The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) was signed into law in August 1990, largely in response to rising public concern following the Exxon Valdez incident. The OPA improved the nation's ability to prevent and respond to oil spills by establishing provisions that expand the federal government's ability, and provide the money and resources necessary, to respond to oil spills. The OPA also created the national Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is available to provide up to one billion dollars per spill incident. For information on Key Provisions visit www.epa.gov

Under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the owner or operator of a facility from which oil is discharged (also known as the responsible party) is liable for the costs associated with the containment or cleanup of the spill and any damages resulting from the spill. The EPA's first priority is to ensure that responsible parties pay to clean up their own oil releases. However, when the responsible party is unknown or refuses to pay, funds from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund can be used to cover removal costs or damages resulting from discharges of oil.

The primary source of revenue for the fund is a five-cent per barrel fee on imported and domestic oil. Collection of this fee ceased on December 31, 1994, due to a "sunset" provision in the law. Other revenue sources for the fund include interest on the fund, cost recovery from the parties responsible for the spills, and any fines or civil penalties collected. The fund is administered by the U.S. Coast Guard's National Pollution Funds Center (NPFC).

The fund can provide up to $1 billion for any one oil pollution incident, including up to $500 million for the initiation of natural resource damage assessments and claims in connection with any single incident. The main uses of fund expenditures are:

More information about this program is available from the National Pollution Funds Center at www.uscg.mil/ccs/npfc. www.epa.gov

Insurance fraud can be "hard" or "soft." Hard fraud occurs when someone deliberately fabricates claims or fakes an accident. Soft insurance fraud, also known as opportunistic fraud, occurs when people pad legitimate claims, for example, or, in the case of business owners, list fewer employees or misrepresent the work they do to pay lower premiums on workers' compensation insurance. www.iii.org

Data mining involves a class of database applications that looks for hidden patterns in a group of data that can be used to predict future behavior. For example, data mining software can help retail companies find customers with common interests. The term is commonly misused to describe software that presents data in new ways. True data mining software doesn't just change the presentation, but actually discovers previously unknown relationships among the data. www.webopedia.com