OPA 90
A Legislative Success Story

Landmark legislation following on the heels of the nation's worst environmental disaster, the 11-millon-gallon Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA90) profoundly changed domestic and international oil transportation in the United States.

Among its key provisions:

• required double hulls for newly constructed tankers operating in U.S. waters, and the phaseout or retrofit of existing single hull vessels by 2015.
• established area committees of federal, state and local officials, and charged them with developing comprehensive oil spill contingency plans. Vessel response plans and facility response plans also are required.
• significantly expanded Coast Guard response capabilities, including creation of a National Strike Force Center in Elizabeth City, North Carolina providing specialized equipment, data and personnel to support three national strike forces in New Jersey, Alabama and California.
• created a billion-dollar Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to assure adequate federal funding for quick response.
• raised the limits of liability for those that spill oil and broadened the scope of damages that claimants can recover. Before OPA90, most non-federal claimants were forced to seek redress directly from the negligent party. Compensable damages were narrowly defined, and existing case law stipulated that in order to claim damage one had to be physically impacted or touched by the oil.

The results speak for themselves:

• The average number of oil spills over 10,000 gallons has dropped 50% from pre-1991 levels.
• The number of gallons of oil spilled per million gallons shipped has dropped 64%, from an annual average of 14 gallons for the years 1983 to 1990 to 5 gallons from 1991 to 1998.

Rehab is for the Birds

Advance planning and well-trained volunteers helped Lee Fox and Save our Seabirds, Inc. set a world record that still stands 10 years after the 1993 oil spill. "We saved 85% of the birds we got - a total reversal of the typical 15% survival rate after an oil spill," she says.

Of the 371 birds rescued, 318 were released. Perhaps more importantly, of the 100 birds banded with identification tags, only one died of unknown causes after the event.

Lessons learned in that event have since spread around the world. Fox and Shannon Aery, the organization's executive director, traveled to Spain to help after thousands of birds were oiled when the Prestige sunk last year. Fox's Oiled Wildlife Response Manual has been sent to organizations in areas ranging from Brazil to Canada as well as England, Germany and Spain.

As part of the region's oil spill contingency plan, Fox had trained nearly 100 volunteers to clean oil wildlife 10 months before the '93 spill. When birds started washing ashore, more than 3000 volunteers mobilized for the four-week effort, washing each animal at least three times to remove the oil.

Without that advance planning, Fox might not have had access to hot water - an absolute necessity for cleaning oiled wildlife. "We'd worked with local utilities and identified a system they could load on a truck and take just about anywhere," she said.

If another spill occurred tomorrow, Fox has fewer trained volunteers standing by, but a wealth of experience and a brand-new mobile unit provided by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. "We can get hot water anywhere we need it in the state, plus the supplies we need to start working."