Oil-spill tug left short of funding
State looks to the other Washington for needed money
For the eighth consecutive year, the Legislature failed to nail down a permanent way to fund a rescue tugboat that prevents oil spills in sensitive Washington waters. Legislators' new approach this year: Let's hope the federal government will take care of it.
Lawmakers also balked at a request to build up the state's oil-spill watchdog council, leaving it with two staffers -- just half the number of, for example, the Washington Beef Commission.
To raise more money for oil-spill prevention, legislators debated whether to boost petroleum taxes by a penny or two for every 44-gallon barrel of oil processed at Washington refineries. But oil company lobbyists succeeded in beating that idea down, saying their tankers are far from the only risk for oil spills.
At the helm in all this was Gov. Chris Gregoire, who originally tried to take away the independence of the Oil Spill Advisory Council, moving it under a Department of Ecology that environmentalists characterize as overly deferential to the oil industry.
"The governor's not interested in a competitive, conflict-oriented approach to this," said Keith Phillips, Gregoire's environmental-affairs adviser. "She'd like to see us do it with what she calls the Washington way, where we sit down and agree to work things out."
Environmentalist Bruce Wishart of the group People for Puget Sound called the failure to augment the rescue tug's funding "extremely disappointing ... and especially ironic because the tug has been so successful this year."
The tug is stationed at Neah Bay, near Washington's northwest corner, in the winter and spring to aid ships in trouble that could otherwise run aground and spill oil.
It saved two stricken vessels last month, and aided more than 30 since 1999. Yet its last day on duty is Sunday. Then it returns next fall. But no funding was set aside to keep it operating after that deployment.
Continue reading this article from the Seattle P-I:
Oil-spill tug left short of funding
