State, Alyeska deny accountability for spill response
Oil company and state regulators' heads are firmly stuck in the sand about the risk of oil spills from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. This was evidenced in competing briefs just filed in our legal appeal of the oil spill contingency plan (or lack thereof) for the Copper River.
Our legal argument is that Alyeska's oil spill contingency plan must identify and protect environmentally sensitive areas. Politicians and PR people like to claim environmentally sensitive areas are protected. The laws say they are in as many words.
The oil companies don't want to and the state says they don't have to, but a growing chorus of Alaskans are demanding that they must include the Copper River area, home to a world-famous fishery, renowned wildlands, and livelihood for thousands of Alaskans. Even a small spill into the water could spell disaster. Fishermen, who lived through the Exxon Valdez in neighboring Prince William Sound, don't aim to let that happen.
Alyeska responds to this clear version of the law with the absolutely nuts claim that as long as they can come up with a single, successful, hypothetical spill scenario, then they've met the law and don't have to do anything else. Their preferred scenario happens to be in the interior forests above the Slana River, an entire mountain range away from the Copper River drainage.
Their argument is a last-ditch effort to avoid a fact-finding hearing into the gaping holes we've identified in spill prevention and response planning on the Copper River. Fishermen, Alaska Natives, Landowners, business owners, scientists are lined up to prove our case. We can prove that Alyeska's plan guarantees failure to respond to spills at the Klutina, Tazlina, or Gulkana River crossings.
It is absolutely crazy, but a one in five chance of destroying an international treasure and someone else's livelihood is cost-effective for oil companies.
It gets even crazier. At Alyeska the pressure from above is for relentless cost-cutting. So they've gone the extra mile and are skimping on spill prevention and response as well. Apparently the cost of letting spills happen and dealing with lawsuits, is cheaper than getting prepared to a standard that would contain spills before they escape downstream.
Given they are making billions of dollars in profit each year, it's not too much to as BP, Conoco and Exxon to do things right.
The oil company's lawyer laments that protecting the Copper River is an unreasonable burden, because, "the entire pipeline route is within one important watershed or another."
Hmm.
posted by Cascadia Wildlands @ Thursday, April 10, 2008
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