East Dallas Times

By Allen Vaught, Texas House of Representatives

With heightened interested and concern over what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico with the BP oil spill, many wonder what would Texas do in such a scenario. Luckily, Texas is ahead of the game and created a contingency plan several years ago.

Oil Spill Prevention and Response Act

In an effort to complement and supplement the federal Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the Texas Legislature created the Oil Spill Prevention and Response Act, OSPRA, in 1991 during the 72nd Legislative Session to protect Texas’s coast, coastal waters, natural resources, and marine life.

The Legislature charged the Texas General Land Office, now led by Commissioner Jerry Patterson, with overseeing this program and gave them responsibility for both response efforts and pollution cleanup to an oil spill. Additionally, OSPRA ensured that the Texas Railroad Commission would remain responsible for creating rules, orders, and issuing permits to prevent such spills from occurring in the first place.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, as a third tier of OSPRA, is responsible for containing and cleaning up any hazardous materials that may result from an offshore accident.

An important component of Texas’ plan is that it does include criminal penalties for people who intentionally violate provisions of OSPRA. In fact, it is considered a class A misdemeanor if a person operates a facility or vessel without a discharge prevention or response plan, or causes, allows, and permits an unauthorized discharge of oil.

Furthermore, if a person in charge of such a vessel does not immediately notify the General Land Commissioner of a spill or discharge, they are not only guilty of a class A misdemeanor, but subject to a civil penalty of up to $250,000 for an individual, or $500,000 for a corporation.

Our Texas program in action

According to the General Land Office, the Oil Spill Prevention and Response Program, OSPR, responds to about 900 oil spills off the Texas coast each year. The program is funded through a 1 1/3 cents-per-barrel fee collected on crude oil loaded or off-loaded in Texas.

Through the collected funds, the OSPR is able to maintain five coastal offices and one Austin office, where not only do they respond to spills, but participate in community outreach efforts, provide resources to schools and organizations, and emphasize pollution prevention methods.

The OSPR is also responsible for research and development of oil spill prevention programs, maintaining an online vessel database, creating a Texas Oil Spill Planning and Response toolkit, hosting an annual Clean Gulf Conference and Exhibition, and developing a Texas Automated Buoy System that helps Texas predict the movement of oil offshore in case of a spill.

For more information about our oil spill prevention program in Texas, please visit the General Land Office Web site.

If you have questions regarding the information provided, I invite you to contact my district office at (214) 370-8305 or my Capitol office at (512) 463-0244. Please free to e-mail me as well, and be sure to include your name and full address. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sources: Texas Tribune, General Land Office