During last year’s oil blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, I kept thinking about our home waters of Puget Sound.
I kept hearing reports about the conflicts and confusion among the state, federal and local governments operating in the region. I am fairly convinced that intergovernmental cooperation would be better in Washington state, because I have seen representatives of numerous agencies working together on blue-ribbon panels, high-level committees, contingency-planning efforts and oil-spill drills.
One big question that remains controversial is whether this state has enough of the right kinds of oil-spill response equipment in the right places.
On Tuesday, state Rep. Christine Rolfes, a Democrat from
Bainbridge Island, announced legislation to address this issue. She
offered her legislative proposal as the National Commission on the
BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill released its final recommendations
about what went wrong in the Gulf and what should be done to
improve deep-water drilling and oil-spill responses.
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