California's Oil Spill Eye Opener

By Mike Young

It’s been almost a week since the Cosco Busan began spilling 58,000 gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay. As with any oil spill, the cost to the environment has been devasting with beaches all over the bay covered in oil, the bay itself highly contaminated, and hundreds of birds harmed and killed. But a week later, a bigger issue than the spill itself is how to prevent it from happening again, and one particular reason why the spill got as bad as it did was because of an arguably slow response from the Coast Guard.

And it’s not entirely their fault. One of the harsh realities is that the resources to prevent environmental disasters like the Bay Area spill have long been diminishing. Like many environmental issues have in the past decade, the problem starts on the federal level. As the LA Times reported earlier this week, the Coast Guard’s role has gradually focused away from duties involving preventing coastal degredation to filling the needs of homeland security:

"In recent years, Coast Guard staff and institutional emphasis have been shifted more toward port and coastal protection duties than marine safety and environmental response. Meanwhile, important equipment used in spill response has aged, insiders say, and training drills - routine in the years after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska - are fewer and farther between."

The result has been less staff to respond to ecological responsibilities, less training for those staff on how to handle such situations, and ultimately a slower response time upon a crisis.

Meanwhile, the State has also found itself with insufficient resources. The problem is two-fold. First, similar to the problem with the Coast Guard key state agencies have found themselves understaffed. This issue has become the focal point of the tension between Senate pro Tem Don Perata and Governor Schwarzenegger over the oil spill. Perata’s bill SB1001 would have helped resolve some of the issues with staffing on regional water boards, but Schwarzenegger vetoed it last month.

Perata said he would reintroduce Senate Bill 1001, legislation to strengthen California’s nine regional water boards by quickening appointments and boosting their powers to reduce water pollution.

Schwarzenegger said in a veto message last month that his administration needs to study problems with the various regional water boards around the state before he acts.

Comments

Posted by: niki at November 15, 2007 01:37 PM

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