Watch out--the risk of an oil spill in Washington state just went up.

The state Department of Ecology has announced deep budget cuts in their spill prevention and response programs. So even as we are feeling really good that there is a tugboat out at Neah Bay to make sure ships in trouble don’t end up causing an oil spill, spill risks are going up in other ways—because of fewer inspectors, less work on regulations and not enough spill response staff. In short, a small program already struggling with their big job just got smaller.

Why is this happening? You might assume it’s because the state is having to cut back in a lot of ways, and this is just is just one of those things. Wrong. The state’s spill prevention and response program is supposed to be funded—appropriately—by a small tax on oil shipped into the state, and not subject to the vagaries of the overall state budget.

Surprise! Between the oil industry’s impressive lobbying, and the governor and legislature’s failure to respond to years of warning of this funding shortfall, here we are. The oil companies (have you heard that they are having financial troubles?) are paying less than a pittance, and the whales, the birds, the fish and the people will pay the real price of slashing spill prevention and response.

To support oil spill prevention and responses, oil companies pay 5 cents for every barrel of crude oil shipped into the state. Believe it or not, that 5 cents has never been indexed for inflation since it was first imposed in 1991! So a funding level based on 1991 salaries and expenses is still expected to do the job almost 20 years later. How would you like to live on your 1991 wages?

To add insult to injury, the nickel is actually refunded to the oil companies if the oil or refinery products are shipped out of state, yet doubling the spill potential to our waters. And wait—the 5 cents is actually only 4 cents much of the time, because of a “cap” on the response fund successfully lobbied into law by—you guessed it—the oil companies.

Over the past several years, the Oil Spill Advisory Council (RIP—it fell victim to the industry lobby too) worked long and hard with the Department of Ecology to come up with funding solutions to make sure that our oil spill programs avoided the funding train wreck so obviously coming. Unfortunately, all that work fell on deaf ears.

This is not rocket science—indeed, there are several effective and fair solutions, like:

• The 5 cents could be indexed to inflation;
• The refund could be eliminated; or
• A different fee could be imposed—like a small payment whenever oil is transferred over water, for example when a ship is fueled or a tanker is unloaded.

What will it take for the governor and legislature to fix this problem? God help us if the only way to get a solution is to suffer a devastating spill.