Environment

• Author: International Law Group

The State of Washington includes some of the Nation's most significant waters and coastal regions. Its seacoast largely consists of "wave-exposed rocky headlands separated by stretches of beach." The inland sea of Puget Sound constitutes 2,500 square miles of inlets, bays and channels supporting fisheries as well as plant and animal life of great value to the Nation and to the world.

The Strait of Juan de Fuca divides Washington from the Canadian Province of British Columbia and provides access from the high seas not only to the U.S. ports of Seattle and Tacoma but also to the Canadian port of Vancouver. The international boundary runs down the center of the Strait. Pursuant to the Agreement for a Cooperative Vessel Traffic Management System for the Juan de Fuca Region [32 U.S.T. 377, T.I.A.S. No. 9706], all inbound ocean commerce sails through Washington's waters while the outbound ships use Canadian territorial waters. U.S. flag ocean-going tankers from Alaska's North Slope reserve and foreign-flag tankers, e.g., from Venezuela and Indonesia, bring large quantities of crude oil to refineries adjacent to Puget Sound.

During World War II, tankers averaged about 16,000 tons but by the mid 1970s, 366 tankers on the world's oceans exceeded 175,000 tons. Between 1955 and 1998, the number of tankers afloat went up from 2,500 to 6,739. The vast amounts of oil carried by these (sometimes underpowered) vessels with only a few inches of metal separating the oil from the sea create serious pollution risks to Washington waters.

In 1967, the supertanker "Torrey Canyon" had spread crude oil along the coast of England. This sparked Congress to enact the Port and Waterways Safety Act of 1972 (PWSA). Similarly, the State of Washington passed stricter regulations for tankers and afforded a wider range of remedies in the case of an oil spill. After the "Exxon Valdez" ran aground in Alaska and brought about the largest oil spill in U.S. history (about 11,000,000 gallons), both Congress and Washington state took further regulatory actions. At the federal level, there was the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA). Washington state set up a new agency charged with coming up with standards to furnish the "best achievable protection" (BAP) from oil spill damages.

The International Association of Independent Tanker Owners (Intertanko) is a trade association of 305 tanker operators whose ships carry about 60% of the oil imported into the United States. It brought suit in...