A Utah man, whose Alaskan fishing career ended with the Exxon oil disaster 20 years ago, says the Gulf Coast spill will ruin the livelihoods of thousands of other people who make money off the land and the sea.

"This is all too familiar a story," said Kent Bowen, who fished the Alaskan waters in the 1980s. "People will never get compensated for what they've [already] lost and all that they're going to lose. My advice for the people on the Gulf Coast: Don't put your life on hold waiting for the oil company to make you financially whole."

Bowen, 58, of Park City, remembered the words of a top Exxon executive official in 1989, soon after the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound: "We will make you whole."

"I sort of believed it," said Bowen, who had fished for sockeye salmon along the Kensai River, some 100 miles west of the spill. "But in the 20 years of litigation, the state and federal governments did nothing to help get the lawsuit settled. Exxon kept appealing because our legal system is set up to their advantage to do so."

People living on the Gulf Coast will directly feel effects from the Exxon disaster.

In the wake of the Alaska spill, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which puts a $75 million limit on economic damages an oil company can pay as a penalty. Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, the only remaining member of the Utah delegation from that time, voted in favor of the cap.

"Individuals hurt by the Gulf spill, such as fisherman, processing plants, small-business and resort owners, can expect to see 20 to 30 years of litigation before they'll get any money back -- and in the end, they'll get only a small amount of damages," predicted

Brian O'Neill, an attorney with the firm Faegre & Benson, who represented numerous Alaskans after the Exxon disaster.

Bowen is evidence of that prediction. He was among 33,000 plaintiffs awarded $5 billion in punitive damages in 1994.

Exxon appealed the jury's verdict, and over the years, various appellate courts cut that amount in half. Exxon then appealed the award to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in June 2008, the justices slashed the punitive damages from $2.5 billion to $507.5 million.

Last June, still another federal ruling ordered Exxon to pay an additional $480 million in interest on the corporation's delayed punitive damage award -- more than 20 years after the spill.

"Waiting and waiting for a settlement gnaws away at you," said Bowen. "We returned to Utah and took a gamble when we bought a house in Park City that needed extensive work done on it. When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Exxon, we ended up having a house that we still can't afford to renovate."

Bowen had received a payment from Exxon the same year of the spill, compensating him for losses from a single fishing season. Several years later, he received a second check of less than $10,000. The punitive damage and interest checks came in December of 2008 and early last year, long after he lost his business.

Beginning in 1992, salmon runs begin declining. Eventually, Bowen was no longer able to continue fishing. The price of fishing permits crashed, and boats were sold for pennies on the dollar.

"I can't put a price on the money I lost," he said. "The spill changed my life. I can't fish anymore -- and that is what I've always wanted to do."

Bowen counts himself was luckier than many other Alaskans. He had started a West Jordan company, Fog River, to market the salmon he had once caught. When fewer salmon returned to spawn, he and his brother John began marketing fish from other sources. Today, one of their customers is Sysco Intermountain, a division of the nation's largest food distributor.

"We know people who had young children, who years later were trying to figure out how to pay for their kid's college education -- and still there was no settlement," said Bowen. "The strain wrecked marriages, and the effects are still seen on the land today."

A study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2007 determined that more than 26,000 thousand gallons of oil remained in the sandy soil of contaminated shorelines, declining at a rate of less than 4 per year. At the time of the study, which Exxon disputed, the Texas-based company posted an annual profit of $39.5 billion, the largest by a U.S. company.

Today, pink and sockeye salmon are considered recovered from the effects of the spill. But the Prince William Sound herring fishery has been closed for 15 of the 21 years since the spill, and herring are not considered recovered, according to Trustee Council. The council was formed to oversee restoration efforts. Commercial fishing, as a lost or reduced service, is considered to be in the process of recovering.

In what would be a portend of the Gulf disaster, the council reported that despite opportunities to skim the oil from the Exxon spill before it hit the shorelines, "almost none was scooped up."