Lisa Vorderbrueggen, Contra Costa Times

Representatives of the California Department of Fish and Game, the state Office of Spill Prevention and Response and the Marine Spill Response Corporation, a company contracted to perform oil-spill cleanups, testified before a skeptical Hancock and the Assembly Natural Resources Committee that their people were on the scene with cleanup equipment and personnel well within the mandated six hours specified under the ship's state-approved contingency plan.

"We more than met the requirements," said Stephen Ricks with the Marine Spill Response Corporation. "The framework is the one you have set up, and California has the most stringent requirements in the world. If you aren't satisfied, I take direction, I don't set policy."

But Hancock, chairwoman of the committee, and her legislative colleagues, Sandre Swanson of Oakland and Mark Leno of San Francisco, were visibly unhappy with the testimony and the presentation of thick, three-ring binders that contained the minutiae of the state's oil-spill response plans.