Extending Authorization for Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory Commission

Floor Speech

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Mr. KEATING. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of my bill, H.R. 182, to reauthorize the Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory Commission.

The Cape Cod National Seashore was created by President Kennedy in 1961. His vision was to preserve the unique landscape of the outer cape for recreation and enjoyment for all Americans forever. Today, more than 4 million people, both Americans and those from around the world, travel to Cape Cod every year to experience the natural beauty and recreation that the Cape Cod National Seashore provides.

However, when the Cape Cod National Seashore was proposed, it presented challenges to residents of Cape Cod unique to locating a national park on a peninsula with a limited area and with very small communities within that area. In many of the communities in the outer cape, the national seashore was designed to occupy as much as 80 percent of the available land, effectively foreclosing other economic development options after the park was established.

While the promise of President Kennedy's vision for the outer cape was realized, with the national seashore drawing millions of people from around the world to the cape, the importance of the advisory commission to the national seashore and its host communities is still important today, as important as it was almost 60 years ago.

The advisory commission was at the heart of President Kennedy's vision for the national seashore, as he recognized that the host communities would need a voice in the national seashore affairs after the park was formed. To this end, it was important that the host communities retained a formal structure to advise seashore leadership and the Park Service about how actions taken within the park would affect them and their communities.

The reasons for the powers granted to the advisory commission in its enabling legislation are just as persuasive today as they were in 1961. Since what happens on the seashore directly affects the lives of thousands of my constituents in the host communities, those decisions should be made with the input of those communities.

Some have suggested that the authority regarding the commercial activity granted to the National Seashore Advisory Commission in its enabling legislation is no longer necessary. This is simply not the case.

Suggestions that the value of having regulatory unity among the national parklands and the various advisory commissions are unpersuasive when one considers the unique nature of Cape Cod. That such a bureaucratic consideration could possibly outweigh the important benefits that the National Seashore Advisory Commission provides to my constituents is just laughable.

Today, just as in the 1960s, the unique nature of the outer cape presents the same challenges to those who live there with respect to the national seashore. The most effective way to address the concerns of the outer cape community is to ensure that a functioning advisory commission is sitting and can continue to play its important role in the community.

Long ago, President Kennedy envisioned what responsible self- governance looks like on the outer cape, a balance between the seashore, the towns, and a place where all parties could come together, again, in the spirit of sustaining the community as a whole. That is the vision of the advisory commission.

Over the past few years, the outer cape region has faced some of its toughest challenges. With climate change, coastal erosion, ocean acidification, and new concerns about sharks in the waters off Cape Cod, Cape Codders are grappling with some of the most difficult issues that the communities have seen in years. Under these circumstances, the commission's absence is felt every day.

Madam Speaker, that is why I ask my colleagues to support this straightforward piece of legislation, a bill that has been passed by this House in the last Congress that will reactivate an effective tool that has provided an important role for the Cape Cod community, my community, for nearly 60 years.

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