A House chairman yesterday urged the Coast Guard to take steps to improve its response to oil spills in federal waters and accused the agency of losing sight of its mission.

Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, said the federal government's contingency plan failed to deal with the Deepwater Horizon accident that released nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico last year.

He urged the agency to follow the recommendations of spill reports to update protocols for using oil dispersants, identify environmentally sensitive areas and improve coordination with state and local officials.

LoBiondo cited findings by the agency's inspector general that the Coast Guard has diverted much of its resources toward homeland security at the expense of environmental protection.

"Funding and resource hours dedicated to non-homeland security missions, as well as oil spill response research and development activities have shrunk considerably over the last decade," he said at a hearing yesterday on a joint Coast Guard and Interior Department report into the causes of the spill. "The Coast Guard's oil spill response and marine environmental protection mission has withered."

The joint report released this fall found that while the sinking of the rig was set into motion by the operator's failure to prevent a well blowout, "other systems deficiencies, and acts and omissions by Transocean and its Deepwater Horizon crew ... had an adverse impact on the ability to prevent or limit the magnitude of the disaster."

Those included: "poor maintenance of electrical equipment that may have ignited the explosion, bypassing of gas alarms and automatic shutdown systems that could prevent an explosion, and lack of training of personnel on when and how to shutdown engines and disconnect the [mobile offshore drilling unit] from the well to avoid a gas explosion and mitigate the damage from an explosion and fire," according to the report.

The report also noted that oversight and regulation of the rig by its flag state, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, was "ineffective" in preventing a disaster that claimed the lives of 11 men. The shortcomings highlight a need to strengthen Coast Guard oversight of foreign-flagged units, it said.

Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft, assistant commandant for marine safety, security and stewardship, told the panel the agency is increasing scrutiny of high-risk foreign-flagged units that have a history of poor environmental performance.

Zukunft said the Coast Guard was also meeting quarterly with the Interior Department's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to strengthen coordination of offshore oversight. Separate work is being conducted with U.S. EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to to update dispersant and in situ burning protocols.