Within the past three years there
have been three oil spills in Utah. The
most recent oil spill happened near Willard Bay in March 2013. This spill received attention in part because
of the dramatic story of a beaver dam stopping an oil spill from seriously
contaminating a wildlife preserve. But
it also received attention because, unlike some of the earlier oil spills which
happened as a result of difficult to prevent accidents such as a downed power
falling on top of an oil pipeline, the Willard Bay spill happened as a result
of lax safety oversight. Federal law
puts the regulation of interstate pipelines under the jurisdiction of the Pipeline & Hazardous
Materials Safety Administration. This
administration has a limited ability to perform safety inspections because it
only has 120 inspectors covering 2.6 million miles of pipeline across the
entire nation, about 6,000 of them in Utah.
Most states do not suffer greatly from this lack of inspectors because
the law allows the administration to delegate much of its responsibilities to
state governments. As a result most
states use their own inspectors and funding from a federal matching program to
inspect interstate pipelines. Utah had
not done this, leaving all inspection work to the Pipeline & Hazardous
Materials Safety Administration instead.
Because of limited resources the pipeline was not properly monitored or
repaired and a lengthwise seam on the 60 year old pipe ruptured. Chevron spent $21.5 million in cleanup
efforts before agreeing to a court settlement to pay the Utah government
another $5.35 million in various fees and payments. Governor Herbert has promised that the state
will take a more active role in ensuring the safety of these pipelines by
working through the Departments of Commerce and Environmental Quality, but did
not propose any new legislation.
Representative Brian King in the Utah state legislature proposed looking
into legislation to toughen penalties on oil spills. In response to previous oil spills Salt Lake
City Mayor Ralph Becker proposed advocating for more tough compliance measures,
but did not advocate for change during the following legislative session and
complained that the Department of Environmental Quality told him that
enforcement measures weren't possible.
To date, the only clear response that has happened to improve interstate
pipeline safety in Utah is that Chevron paid a large settlement and spent a
large sum of money before that on cleanup efforts that may encourage them to be
more careful with other pipelines they operate.
As time passes and the matter is considered by the government, it will
become more likely that the Utah government may take more authority over
regulating these interstate pipelines, especially if significant oil spills
continue to happen at a rate of about once a year as they have been over the
last three years.
References:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/56075172-90/spill-state-pipeline-bay.html.csp
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