Yesterday, I attended a Congressional subcommittee hearing in San Francisco to talk about the Cosco Busan oil spill.  The hearing was led by Representative Elijah Cummings, chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation (how’s that for a mouthful!).  Impressively, all of our Bay Area representatives showed – Pelosi, Woolsey, Lee, Miller, Tauscher, Lofgren, Lantos, and McNerney – what a turnout!  And we had Rep. Richardson from the Los Angeles area, who rightly pointed out that maritime safety is a national issue.

I was impressed with the questioning from our members of Congress.  They were asking the right questions.  How could such a mistake happen?  Why was the response so slow and disorganized?  How do we improve our laws and regulations to make sure that a spill like the ‘Cosco Busan’ never happens again?

I was not as impressed with the Coast Guard testimony.  While they owned up to the coordination problems, the Coast Guard kept saying that the response was appropriate.  I don’t understand how that can be, when no containment boom was placed around the ‘Cosco Busan’ to prevent oil from escaping out into the Bay?  For those interested, check out this YouTube version of the oil spill distribution, which demonstrates just how the strong tides and currents in San Francisco Bay made the oil churn through the Bay like it was in a washing machine.  Once the oil wasn’t initially contained, it was already too late.

It seems like a lot of investigations have started.  The Coast Guard is doing its own investigation.  The National Transportation Safety Board is doing an investigation.  Governor Schwarzenegger has asked the Office of Spill Prevention and Response to conduct an investigation.  The US Attorney is doing an investigation.  And yesterday, Speaker Pelosi called for an Inspector General’s investigation.  Soon we will need an investigation to keep track of the investigations!  But unfortunately, none of these investigations are independent.  We need an independent, fresh look at our shipping safety regulations.  The regulations we have in place now are not enough to deal with the volume and size of ships we have moving through places like San Francisco Bay.

We’re calling for an independent commission that will make recommendations about how to improve our shipping safety laws.  Check out our op-ed and go to this action alert to send a message to our elected leaders.

And let’s hope we can put the safeguards in place to make sure that our waters and wildlife don’t have to suffer from this pollution again in the future!