contingency planning prior to an event?
Bennis： Under OPA-90, we have funds available for OPA-90 preparedness exercises, and each regional response team, each region, is funded a certain amount for the prep exercises, area contingency plan, planning, production, and that money comes from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. It's not tax dollars, it's Trust Fund dollars.
Suzuki： The U.S. compensation system only applies domestically, in the United States, I believe. As to authority given to the Federal On-Scene Coordinator, you mentioned that he is endowed with very broad authority and power given, but when it comes to costs incurred for this response and for damage compensation, is the Federal On-Scene Coordinator in a position to decide on these matters as well?
Bennis： As the final authority with regard to the level of response, the amount of money expended on the response―if I understand your question properly. I would say the answer is yes. We have incidents that, when the response is over, the responsible party will come back and say, "It appears that more was spent than I anticipated would be spent," and they may question certain areas of expenditure―as was mentioned earlier, there was a question on the causeway. The FOSC would be the individual who would come back and he would say, "We spent the money on this causeway because ...," or he would say, "That's a good point." We are flexible. As an example, we have had incidents in the U.S. where we have required the use of a United States Coast Guard helicopter, and afterwards somebody said it would have been much cheaper to use a private helicopter. We're negotiable on that. We will then fund a certain portion of that out of the Fund.
I will say this, as an interesting note that I didn't bring up: Under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, if we identify a spiller, a responsible party, and he refuses to accept responsibility or denies responsibility and we use our Fund to conduct that cleanup, under the law, if subsequent to the cleanup we determine that that responsible party was in fact the spiller, we can recover the cost of cleanup from that spiller times three. So there is a certain incentive there for a spiller, if they know they're the spiller, to step right up to the plate and accept responsibility and fund the response―because if they don't, and they know they're the responsible party, it will cost them three times the response.
