Legislation
Congress passed the Submerged Lands Act in 1953 to clarify responsibilities between state and federal government. This was immediately followed by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) used to control leasing of exploration rights in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). The OCSLA did not contain any real environmental provisions associated with drilling and in 1969 an explosion at a drilling location off of California's coast triggered the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA concluded that every major federal action (i.e.: oil exploration on the OCS) required an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). In 1982, The U.S. Department of the Interior created the Mineral Management Service (MMS) to monitor development on the Outer Continental Shelf. The MMS leases submerged federal lands and assesses the environmental effects of exploration and drilling (by issuing an EIS). In 1984 Congress passed the National Fishing Enhancement Act (NFEA) which provided the basis for artificial reef programs. The NFEA spawned the National Artificial Reef Plan of 1985. This plan cleared the way for government-endorsed artificial reef projects and subsequently the Minerals Management Services' Rigs-to-Reef program.
In California, a bill granting oil companies the right to conditional partial removal was approved and signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010. A.B. 2503 “allows a platform owner or operator to design a ‘partial removal’ plan for a platform and to apply for permission to implement it”. The plan requires the approval of three agencies: The Department of Fish and Game (DFG), The Department of Ocean Protection Council (OPC), and the California State Lands Commission.
Read more about this topic: Rigs-to-Reefs
Famous quotes containing the word legislation:
“No legislation can suppress nature; all life rushes to reproduction; our procreative faculties are matured early, while passion is strong, and judgment and self-restraint weak. We cannot alter this, but we can alter what is conventional. We can refuse to brand an act of nature as a crime, and to impute to vice what is due to ignorance.”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)
“Statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, much legislation is moral legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres of life.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)