Groups To Sue BP Under Clean Water Act

Out of the grim saga of the Gulf Oil Spill comes some hope that BP could possibly be held accountable in a significant way for polluting the Southern US's coastline.

Three environmental groups, the Gulf Restoration Network, Louisiana Environmental Action Network and Environment America are suing BP under the Clean Water Act, charging the company with allowing oil to leak into the gulf and failing to measure the true volume of the leak.

The Clean Water Act was, after all, partly inspired into law by a 1969 oil rig spill near Santa Barbara, CA. Additionally, the Exxon Valdez Spill in the Gulf of Alaska in 1989 helped inspire the Oil Pollution Act (OPA) that strengthened the Clean Water Act to open up criminal charges and civil action against companies responsible for oil spills.

The oil rig spill near Santa Barbara leaked 100,000 barrels of oil. The Exxon-Valdez tanker spill was responsible for 10 million gallons of spilled oil. BP Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico? 22 to 35 million gallons so far. If this does not spur catastrophic fines for BP and other companies involved and new stronger legislation, I don't know what will.

Because the BP clean up effort seems to have vastly underestimated the volume of oil leaking into the ocean and used banned practices such as releasing toxic chemicals into the water to break up the oil, legal experts believe the companies could be fined as much $4.7 Billion under the Clean Water Act.

Lets hope these environmental groups are successful against what I imagine is a massive BP legel effort. We just can't afford for something like this to happen again.

You can support these groups through the following links: Gulf Restoration Network, Louisiana Environmental Action Network and Environment America.

Photo thanks to jeferonix on flickr under Creative Commons license