CORDOVA, Ak. -- Twenty-one years after an oil disaster forever changed lives in Alaska, Louisiana leaders are spending this week learning what they can from that region's experience.
Community leaders have traveled to Alaska to meet with members of the fishing industry and others affected by the spill.
The Louisiana connections were easy to find the minute the group arrived.
The team from Louisiana is entrenched when they see a glacier in the distance and their first iceberg on Cordez Lake, deciding it looks like a Mardi Gras float. Then, a sobering moment when they find the visitor center that is named for the late Louisiana congressman Hale Boggs, who died in a crash in Alaska in 1972
"We saw the name on the outside, Boggs, and when we went in there was a picture of him there on the wall with a brief story of the trip that he was making here to Alaska," said Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts. "It just goes to show you, I guess, that Louisiana has its footprints far, far away from New Orleans."
And then we found some Who Dats from home, the Steibs from Ponchatoula here on vacation. But the Alaskans are asking them about the BP oil disaster.
"We had several people ask us, you know, we know what you guys are going through, and I said, yes, it's horrible, it's hurt a lot of people down there. And we just hope and pray that everything will eventually work out," said Brian Steib.
But the scenery becomes compelling as we cruise at 35 knots past waterfalls and glaciers, and into Prince William Sound, where the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred 21 years ago. The water once again looks pristine as Captain Sam Daniels guides the ferry past dolphins and sea lions, cruise ships and hunchback wales, always ready to dodge icebergs.
They call this Alaska's marine highway, the only way to get to the town of Cordova, where fisherman Russell Dardar from Pointe Aux Chene worries he'll hear about continuing problems from the Exxon Valdez spill.
"For 20 years for us to still be here, yeah, I'm afraid to find out what I'm going to find out," Dardar said.
"If you speak to the commercial fish people, they'll probably tell you the herring has never returned to the level it was," said Pete Heddell, a Whittier, Alaska businessman.
Long after the sunset in New Orleans, it was still shining here when we arrived in Cordova. And over the next two days, the worried visitors will have a chance to learn from the residents of Alaska.
"There is a light at the end of the tunnel," Heddell said. "The resources will rebuild. Will all of them come back? That remains to be seen."
"It's going to affect not just me and my friends, not even just my family," Dardar said. "It's going to affect the whole coast."
