• Several notable oil spill disasters in recent history led to the creation of new agencies and regulations designed to reduce environmental damage from the production, transport and storage of oil.

Water pollution is not a new phenomenon. It is likely our ancestors in the Middle Ages had water pollution with human and animal waste and ordinary garbage. However, in recent history industrialized areas experienced a new kind of water pollution — oil spills from onshore or offshore facilities. Several oil spill disasters have shaped U.S. laws and regulations for oil spill prevention. Four of them are covered here.

1969 Cuyahoga River fire in Ohio

What makes the Cuyahoga River fire so infamous is that the river became so polluted that the water erupted into flames. The first known fire occurred in 1936, when a spark from a blowtorch ignited floating debris and oils. Over the next 30 years, the river caught fire several more times.

In 1969, another major fire erupted, but this time, the national news media covered the story, and this prompted the nation to take action against water pollution. The overwhelming public response to the fire, in part, helped create the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 and motivated Congress, in 1972, to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) to make it unlawful for anyone to discharge any pollutant, including oil, into navigable waters, unless a permit was obtained. This amended law became known as the Clean Water Act (CWA) we know today.

1988 Monongahela River diesel tank release in Pennsylvania

In January 1988, the shell plates of a reconstructed four-million-gallon aboveground storage tank in Floreffe, Pennsylvania, experienced a “brittle fracture” failure. Brittle fracture is a type of structural failure in aboveground steel tanks, characterized by rapid crack formation that can cause sudden tank failure. The tank split apart while being filled to capacity for the first time after it had been dismantled and moved from an Ohio location and reassembled at the Floreffe facility. After splitting, the tank collapsed and discharged approximately 3.8 million U.S. gallons of diesel fuel. Of this amount, approximately 750,000 U.S. gallons were discharged into the Monongahela River. The spill temporarily contaminated drinking water sources, damaged the ecosystems of the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers, and negatively affected private property and local businesses. The spill highlights the direct impact inland spills can have on large populations — in this case, one million people were affected.

1989 Prince William Sound oil spill in Valdez, Alaska

On March 24, 1989, a fully loaded oil tanker grounded and ruptured, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, an environmentally sensitive area. It turns out underwater rocks tore huge holes in eight of the vessel’s 11 giant cargo holds. Seven hours after the spill was reported, the resulting oil slick was 1,000 feet wide and four miles long. The spill made national headlines, and in response to the new public awareness of the damaging effects of major oil spills, Congress unanimously enacted tougher oil spill legislation. On August 18, 1990, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA) was signed into law.

1991 butter spill in Madison, Wisconsin

Not all oil spills involve petroleum oil. Animal fats and vegetable oils can also cause great harm to the environment when spilled. The butter spill described here demonstrates that oil spills can come from many different sources and that fires and other incidents can lead to spills. A fire broke out at a refrigerated warehousing facility in Madison, Wisconsin, in May 1991. The fire destroyed roughly 50 million pounds of food, including nearly 16 million pounds of butter. When the fire reached the butter and animal tallow in the warehouse, it became a hard-to-control grease fire. Melted butter spilled into roadways and ditches, threatening the environment and making it more difficult to fight the fire.

Six truckloads of sand were applied to the butter spill in an attempt to absorb it and prevent it from reaching Starkweather Creek. Engineers dug a channel from the warehouse to a low-lying area beneath a highway overpass and built hundreds of feet of redirecting dikes to allow the melted butter to flow into the depression and other lagoons. Very few contaminants were reported to have reached the creek. It was hypothesized that, had the butter been able to reach the creek, the resulting loss of oxygen in the water would have affected the resident fish species and reversed the effects of a recent $1 million cleanup effort in the area’s watershed.