Political leaders ranging from Winston Churchill to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have long opined on the importance of never letting a good crisis go to waste. Whether the Refugio oil spill qualifies as “good” depends, no doubt, on one’s vantage point. Probably the dead dolphins that washed ashore, their mouths blackened with oil, might have an opinion on the matter.
Earlier this week, state representatives Hannah-Beth Jackson and Das Williams dropped a legislative cluster bomb of gut-and-amend bills designed to prevent future Refugio spills from taking place. Late Wednesday night — 30 minutes before the stroke of midnight — Congressmember Lois Capps — managed to get an amendment to an appropriations bill passed that would require the federal agency responsible for pipeline safety to enact new rules and regulations relating to leak detection and shutdown capacity.
As quick fixes go, it ain’t. It’s weedy and wonky in the extreme, but it sends a clear message that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) — an especially obscure agency within the Department of Transportation — needs to stop dragging its feet on such matters. According to some Capitol Hill staffers who’ve bird-dogged the agency in the past, PHMSA has been under pressure from Congress to enact such regulations since 2002, but it has been especially slow to act. According to PHMSA spokesperson Damon Hill, drafting new rules involves a nine-step process, the first being an “advanced notice of proposed rule making.” PHMSA took that first step in 2010, but has yet to take the second one — the actual notice of proposed rule making.