On the Friday of Winter Carnival, Katherine Robinson Hall filled Wege auditorium with an attentive audience and a passionate performance. Hall, a policy professor for the Williams Mystic Program and an environmental lawyer with a private practice in Rhode Island, opened up the first of a series of lectures for the Williams Oceans Symposium with a talk entitled “Disaster-driven Ocean Policy: Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Not Enough?” When considering what to discuss for her lecture, Hall asked herself “what is something that’s really bugging me that I think everyone should be talking about?” This was her answer: “what really bugs me is that nothing has happened since [the oil spill.] There’s still oil. Lots of oil.” Addressing her audience forcefully, she yelled: “if you don’t want it put in your laps, run!”
Hall went through the history of US marine policy, making the point that it was always reactive, in response to large photogenic disasters. The list went as follows:
- The 1969 Cuyahoga River Fivers instigated the creation of EPA 1970 and the Clean Water Act 1972
- The 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spills instigated the National Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act 1972
- Dolphin deaths in nets instigated the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972
- The use of sperm whale oil by Pentagon submarines instigated the Endangered species Act of 1973
- Hypodermic needles found on beaches instigated the Ocean Dumping Ban of 1988
- The 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill instigated the Oil Pollution Act of 1990
Of these disasters, “none of them compare” to the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, acknowledged as the largest accidental spill in the history of the world. 68,000 square miles of the gulf were impacted. “They could see the oil from the satellites!” said Hall, incredulous. Whereas Exxon Valdez spilled 10.9 gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound, BP spilled 127 gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. That is a ten-fold increase in environmental impact, and it has neither produced a sentence of meaningful legal change nor any technological advance in oil drilling safety or clean up. “What is UP?” asked Hall.
Hall clarified that the effects of the spill are multi-faceted. The spill continues to negatively affect an ecological system, a fishing industry, a tourism industry, and the health of untold numbers of residents. The next time Hall visits, she knows that fishermen will still be “pulling shrimps out of their nets with deformities.”
“What has our government done so that this doesn’t happen again?” asked Hall: “what about an energy policy? we don’t have any!” What kind of policy do we need? “How about let’s just say ‘let’s not be stupid. Let’s get some more information,’” argued Hall with frustration. The industry needs an incentive to provide the government with information. This requires law.
Hall worries that the public has forgotten about the spill, but “we have to try to find a way to bring it back to our consciousness.” Returning back to her initial promise, Hall concluded: “I am putting it in your hands because you have the ability to make a change.”
Written by Claire Lafave, ’12
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