Title: Oil Pollution Act of 1990 - WikiMili, The Best Wikipedia Reader
Headings: Oil Pollution Act of 1990
Oil Pollution Act of 1990
Oil Pollution Act of 1990
Contents
History/Background
Enactment timeline
Key Content (Titles) [1]
Enforcement
Concerns and reactions
Long-term effects of OPA
International treaties

Content: This statue, in an attempt to protect the shipping industry, stated that vessel owners were liable for incident-related costs up to the post-incident value of their vessel. The shortcomings of this law were revealed in 1967 with the release of over 100,000 tons of crude oil into the English Channel from the Torrey Canyon. Of the $8 million of cleanup-related costs, the owners of the Torrey Canyon were held liable for only $50—the value of the only remaining Torrey Canyon lifeboat. In the meantime, the Oil Pollution Act of 1924 had passed, but this statue only limited liability for deliberate discharge of oil into marine waters. [ 4]
Two years following the Torrey Canyon spill, an oil platform eruption in the Santa Barbara Channel made national headlines and thrust oil pollution into the public spot light. As a result, in 1970, Congress placed oil pollution under the authority of the Federal Water Pollution Act (FWPA) of 1965, which later became the Clean Water Act of 1972 and had previously only covered sewage and Industrial discharge. The FWPA set specific liability limitations. For example, vessels transporting oil were liable only up to $250,000 or $150 per gross ton. These limitations rarely covered the cost of removal and cleanup, let alone damages. [ 4]
In the decades to follow, several other laws that dealt with oil spill liability and compensation were passed.