Louisiana has allowed thousands of other spills to pass

In its current issue, Gambit Weekly asks this question: In Louisiana, fewer than one in 100 oil spills result in any fine whatsoever — so why should an oil company clean up after itself? In the months since the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana regulators moved to fine BP Plc and two of its contractors as much as $1 million for each of the 86 days the runaway well gushed oil. The state attorney general also hired outside counsel to help pursue legal claims that may reach hundreds of millions of dollars. The goal is to restore the oil-stained coast “to what it was pre-spill,” says Gov. Bobby Jindal. But in hundreds of smaller, less noteworthy cases, the news magazine reports that Louisiana gave oil spillers a pass, according to a review of five years of regulatory data. Since 2007, the U.S. Coast Guard has reported fielding more complaints of oil and chemical spills from the thousands of wells and thousands of miles of pipelines in Louisiana than in any other state, exceeding 4,000 a year. In 2009, Louisiana punished oil companies for fewer than one in 100 spills, data show. Fines are measured in thousands of dollars, not millions. They take years to collect and are seldom levied against even repeat spillers. A small gas station operator was penalized for faulty paperwork while the state’s biggest oil producer paid no fines in more than a dozen spills since 2002, according to state records. “Lax enforcement leads to lax behavior,” says Paul Templet, who led the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality from 1988 to 1992 under Gov. Buddy Roemer. “You let the little things go, and you set yourself up for something big to happen.” To read the full story, click here.