Juneau -- An important piece of environmental legislation appears to have been successfully killed at the request of industry representatives. SB 273, sponsored by Senator Drue Pearce, with a companion bill in the House sponsored by the governor, would require the Alaska Railroad, fishing boats, cargo vessels, and cruise ships over 400 gross tons to provide oil spill response and contingency plans in the event of an oil spill.

Pearce introduced SB 273 in response to recent spills by the railroad and groundings of large ships. Alaska arguably has the world's best oil spill prevention and response program. However, the current state program is limited to oil tankers and on-shore oil facilities such as oil wells, pipelines, refineries, and tank farms. Alaska is the only state on the West Coast that doesn't require oil spill response and contingency plans for vessels covered by this bill.

Most of Alaska's oil spills come from carriers that are not currently required to prepare for spill response. Recently, the Alaska Railroad has had three large spills in excess of 140,000 gallons of jet fuel. Also there was the disastrous spill in 1997 where the M/V Kuroshima spilled 39,000 gallons of oil on the beaches near Dutch Harbor.

Since SB 273 was introduced two months ago, there have been three groundings. The F/V American Star went, and remains, aground in Unimak Pass. The M/V Pacsun went aground in Icy Bay, and the M/V Bovec went aground near Prince Rupert. Although none of these three groundings resulted in oil spills, they all had the potential for environmental disaster. "The fact is that spills and groundings are going to occur," said Pearce. "SB 273 is simply a vehicle to prepare a response plan for when these unfortunate accidents happen. It will expand the existing prevention and response program to include these large ships and the Alaska Railroad which transports oil in bulk."

"We've been flexible in addressing the concerns of industry so long as we were still meeting the intent of the legislation," said Pearce. "SB 273 has been amended to accommodate these needs without receiving industry reciprocity. Initially, industry claimed high compliance costs would prove costly to Alaskan business trade. But, according to testimony before the House Resources Committee, the costs would be nominal.

"We ran several fee examples for contingency plan compliance based on various sectors of industry and came up with the following findings:

• An average sized freezer vessel hauling an average load of frozen fish - 11 cents per ton.
• A coal ship hauling an average load of Coal - less than 1 cent per ton.
• An average sized cruise ship over a four-month season with an average number trips and passengers - 15 cents per passenger

"I don't find these costs overly burdensome and I'm appalled that these same shipping companies comply with similar regulations in every other west coast state but their owners are unwilling to pay these nominal costs to protect Alaska's waters. This is especially true of Trident Seafoods, the Northwest Cruise Ship Association, and even the Alaskan owned Usibelli Coal Company," said Pearce. "For the amount of money these companies have spent on their high priced lobbyists, they could have complied with SB 273 for years."

Attachments:

• Sponsor Statement
• What to you think about the issue? Should Alaska require the Alaska Railroad, fishing boats, cargo vessels, and cruise ships over 400 gross tons to provide oil spill response and contingency plans?