SALT LAKE CITY — The National Wildlife Federation announced Thursday it is suing the federal government over its failure to ensure adequate regulatory oversight of the nation's oil pipelines.

“We hope today’s action will be a catalyst for long-overdue protections that benefit people, communities and wildlife,” said Mike Shriberg, regional executive director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Regional Center. “The federal government needs to enforce the law to prevent oil pipeline disasters from fouling our water and threatening our communities and iconic places.”

The lawsuit asserts the agency with regulatory authority, the U.S. Department of Transportation, is not doing enough to ensure the oil pipeline industry has protective spill response plans in place to counter threats to fish, wildlife and their habitat should an offshore rupture occur.

According to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, there have been 10,844 pipeline incidents causing 371 fatalities, 1,395 injuries and more than $6.3 billion in property damage between 1995 and 2014.

The lawsuit demands the federal government enact offshore regulations requiring spill response plans for those pipelines directly under navigable waterways. There are regulations in play for pipelines adjacent to urban streams and other inland waterways, but the adequacy of oversight for those pipelines, too, has been called into question given spills in Utah and elsewhere in the nation.

Over the past several years, a trio of pipeline failures have injured or killed wildlife and inflicted damage and disruption on communities and recreational destinations in Salt Lake City and in northern Utah.

In June 2010, a lightning-caused hole in Chevron's Rangely pipeline released about 800 barrels of oil into Red Butte Creek, oil that ultimately flowed downstream into the lake at Liberty Park. Some of the oil also made it to the Jordan River.

The leak went undetected for 10 hours, leading to concerns over the adequacy of Chevron's monitoring system. A second, smaller spill less than six months later involving the same pipeline on Salt Lake's east bench renewed criticism, especially by elected leaders who said the risk posed by the pipeline to residents and wildlife was too great.

Chevron paid $4.5 million to Salt Lake City and the state, money that in part paid for a variety of mitigation projects, including a fish-restocking effort in a 3-mile stretch of the riparian waterway.

The release of crude oil wiped out the stream's wildlife, including the macroinvertebrates — or tiny little bugs — critical for thriving aquatic ecology. That pipeline flows directly underneath the Jordan River and also under the Provo River. Another pipeline, the High Plains, goes under the Weber River.

In a separate incident involving Chevron, federal pipeline safety officials ordered the shut down in 2013 of a pipeline adjacent to Willard Bay State Park because of the hazards it posed to freshwater resources in the area. The 8-inch line carrying diesel fuel became corroded to the extent that it leaked, sending 21,000 gallons of the substance into wetlands, impacting a beaver dam.

The spill also caused the closure of half of one of the state's most popular summer recreation destinations for an entire summer and resulted in a $5.3 million settlement.

Neil Kagan, senior counsel for the National Wildlife Federation, said the government agency's lack of oversight leaves wildlife and communities vulnerable.

“The Department of Transportation needs to act with urgency and purpose to provide the long-overdue protection Congress mandated in the Oil Pollution Act,” Kagan said.

The pipeline safety administration has identified 20 accidents occurring at inland water crossings between 1991 and October 2012, not including the rupture of an oil pipeline under the Yellowstone River in 2015. That 2015 incident, together with a 2011 spill elsewhere in the Yellowstone River, spilled more than 100,000 gallons of oil into a river that supports endangered and threatened species, as well as fishing and rafting.

"We have seen time and again where there have not been adequate resources on-site to respond to spills of oil in water," Shriberg said during a teleconference about the lawsuit.

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