H-2196.1  _______________________________________________

                          HOUSE BILL 2185

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State of Washington      55th Legislature     1997 Regular Session

By Representatives Anderson, Morris, Kessler, Blalock and Costa

Read first time 02/25/97.  Referred to Committee on Agriculture & Ecology.

Requiring development of a computer model to evaluate existing safety precautions to prevent a catastrophic oil spill.

    AN ACT Relating to oil spills; and creating new sections.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

NEW SECTION. Sec. 1.  (1) The legislature finds that:

    (a) Oil tankers delivering oil to refineries located at Ferndale must transit either through Haro or Rosario Straits;

    (b) Rosario Straits is particularly narrow and shallow, and as a result has tides that are particularly strong and difficult to predict;

    (c) Foreign tanker traffic to Puget Sound refineries may increase by eight hundred percent as a result of Congress allowing Alaskan crude oil to be exported to foreign countries;

    (d) Foreign ships have had substantially higher mechanical failure and accident rates than United States flagship tankers;

    (e) Less than twenty percent of oil tankers traveling to Washington ports have double hulls;

    (f) Rosario Straits exits through the San Juan Islands and borders rich shellfish areas of Bellingham, Samish, and Padilla Bays;

    (g) These areas are some of the most beautiful and environmentally sensitive in the world; and

    (h) While special safety measures are already in effect to prevent a catastrophic oil spill in Rosario Straits, these precautions have never been evaluated using computer modeling to simulate emergency conditions.

    (2) The legislature therefore declares that it is in the public interest for the office of marine safety or the department of ecology, as appropriate, to conduct computer modeling of emergency conditions in the Rosario Straits to evaluate existing safety precautions.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 2.  (1) The office of marine safety, or its successor, shall develop a computer model to simulate emergency conditions in the Rosario Straits for the purpose of evaluating the ability of existing safety precautions to prevent a catastrophic oil spill. 

    (2) The agency conducting the computer simulation under this section shall report its findings to the appropriate standing committees of the legislature by December 1, 1998.

    (3) This act is null and void unless funding is specifically provided by June 30, 1997, in the omnibus appropriations budget act for the computer simulation required in subsection (1) of this section.

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