Young Introduces the SAFEGUARDS Act to Address Breakdowns that Led to the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster

Young Introduces the SAFEGUARDS Act to Address Breakdowns that Led to the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster
July 2, 2010 – In response to the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf, U.S. Rep. C. W. Bill Young introduced H.R. 5677, the SAFEGUARDS Act (Secure All Facilities to Effectively Guard the United States Against and Respond to Dangerous Spills). The SAFEGUARDS Act would provide common sense solutions to help prevent oil spill disasters and improve the federal response in the event of another one.

This legislation was crafted after several meetings with the on-the-ground incident commanders, including the Coast Guard both at the national level and in the Saint Petersburg Command as well as other federal, state and local emergency responders.

The SAFEGUARDS Act would address many of the systemic breakdowns that led to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. The legislation would prohibit regulators from granting categorical exclusions from environmental laws and increase the amount of time regulators have to review exploration plans. Additionally, since the Coast Guard is in charge of cleaning up oil spills, this measure would require the Coast Guard to approve all spill response plans submitted by oil rigs. It would also require oil rigs to plan for a true worst case scenario spill, including the failure of a blowout preventer, as happened in the recent oil spill.

Furthermore, the SAFEGUARDS Act would modernize the government’s response to future oil spills. It would require periodic updates to the government’s response plan, which hasn’t been updated since 1994. The legislation would also automatically put the Commandant of the Coast Guard in charge of the response to a major oil spill and would require the EPA to begin monitoring water quality information within 48 hours after an oil spill.

In introducing H.R. 5677, Rep. Young stated: “The Federal Government’s reaction to the Gulf disaster over the last few weeks has been insufficient, to say the least. BP’s response has not been much better. We owe it to the American people and the entire Gulf coast to do better. The SAFEGUARDS Act presents common sense solutions to help prevent a disaster of this magnitude from ever happening again, and improves the federal response in the event it ever does.”

For additional information regarding the SAFEGUARDS Act, please see the attached fact sheet and press release.

Click here to view fact sheet

Click here to view press release


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