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Community Newspaper Group / Aaron Short

The Gulf of Mexico's loss is Assemblyman Joe Lentol's gain.

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The ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico might be good for one thing — it might lubricate the passage of a Greenpoint lawmaker’s stalled bill to prevent future oil spills closer to home.

Assemblyman Joe Lentol, who likes to say he that represents the largest oil spill in the history of North America, said he was both “saddened and pleased” when the Assembly passed his Oil Spill Prevention and Protection Act, which has languished in the murky waters of Albany for more than 10 years.

Lentol’s bill is one of the legislator’s efforts to address the cause of an underground oil plume that some studies say is three times as large as the Exxon Valdez disaster.

In Greenpoint’s case, the nightmare is the result of a half-century of oil leaks, not one big high-profile disaster.

Lentol’s legislation would require oil companies to install equipment that would detect discharges of petroleum from an oil tank or a pipeline. When he introduced the legislation, Lentol found that some oil companies in Greenpoint monitored the storage tanks and pipes only once a month, resulting in underground leaks.

“This legislation allows the oil company and the Department of Environmental Conservation to immediately act to clean up and stop the leak and protect our environment, our economy and our residents,” said Lentol (D–Greenpoint).

The bill would only apply to companies that operate functioning terminals, such as BP, which in addition to befouling the Gulf, has about eight above-ground storage tanks just under the Kosciuszko Bridge.

A spokesman for the company could not be reached for comment.

Progress cleaning the oil spill in Greenpoint, while slow, has been made.

In March, state environmental officials announced that the spill’s five potentially responsible parties, which include ExxonMobil and BP, have removed 10 million gallons of petroleum, and that the land west of Newtown Creek would be cleaned in 10 to 25 years.

That hasn’t stopped Lentol’s stomach from turning when he saw millions of gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and waterfowl covered with the slick on television. He believes that his bill has a chance to pass the Senate now that the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has dominated headlines for several weeks.

“I wished we had passed it because maybe the petroleum industry [would] at least provide a mechanism [to] stop leaks like what has just happened in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Lentol.

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