Statements On Introduced Bills And Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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By Ms. CANTWELL:

S. 3603. A bill to amend the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to establish the Federal Oil Spill Research Committee and to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to include in a response plan certain planned and demonstrated investments in research relating to discharges of oil and to modify the dates by which a response plan is required to be updated; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Mr. President, over 21 years ago the tanker Exxon Valdez, en route from Valdez, Alaska, to Los Angeles, failed to turn back into the shipping lane after detouring to avoid ice. At 12:04 a.m., it ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound.

Within six hours, the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into the Sound's pristine waters and wrote itself into the history books as--at that time--the worst oil spill ever in U.S. waters. Eventually, oil covered 11,000 square miles of ocean.

The environmental and economic damage is impossible to both fathom and assess; countless seabirds, marine mammals, and fish were killed. As a result, companies like the Chugach Alaska Corporation went bankrupt. There were huge losses to recreational sports, fisheries, and tourism. And 21 years later there is still oil in the area.

Today, we are re-living a similar nightmare--only this time on an even larger scale. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, triggered by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the failure of its safety systems, has shattered all previous records as the single largest marine oil spill in our Nation's history. Even today, oil continues to gush from the uncapped well, furthering the devastation to the Gulf of Mexico's environment and economy.

The Exxon Valdez showed us just how unprepared we were in 1989, and the BP oil spill is showing us today how unprepared we are in 2010. While the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 has been successful in achieving many of its policy goals, the BP oil spill is proving to us that oil spill response technology remains largely stagnant, and that our response infrastructure remains inadequate.

This is why I rise today to introduce the Oil Spill Technology and Research Act.

This legislation is designed to address the massive gap in oil spill research and development that has contributed to our inability to respond to the BP oil spill. It will: put mechanisms in place that will foster continuous research and development on oil spill response methods and technologies; provide an incentive structure for translating new technologies from ideas into reality; and continuously add new layers to our oil spill safety net.

This is an important step in the right direction to improve our Nation's ability to contain and clean up oil spills in the future.

It is a proclamation that we are not going to allow complacency back at the wheel, nor are we going to allow politics to get in the way of doing what is right.

Twenty-one years ago we saw the devastating costs of complacency, and we are living that nightmare again today. It is up to us to ensure that this country's environment, economy, and people are protected with the greatest rigor that we can muster. Our oceans, coasts, and citizens deserve nothing less.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the RECORD

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