Opinion ID: 27770
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Statutory Developments: FWPCA

Text: 23 In opposition to this dictum, argues Marine Salvage, stands positive law. As a general rule, court-made admiralty law applies only in the absence of relevant federal statutory law. 30 Thus, even if here we were to assume without granting that in other circumstances the Coast Guard could assert a salvage claim, this case requires only that we address how that putative common-law right fares in the face of statutory provisions enacted since American Oil was decided. 31 For it was pursuant to these post- American Oil enactments — portions of the FWPCA — that the Coast Guard asserted it was acting to secure the CABOT. Examination of those FWPCA provisions reveals that they expressly require the Coast Guard to abate threats of oil pollution. For the district court to conclude that the Coast Guard had no pre-existing duty to act in this case was therefore legal error. 24 The FWPCA declares a national policy that there should be no discharges of oil or hazardous substances into or upon the navigable waters of the United States. 32 To effect this policy, says the statute, the President shall prepare and publish a National Contingency Plan [`NCP'] for removal of oil. 33 The FWPCA mandates that the NCP shall provide for efficient, coordinated, and effective action to minimize damage from oil and hazardous substance discharges and shall include (C) Establishment or designation of Coast Guard strike teams, consisting of — 25 (i) personnel who shall be trained, prepared and available ... to carry out the National Contingency Plan; 26 (ii) adequate ... pollution control equipment and material; and 27 (iii) a detailed oil and hazardous substance pollution and [sic] prevention plan. 34 28 [A]ctions to minimize damage from oil and hazardous substance discharges shall... be in accordance with the NCP. 35 The Secretary of Transportation shall establish in each Coast Guard district a Coast Guard District Response Group, which shall consist of the Coast Guard personnel and equipment ... of each port within the district. 36 The FWPCA further mandates that the NCP shall designate the Federal official who shall be the `Federal On-Scene Coordinator' for each port or harbor area. 37 The mandatory shall is ubiquitous in the FWPCA. 29 These and other provisions 38 of the FWPCA make abundantly clear that the Coast Guard's duty to respond to a threatened oil spill is mandatory, not optional. Many of these mandatory provisions were enacted in 1990, in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and embody a congressional policy that the Coast Guard must respond swiftly and effectively to threatened oil spills. The Coast Guard therefore cannot forthrightly analogize its pollution-prevention plan and mission to its search-and-rescue plan and mission, which we determined in American Oil to be permissive or optional — not required or mandatory — for the purposes of a salvage analysis. 39 30 The government also advances a privity argument grounded in American Oil: that the pre-existing duty which can disqualify a salvor from recovering must run between the salvor and the owner of the vessel and cargo salved. 40 This is only a partial statement of the law, however: As one leading treatise puts it, the pre-existing duty to act can also arise 31 from the nature of the salvor's employment, for example, salvage by firemen, pilots, or public officers and employees. 32 The general rule in such cases is that such persons are not entitled to a salvage award if the services were performed in the line of their assigned duties.... Firemen, pilots, and other public employees and service personnel may qualify for an award only where their service is outside the line of their official duties. 41 33 Yet even if we were to read American Oil overbroadly and decide that the Coast Guard is an exception to the rule that salvage is within the regular duties of public officers, the Coast Guard's § 1321 general duties to protect the public health and safety obviously included preventing an oil spill from the CABOT. We are not persuaded by the government's argument that even if the Coast Guard was acting under § 1321, as it declared repeatedly at the time, it still acted voluntarily and therefore may bring a salvage claim. 34