Perata Blasts Schwarzenegger Administration for Failure of Response on San Francisco Oil Spill

Nearly half of the seats on the state’s regional water quality boards are empty because the Governor has not filled them. The San Francisco Regional Water Quality Board does not presently have enough members for a quorum and so cannot even meet to decide how to take action on the Cosco Busan spill, which dumped 58,000 gallons of toxic fuel into the San Francisco Bay last week.

“This is outrageous,” Perata said. “The San Francisco Regional Water Quality Board should be working with other government agencies and playing an important role in the clean up of this oil spill and punishing the offenders, if necessary, but it cannot.”

Perata wants quick action by the Governor: "We are fortunate to have a celebrity Governor who has called international attention to the quality of the environment. But this is a case where we are talking action and not taking action. So the Governor now has to bear a certain burden of responsibility here. It's his administration, it's his watch. We knew this was happening. The legislature acted. And I'm not blaming the Governor--I'm saying you've got to fix something now because before it was speculative--now it's reality."

This passage gives a flavor of what Perata had to say as he spoke without notes and with passion:

"We have collected enough money to deploy people on the bay to respond to a spill. But the Administration just hasn't spent the money.

"The Governor had an audit in 2005. The audit said that we are woefully under funding, understaffing and we are ill prepared to respond to a major spill. Nothing that I know of has been done to date.

"I had a bill this year that was vetoed that would have modernized the water control agencies for the regions so that they operate more effectively. This region is notorious for its lax enforcement. So, while we can fly around here and look over and say "golly, this is a problem and ain't it a shame" there are things that we should have been doing that we can still do right now to make things better the next time. Or perhaps do things to make sure there isn't going to be a next time or if there is one, it's going to be further away.

"It's been 20 years since the last calamity we had and the number of ships that come in and out of the Port of Oakland in that time has tripled. We ought to be better--We should be more capable and not less capable.

"The most staggering thing that I read in the audit report was that the training manual that the office of oil spill prevent recovery has, says that they should be drilling, training, a certain number of times, a certain number of days per year. They only have staff and equipment to do that 3% of the time. So, if you looked at these people as being the firefighters on the bay, we have no firefighters. It would be the equivalent of having a forest fire like they did in Southern California and nobody showed up.

"We have a Governor who's brought attention to the environment throughout the world. What you can't do is talk about taking action; you've got to take action. This one was not difficult. It was predicted by his own department and nothing was done.

"Four years ago, Gray Davis, the previous governor, vetoed a bill that would have added a nickel a barrel fee to marine fuel that would have allowed us to even further extend our capabilities. So, for some reason in this state, we take a beautiful environment and we take it for granted. And this is exhibit A of how we are failing to do the things that we were given the public trust to do. And that's embarrassing.

"If you have a nine member board, and you only have four members appointed, you cannot do business. You cannot operate. And the regional quality control board staff knows as much about the ecology of this bay as anybody. But as I said, if they don't have any leadership there, if they are not allowed to deploy all that knowledge goes for naught."

Ann Notthoff, California Advocacy Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), noted the history of California legislation in this area, the reasons for it, and the failures. She said:

"20 years ago with Exxon Valdez, we've enacted strong laws.

"What's happened is that we've become complacent. While we have the resources and we have put in the funding mechanism in place to fund an oil spill prevent and response fund, we are not deploying that. The same way we are not deploying the funds at the state level, we also have equipment here in the Bay and equipment along the West Coast, but that hasn't been drilled often enough, there haven't been enough practices so that when something did happen people weren't ready to go as quickly as they needed to go.

"It's clear that we are not doing enough prevention as we need, because one of the most important lessons that we've learned from oil spills around the country is that prevention is where it's all at. Because once it hits the water, you've really lost most of the battle and you're just trying to catch up at that point."

Perata summed it up with a baseball analogy in answering a question of what was the biggest problem--staffing, drilling, technology, equipment, or leadership. His answer involved all of these:

"I know from the 2005 audit that the office that is responsible for the training and development--their plan calls for a certain number of drill exercises planning exercises per year. They only have enough staff to do about three percent of those drills. So, they could have the best equipment in the world, which they don't, the best technology in the world, which I'm sure they don't have, the best communications in the world which seems to have been lacking but they don't have any practice in any of this. So, it's kind of like going to start your first game of the season with no Spring training. These people don't have the ability to do their job because they do not have enough staff to field a team."

His hopes are that the Governor will take all the action he can now and then sign legislation for the rest:

"A lot of this stuff has been documented. His own staff has provided him with an audit which has a series of recommendations. I would hope that the Governor would just grab the audit and do whatever he can by executive order right now. What cannot be done, the legislation of mine that he vetoed on the water quality control boards, I'll put it right back on his desk and he can sign it this time."

Finally, Perata noted that failure to respond to the Bay spill promptly and effectively is only the tip of the iceberg:

"And the reality of this is that this is just cold water thrown on us in the middle of the night. We are polluting the Bay on a daily basis. If we don't have the agency set up to do the job that it's supposed to do, clean water is just another phrase that has no reality."