House Votes to Let States Enact Strict Oil Spill Laws

In a major victory for environmentalists, the House voted Wednesday to significantly strengthen federal oil spill legislation by preserving the right of states to enact their own, stricter standards for clean-up efforts and liability limits.

Voting 279 to 143 after heated debate, the House adopted a package of amendments by Reps. George Miller (D-Martinez) and Gerry E. Studds (D-Mass.) that leaves intact existing oil-spill standards adopted by California and several other states.

By a razor-thin margin of 213 to 207, the House adopted a separate amendment by Miller that would lift all limits on the financial liability of tankers and oil companies responsible for oil spills in cases of negligence.

Although work on the measure has not been completed, Wednesday’s votes settled a longstanding congressional controversy over the rights of states to set their own oil spill clean-up and liability requirements.

The amendments sponsored by Miller and Studds shored up what critics had argued was the weakest part of the bill by striking a provision to set uniform, and in most cases, lower federal standards for oil spill liabilities than those in effect in a number of states.

The votes also bring the House bill into closer alignment with legislation already passed by the Senate. The House is expected to finish work on the bill today and send it to a conference committee, where House and Senate negotiators will try to iron out differences between the two versions of the measure.

Long considered more sympathetic to oil industry interests, lawmakers in the House were frequently at loggerheads with the Senate over the question of state oil spill standards. But the ecological damage caused by the Exxon Valdez oil spill last March and the Bush Administration’s new emphasis on environmental issues appear to have weakened the oil industry’s influence on the Hill.

“The Congress had to decide whether this bill would be an environmental bill or a company bill and it decided it would be an environmental bill,” Miller said after the vote.

“The Exxon Valdez was a national environmental insult to the American people, and today’s vote was the House’s response to its constituents’ outrage,” he said.

Like the Senate version passed in August, the House bill would create a national fund, probably financed by a new tax on oil, to pay for oil spill damages. It would make cleanup a federal responsibility coordinated by the Coast Guard.

With the adoption of Miller’s amendment on negligence standards, the House measure goes even further than the Senate bill, which provides for unlimited liability only in instances of “gross negligence.”

The American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade association, issued a strongly worded statement calling on President Bush to veto the bill if it goes to his desk in its present form.

“We are dismayed and distressed that the House has taken this gigantic step backwards in environmental protection. If the House’s plan is adopted into law, many responsible transporters of oil will likely be driven out of business and replaced by less financially responsible and capable shippers,” the trade group said.

“Unless altered by conference committee action, we must strongly urge that the President veto this legislation,” the API said.

While supporters of the bill said that the House provision on negligence standards may be scaled back to conform with the Senate version, they expressed enthusiasm bordering on surprise at the extent of their victory.

“We think it’s very significant and very exciting. These (votes) add real teeth to the bill and, for the first time, we have a real deterrent to pollution by the oil industry,” said Bob Sulnick, executive director of the Santa Monica-based American Oceans Campaign.

Most of the day-long debate focused on the question of whether states should retain the right they now have to enact and enforce their own oil pollution laws, a controversy that has long blocked passage of legislation in the House.

Supporters of the state preemption provision contained in the House bill argued that creating a single federal standard to replace a patchwork of existing state laws would ensure a speedier and more effective response to another disaster like the Exxon Valdez spill.