To: Gina McCarthy, Environmental Protection Agency and Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Office of Management and Budget
Revise oil spill dispersant regulations
Do what it takes to revise the oil spill dispersant regulations!
I am writing because I care about the chemicals that are being released into our oceans. The dispersants we use to fight oil spills should not make oil even more harmful to the environment. But we can’t know whether they do until those dispersants have been sufficiently tested and enough information is known about their effectiveness and toxicity.
Please hurry up and update the existing regulations governing dispersants so that this testing and information is required. Without reform to the current flawed system, we face the threat of another chaotic and uninformed response when the next oil spill catastrophe hits.
The EPA knows that these reforms are necessary. So please do what it takes to publish the rule and make the changes necessary to inform future oil spill responders and to protect our coastal communities.
I am writing because I care about the chemicals that are being released into our oceans. The dispersants we use to fight oil spills should not make oil even more harmful to the environment. But we can’t know whether they do until those dispersants have been sufficiently tested and enough information is known about their effectiveness and toxicity.
Please hurry up and update the existing regulations governing dispersants so that this testing and information is required. Without reform to the current flawed system, we face the threat of another chaotic and uninformed response when the next oil spill catastrophe hits.
The EPA knows that these reforms are necessary. So please do what it takes to publish the rule and make the changes necessary to inform future oil spill responders and to protect our coastal communities.
Why is this important?
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been working on reforms to the outdated and flawed regulations governing oil spill dispersants for more than 13 years, but the Office of Management and Budget has yet to take up its required review. It’s time to move this process along and publish the rule!
The systemic flaws in the existing dispersant regulations became tragically clear during the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. Because the existing regulations do not require adequate testing and disclosure of information about the dispersants that are allowed to be used, responders authorized the spraying of 1.84 million gallons of chemical dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico with no knowledge of those chemicals’ long-term impacts and effectiveness underwater. Those impacts are still reverberating through the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem today, as studies raise troubling concerns about the damage the dispersants have done to underwater marine life.
The need for reform of the flawed dispersant regulations is well-established and widely-accepted. The national commission on the Deepwater Horizon incident recommended a revision of the dispersant regulations in its Report to the President. The EPA itself has acknowledged the need for, and sense of urgency around, a reform of the current dispersant regulations.
Yet, nearly four years after the catastrophe of the Deepwater Horizon, the government is still dragging its heels in reforming the dispersant regulations to require more testing and information submission. This delay puts coastal communities at risk. Tell the EPA and OMB to hurry up already and publish revisions to the dispersant regulations.
The systemic flaws in the existing dispersant regulations became tragically clear during the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. Because the existing regulations do not require adequate testing and disclosure of information about the dispersants that are allowed to be used, responders authorized the spraying of 1.84 million gallons of chemical dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico with no knowledge of those chemicals’ long-term impacts and effectiveness underwater. Those impacts are still reverberating through the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem today, as studies raise troubling concerns about the damage the dispersants have done to underwater marine life.
The need for reform of the flawed dispersant regulations is well-established and widely-accepted. The national commission on the Deepwater Horizon incident recommended a revision of the dispersant regulations in its Report to the President. The EPA itself has acknowledged the need for, and sense of urgency around, a reform of the current dispersant regulations.
Yet, nearly four years after the catastrophe of the Deepwater Horizon, the government is still dragging its heels in reforming the dispersant regulations to require more testing and information submission. This delay puts coastal communities at risk. Tell the EPA and OMB to hurry up already and publish revisions to the dispersant regulations.