Page 77: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (October 1998)

a commitment to achieving audit- ed compliance with the

Responsible Carrier Program a condition of membership in AWO.

From now on, any company that joins AWO will pledge its commit- ment to implementing the RCP and to undergoing a third-party audit within two years.

AWO is convinced this trend toward industry standard-setting offers real opportunities both for the maritime industry and also for those who regulate it. We do not expect industry standards to elim- inate the need to ensure that an adequate regulatory floor remains in place. However, we do see real opportunities to use industry stan- dards as a supplement to, or a sub- stitute for, additional governmen- tal regulation in the future.

Industry standard-setting initia- tives like the AWO Responsible

Carrier Program, and its external counterpart, the USCG-AWO

Safety Partnership, offer a mean- ingful way to leverage government and industry resources in support of improved safety and environ- mental protection. USCG Rear

Admiral Robert C. North,

Assistant Commandant for Marine

Safety and Environmental

Protection, has talked on more than one occasion about the need to focus collective attention on "best investments" - those areas where everyone's energies will yield the greatest marine safety bang for the buck. AWO believes the trend toward industry stan- dard-setting offers an unprece- dented opportunity to target

USCG regulatory and enforcement resources where those scarce resources are most needed, while at the same time encouraging responsible operators to go beyond simple compliance with the rules to exceed the regulatory floor.

Criminal Liability

The second issue about which

AWO's members also feel strongly is the use of strict liability statutes to prosecute companies and corpo- rate officers for oil spills. This practice is undermining the objec- tives of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), which AWO believes should be the exclusive vehicle for civil and criminal penalties for oil pollution. Recent occurrences involving criminal enforcement of obscure environ- mental laws, such as the

Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the

Refuse Act, have sparked consider- able concern in the industry regarding a new emphasis on crim- inal prosecution at the expense of cooperative efforts to respond to accidents and, more importantly, to prevent them before they occur.

AWO members are certainly not suggesting the USCG does not have the right and the responsibil- ity to vigorously pursue and help prosecute those operators who flout the law or conduct negligent operations. The cause for real con- cern is the prospect of responsible companies being put in a position

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