SPECIAL REPORT
DOUBLE BOTTOM DEBATE TIMELINE

ANCHORAGE- JUNE 1972: Interior Secretary Rogers Morton promises double bottoms on oil tankers that will come to Valdez.

JANUARY 1973: Coast Guard proposes rules requiring double bottoms on oil tankers.

Guard announces it won't act on double bottoms until Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO) considers them at upcoming London conference.

IMCO votes down double bottoms. Sen. Warren Magnuson, DWash., denounces the organization and the action as "an oil lobby pure and simple."

JUNE 1974: Coast Guard proposes tanker regulations not requiring double bottoms.

JANUARY 1975: James Card, a Coast Guard naval architect, publishes a study concluding that double bottoms would have contained up to 97 percent of the oil lost in 30 U.S. tanker groundings from 196973.

FEB.APRIL 1975: At the Coast Guard's request, a task force set up by the oil industry's American Petroleum Institute and chaired by a double bottoms opponent quietly writes detailed tanker design specifications for inclusion in the final tanker regulations. Double bottoms aren't required.

JULY 1975: Congress's Office of Technology Assessment concludes that double bottoms offer "a significant degree of pollution protection in the event of a grounding accident" and are safer than single bottoms.

AUGUST 1975: Coast Guard publishes the tanker design specifications drawn up by the API group. Double bottoms are not required.

SEPTEMBER 1975: Responding to a storm of criticism over the APIdrafted regulations, U.S. Secretary of Transportation William Coleman admits "the Coast Guard may not have acted in every respect in compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act." The regulations are allowed to stand, however.

DECEMBER 1976: Tanker Argo Merchant runs aground and breaks up off New England, spilling 7.6 million gallons of fuel oil into the ocean. The doublebottoms debate flares anew.

MARCH 1977: President Jimmy Carter calls for double bottoms on oil tankers.

MAY 1977: Coast Guard again proposes double bottoms for new tankers.

FEBRUARY 1978: Coast Guard again takes double bottoms to Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization, which again turns them down. Coast Guard again drops double bottoms.

SEPTEMBER 1978: Coast Guard admiral who led U.S. delegation to IMCO goes to work as president of shippers' organization long opposed to double bottoms.

MARCH 24, 1989:

Exxon Valdez hits Bligh Reef, spills 11 million gallons of North Slope crude. Double bottom

fights start up yet again

MAY 10, 1989: Coast Guard Commandant Paul Yost warns Congress that double bottoms have drawbacks.

MAY 25, 1989: Coast Guard's inhouse analysis finds double bottom would have prevented up to 60 percent of the 11milliongallon Valdez oil spill.

AUGUST 1989: U.S. Senate passes bill calling for double bottoms, but leaves plenty of loopholes.

OCTOBER 1989: Sen. Frank Murkowski says he's convinced August bill will ensure double bottoms in Prince William Sound, if nowhere else. Sen. Ted Stevens says he thinks the international shipping community will buy U.S. doublebottoms proposals this time. Congressman Don Young calls for study of neoprene tank liners as alternative to doublebottoms.

Source: Daily News research

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