Greater environmental risk: tennis shoes or crude oil?
By Capt. Michael Moore
February 12, 2010
It’s good to see that the news media is shining some light on the issue of paying for a standby tug at NeahBay. (See Kitsap Sun coverage below).
The tug’s purpose is to prevent a catastrophic oil spill that could result from a disabled ship grounding along the WashingtonCoast or in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Under state law, companies that operate large vessels in the strait have to share in the costs of paying for a stand-by tug to help prevent an oil spill by a drift grounding.
That’s fine. The fairest way to allocate tug costs would seem to be on the basis of how much oil is carried on ships navigating the strait. Vessel operators should pay on the basis of how much oil is moved through the strait on their ships. It’s oil that poses a risk, not tennis shoes (or other consumer goods). Cargo ships carry about 20% of the oil (as fuel), tankers about 80% of the oil (as cargo and fuel). It seems that a fair share is pretty straight forward.
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