Oil spill governance in the United States the "Exxon Valdez" incident a number of laws were in place to prevent and respond to oil spills. These include: The above legislations were the principle governing instruments of oil spills incidents prior to the "Exxon Valdez" oil spill. Several attempts by congress to establish more encompassing and elaborate oil pollution laws were hindered by belligerent issues which mostly produced stalemates. One such conflict was federal law limiting a state's ability to enforce requirements and liability for parties responsible for causing oil spills. The focus of the debates was mostly centred on party liability. An example of the type of
Morris J. Berman oil spill of hours after the spill. As mentioned earlier, despite the overall success of Puerto Rico's oil spill response plans there were still some areas for improvement. For example, there were some mechanical failures with some skimmer boats, inappropriate use of oil soaking materials, and an insufficient number of properly trained personnel. There were also problems with communication between agencies as well as some organizational issues during the cleanup process. The Berman spill served as a field test of how well the plans set forth by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 worked, and provided many examples on how future spill