The Oil Pollution Act

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The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) was signed into law in August 1990, largely in response to rising public concern following the Exxon Valdez incident. The OPA improved the nation's ability to prevent and respond to oil spills by establishing provisions that expand the federal government's ability, and provide the money and resources necessary, to respond to oil spills. The OPA also created the national Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is available to provide up to one billion dollars per spill incident.

In addition, the OPA provided new requirements for contingency planning both by government and industry. The National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (NCP) has been expanded in a three-tiered approach: the Federal government is required to direct all public and private response efforts for certain types of spill events; Area Committees -- composed of federal, state, and local government officials -- must develop detailed, location-specific Area Contingency Plans; and owners or operators of vessels and certain facilities that pose a serious threat to the environment must prepare their own Facility Response Plans.

Finally, the OPA increased penalties for regulatory noncompliance, broadened the response and enforcement authorities of the Federal government, and preserved State authority to establish law governing oil spill prevention and response.

http://www.epa.gov/oem/content/lawsregs/opaover.htm

Following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, numerous U.S. Senators attempted to pass a bill to raise the $75 million cap limit to $10 billion, retroactive to before the spill occurred. This would still only constitute a fraction of the estimated total damage. Senators of both Republican Party and Democratic Party blocked efforts for new legislation on multiple occasions due to the potential unintended consequences that a new law could have.[4]. Democratic Party senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana was quoted in saying “We want to be careful before we change any of these laws that we don’t jeopardize the operations of an ongoing industry, because there are 4,000 other wells in the Gulf that have to go on,” .[5] This statute limits British Petroleum's (BP) monetary damages to $75 million for losses to private parties, although it still remains liable for all cleanup costs under the law.[6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_Pollution_Act_of_1990


another toothless law created by our bought and paid for federal government :roll:

ed243421

at what point do we stop blaming THEM for doing things like this and start blaming OURSELVES for allowing it to happen?

how powerful are they?

Godfather.

ed243421 wrote:

at what point do we stop blaming THEM for doing things like this and start blaming OURSELVES for allowing it to happen?

how powerful are they?

more than we know.......OMP = oil money power

Pepe Silvia

ed243421 wrote:

at what point do we stop blaming THEM for doing things like this and start blaming OURSELVES for allowing it to happen?

how powerful are they?

that's the beauty of the 2 corporate party system and 'the lesser of 2 evils' bs argument.

they fool themselves into thinking they have to vote for a certain corporate fuck because the opponent is a slightly bigger corporate fuck (in their minds but in reality it's just because that person panders to their side)

blackredyellow

Pepe Silvia wrote:

ed243421 wrote:

at what point do we stop blaming THEM for doing things like this and start blaming OURSELVES for allowing it to happen?

how powerful are they?

that's the beauty of the 2 corporate party system and 'the lesser of 2 evils' bs argument.

they fool themselves into thinking they have to vote for a certain corporate fuck because the opponent is a slightly bigger corporate fuck (in their minds but in reality it's just because that person panders to their side)

The only "change" we ever vote for is the name that the lobbyists checks are made out to.