Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to discuss an important piece of bipartisan legislation that I am introducing today with my friend and fellow New Englander, Senator SNOWE, to establish a national endowment for the study, conservation, and restoration of our Nation's oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes.

Let me begin with a particular thank-you to our original cosponsors: the chairman of the Commerce Committee, Senator ROCKEFELLER of West Virginia; the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator INOUYE of Hawaii; my colleague from the great State of Michigan, Senator STABENOW; and two colleagues from the Gulf of Mexico region, Senator BILL NELSON of Florida and Senator LANDRIEU from Louisiana.

As any Rhode Islander can tell you, the ocean is central to our State's way of life. I tell colleagues that Rhode Island's coast is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. But we don't call Rhode Island the Ocean State just because it is beautiful. We are the Ocean State because from our earliest days we have relied on the ocean and our beloved Narragansett Bay for trade, for food, for recreation, and for jobs in the shipbuilding, shipping, fishing, and tourism industries.

And we are not alone--across America, our oceans and coasts directly provide over $130 billion to our country's gross domestic product, and support 2.3 million America jobs. But one impact goes far beyond that.

Our coastal zone areas generate nearly 50 percent of our Nation's gross domestic product and support more than 28 million jobs.

In part, it is Americans' love of and reliance on the oceans that drives the need now to protect and restore them. Coastal America is experiencing a huge population boom, leading to more and more construction that puts significant pressure on our natural coastline and our wetlands.

Worldwide demand for seafood grows at a pace that our fish stocks cannot keep pace with, and our demand for energy leads us ever deeper into the ocean in search of fuel.

There is an old adage, that nothing focuses the mind like a crisis. If this is true, it must be time to focus on taking care of our oceans, because I believe that our oceans are facing what can be characterized as nothing less than a crisis. Our oceans are facing an array of threats, from marine debris aggregating in gyres the size of Texas, to whales so full of bio-accumulative toxins that they constitute swimming hazardous waste.

These are just a few of the headlines from just the past year:

This spring, we have watched in horror as Japan, already suffering from a terrible earthquake and tsunami--and our hearts go out to them--battled to keep the Fukushima Nuclear Plant intact. Leaks from the plant have sent harmful levels of radiation into the ocean.

In July of 2010, the Midwest experienced its largest oil spill ever, after a leaking Michigan pipeline poured oil into the Kalamazoo River and thence into the Great Lakes.

Last June, the journal Science published a literature review by researchers from the University of Queensland

and UNC Chapel Hill, revealing mounting evidence that:

Rapidly rising greenhouse gas concentrations are driving ocean systems toward conditions not seen for millions of years, with an associated risk of fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation.

In my home State of Rhode Island, the Narragansett Bay has witnessed a 4-degree increase in average annual winter water temperature, causing what amounts to a full ecosystem shift.

And of course, in April 2010, we witnessed the horrific explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, the tragic loss of life, and the unfolding of the largest environmental disaster our country has ever seen. The Gulf of Mexico, and the people who depend on this ecosystem for their sustenance and livelihoods, are still struggling to recover.

We are now 13 months beyond the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Lives are still shattered; livelihoods reliant on the gulf ecosystem are still threatened. But we are within the window of action. It is not too late to provide for short-term restoration of the gulf coast to enact legislation that reduces the risk of future oilspills, and as my cosponsors and I seek to provide dedicated funding to study, protect, and restore the marine and coastal ecosystems within the United States' boundaries.

The National Endowment for the Oceans is our proposal to meet this last challenge. The Endowment would make grants available to coastal and Great Lakes States, local government agencies, regional planning bodies, academic institutions, and nonprofit organizations so these entities could embark on projects to learn more about and do a better job of protecting our precious natural resource.

Projects that allow researchers to hire technicians, mechanics, computer scientists and students. Projects that put people to work relocating critical public infrastructure jeopardized by sea level rise. Projects that solve resource management problems and restore our natural ecosystems. Projects that protect jobs by restoring commercial fisheries habitat, and creating new fisheries gear for sustainable and profitable fishing.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration received $167 million for coastal restoration projects under the Recovery Act. More than 800 proposals for shovel-ready construction and engineering projects came in, totaling $3 billion worth of work. But NOAA could only fund 50 of the 800.

The National Endowment for the Oceans would help us move forward with these projects and others that protect our oceans and drive our economy. As I stand here today, more than a year after the beginning of the oilspill in the gulf, and in the face of mounting evidence that our oceans and coasts are truly facing a crisis, I understand the feelings of concern and frustration. But, again, I believe it is not too late.

In fact, I believe the time is now to pass legislation that will help to restore the gulf ecosystem. The time is now to pass legislation that will reduce the risk of future oilspills. And it is time now to provide dedicated funding for the study, restoration, and protection of our Nation's ocean and coastal resources.

We need to put the stewardship of our natural resources, our ocean resources, at the forefront of our national agenda. The National Endowment for the Oceans, as I said, is bipartisan. I thank Senator Olympia Snowe for her leadership in this effort. This legislation is science based, with much of the money made available through a competitive grant program. This legislation is cost effective, coordinating existing efforts of Federal, local, and private programs, reducing duplication of research efforts, and crossing political borders to ensure that every dollar is spent with the greatest possible effect.

Finally, this legislation is appropriately paid for with revenue generated from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, a portion of royalties from Outer Continental Shelf energy development, and fines and damages collected for violations of Federal law off our coastline. Put simply, a small portion of the revenue we extract from our oceans and great waters will be reinvested to now protect the long-term viability of those oceans and great waters.

The ocean provides us with great bounty, and we will continue to take advantage of that, as we should. We will fish, we will sail, and we will trade. We will dispose of waste. We will extract fuel and construct wind farms. Navies and cruise ships, sail boats and supertankers will plow the ocean surface. We cannot change how reliant we are on our ocean. What we can change is what we do in return.

We can for the first time give back. We can become stewards of our oceans, not just takers but caretakers. The oceans contain immense potential for new discoveries, immense potential for new jobs, and immense potential for new solutions to the emerging oceans crisis. But to meet the demands of this moment, we must respond to the challenges before us. We must heed the alarm bells that are ringing from the arctic seas to our tropic oceans, from the top of the food chain to the bottom, alarm bells indeed are ringing.

I urge my colleagues to join Senator Snowe and myself in support of the National Endowment for the Oceans. Let ours be the generation that tips the increasingly troubling balance between mankind and our oceans a little bit back toward the benefit of our oceans for the long-term benefit of mankind.

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