In the late 1990s, Maine BEP and DEP duked it out with the US Coast Guard and Intertanko the oil tanker lobby group, over the extent of state power to regulate interstate tanker shipping in state waters. (And lost. )
Have a listen to a 29 minute recording from a historic BEP Hearing of this struggle. Broken into 4 sections for ease of listening (Summaries of each Part provided below)
Part 1 USCG Presentation_8min35sec (partial)
Part 2 BEP / USCG Q&A 1. 6min Part 3 BEP / USCG_Q&A2_3min38sec
Part 4 BEP / USCG Q&A 3 to end 8min 7sec
Questions raised and answered in Q&A 1
Questions raised and answered in Q&A 2
Part 3 presentation & Q&A by DEP's David Look, chair of the oil spill advisory committee
Look was appointed in 1990 the Commission to Study Maine Oil Spill Preparedness At the April 28 meeting of the BEP the Commission gave unanimous recommendation that the vessel operations portions of Chapter 600 be sernt back and reviewed by his committee Look said they been at this for 6 years
Q: Why do you need look need more time?
A: Not enough input from those involved.
(Look notes that he is a spill professional not a vessel operations expert)
Q. If Coast Guard has supremacy over vessel operations what good does the state effort do?
A: We learned the more agreement ahead of time between regulators and others the better off you are
Q This has been under study 5 years. What new info haven't they had opportunity to consider?
A Right about the time, but the comments we got those arts of industry involved in vessel operationss don't feel they had opportunity for input.
Q Given your expertise in oil spills what could ahve prevented Julie N
A Don't know; not his expertrise
Q CG said state equal partner in spill incident command
A True and we work closely with the Capain of the Port...
End of recording
