economy and the community feel. It discusses the false promises made by the government and the oil industry (no spills, instant clean up) prior to the Valdez accident.
It then covers the events of the Valdez 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 other 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 legal battles, including how Exxon arranged to get an 11% kick back from its own settlement, and in some cases billed those who lost their businesses for the 'benefits' of the spill.
The book does occasionally meander into areas that are unrelated to the story, such as when the author talks about the mental break from a skiing vacation, and it ends with a weaker conclusion than I would like. In particular, instead of ending with a list of concrete actions readers can take or ways to find out more information, it ends with a general discourse on how corporate power prevents justice. While this might be very true, it is too abstract and leaves too much of a sense that nothing short of a revolution will prevent environmental disaster from reoccuring. Again, this might be true... but it would be nice to have a more concrete conclusion, especially since only a few lines are given to the Supreme Court's slashing of the damages from 5B to 500M dollars.
Overall, very interesting, sad and coompelling depite occasional drifts.
 Ricki Ott: Alaska Hero December 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As someone who grew up on a small, beleaguered fishing boat in the waters of Southeast Alaska, I was enraptured by Ott's book. I won't say appalled or embittered - because before reading, I was already too familiar with the ravaged ecosytem and the long battles that ensued, the emotional, physical and sociopolitical toll taken on the humans, the incredible, well, sociopathic evil, of the giant corporation. The reason I took up the book was out of homage to Dr Ott's courage and scholarship and maybe to wallow in elegiac tears and drum up some hope for the little people and critters of Earth. Maybe it is like liturgy, this book a bead on a long string of beads each representing another shock to the Mother, another David and Goliath fight. Or like folk songs of pain, anger and resistance sung by Odetta. Anyway, somehow this book makes me feel good.
Ott includes a lot of technical detail of the legal battle, very instructive. I encourage all citizens to read it and see what most Alaskans and most fisherfolk are like, so different from what we have seen in the media of late.
~Lesley Thomas, author of Flight of the Goose, a novel about oil and Alaska
Fantastic overview of a national tragedy . . . December 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Riki Ott is, to me, a true heroine. Not just because of her tremendous devotion to fight for fair treatment for fishermen, townsfolk and others from Exxon, but because she did it for so long and with such great patience. Evidence of this is in the even-keeled tone of this book, which took me about 10 days to read (and I'm a quick reader) because I kept getting so made at the games Exxon played throughout the whole ordeal that I thought I'd have a heart attack!
One could argue that Exxon's near complete abandonment of any attempts to "do right" after their negligent behavior - and their subsequent getting away with it - gave a green light to Enron, most of America's banks, government contractors like Halliburton (etc) to pillage at will, knowing our legal system is simply not prepared to deal with the scale and complexities of corporate crime . . . nor does anyone really have the time or pocketbooks to fight the fight for what might be decades.
I followed the Exxon Valdez story for years, and I too watched (indirectly, via the media) as Exxon neglected all of its bold promises to repair the damage they did. It was and stays a big heartache for many.
"Not One Drop" works because it tells the basics of the story plainly and without palpable anger. You can feel the fatigue. There is not a lot of characterization or evidence of personal life in the book, but there is just enough to put a good human face on the suffering of Exxon Valdez's many victims. At times, knowing how it all ends makes it tough to relive it all, but I'm glad I did . . . it recharged the batteries of my cynicism in a healthy way!
Great info, great story, minor narrative flaws December 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Fresh out of graduate school, a young Riki Ott sought respite from academia by joining a salmon-fishing crew in Alaska. "Hooked" on the joy and excitement of the salmon runs, she bought a boat with a partner and settled in to build a life for herself as a fisherwoman in Prince William Sound. Making an effort to become part of her new community, she attended a few local political meetings. When the old-timers raised concerns about Alyeska's oil-producing activities, Riki's academic background resurfaced: "Maybe I can help there ... I have a master's in oil pollution and a doctorate in sediment pollution." Her stunned neighbors promptly voted her onto their organization's board, passed her a towering stack of papers, and--in the case of the now-former lead person on the Alyeska issues--made plans to go moose hunting.
Two years later came news headlines about the Exxon-Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, and Riki was right in the middle of the chaos of an entire community's shattered lives. Not One Drop chronicles how, over the next two decades, she and others fought to restore to the families of the small fishing community all that had been stolen when a tanker crashed and broken promises spilled across human lives as thickly as oil coated once-pristine beaches. Riki's firsthand account ranges from makeshift office space to Congressional offices in Washington, DC, from the sweeping wilds of Alaska's remote spaces to the crowded pen of her Dallas prison cell. Everpresent are the friends and neighbors struggling to regain their footing in Cordova, Alaska.
While Riki's uniquely well-informed perspective allows her to tell the story of this accident in a way that sheds light on corporate power-plays and profit-seeking platitudes, her narrative occasionally bogs down in the very literary device that at first seems to make the science and politics truly accessible to a lay reader. Much of her story is told, not directly to the reader, but to her best friend--who asks for clarification and simplification frequently enough that the reader can't possibly get lost in the details. This device can be very effective, but the effect in Not One Drop reminded me a bit of the cheesy management-advice books that rely on questioning characters who find unexpected mentors in trains, airplanes, and amusement parks. The information is great, but the characters feel forced. I'd have preferred that Riki Ott simply continue her narrative as it began, telling her story without the artificial intermediaries of townspeople who ask her to simplify science that's already been adequately explained.
Despite that flaw, I found this book enlightening and informative, an enjoyable read well worth my time. I'd recommend it to anyone who cares about any community or natural space touched by any megacorporations, as the lessons Riki learned in Alaska seem likely to transfer all too well to the site of the next human-made disaster. Perhaps, if enough people read Cordova's story and others like it, that next disaster can be prevented before it destroys a community and an ecosystem.
(Review from the "mother" half of our mother-daughter book review team)
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