federal government participating financially and otherwise? help me -- your testimony, i've read it well. a lot of discussions about developing long-term studies and drafts and so forth. but what we're hearing is it's here. how do we deal with it? first, does noaa have a responsibility to help with the cleanup? not just a few grants to the small groups. i know off small budget, which the president did cut, appropriators put it back in, and they want to shift it to another agency, which the appropriate or the said no. do you think you have enough money to do cleanup? and do you think that's a role that -- >> well, to start, there was a lot in there. and so i'll start answering and then you -- you come back to me with -- when i don't answer the way you'd like. >> that's good. >> not that -- >> a good way to start the answer. >> because i am i grade i will at least at least in part answer the way you may not like.

first of all, we do not have the funds to mount a cleanup, especially in areas as remote as alaska or some of the northwestern hawaiian islands. certain remote areas, we don't have those funds. >> can i ask you quickly, but you have authority to do it and/or partner or assign groups, for example, you are giving grants to. >> as i understand it in the current act, we don't have the authority to actually do the cleanup. that is not part of our responsibility. >> but dollars that you have that flow through your system can go to organizations -- >> yes, they can. and they have routinely. and they have routinely for the last many years. that's a major component of what we do, and we've invested in community-based cleanup programs throughout all the states that are potentially affected here. so, yes, we do. >> indirectly have the ability. >> we do. >> you don't have the money is what you're saying. >> we do not. >> do you know how much would be

required to do what is anticipated here? >> i do not. and part of that problem is why it's so important to try and get a better handle on how much debris we have out there, where it is and when it may come ashore is to be able to make that kind of an estimate. but i can tell you, hawaii, a small sailboat 30 feet long, debris, $1.2 million for that one sailboat in that remote area. we go out to the northwestern hawaiian islands. >> why? >> because of the remoteness, the logistics. you have to have ships to get out there, people, and some place to do away with it. so it varies depending on where the debris is, but it's incredibly expensive to do this kind of a cleanup. and the few examples that we can give you from around the country where we've done a focused cleanup, especially in a remote area, the expenditure is extremely high. so we can't begin to touch, especially in remote areas, if there is substantial new amounts

of debris, what's going to be required to remove it. >> let me pause you. my time is up for my first. the i'll ask the ranking member to go to her questions and we'll kind of keep bouncing back. here's the challenge. you just gave me one example where you know what something cost. we don't know what you need because we don't know what the overall cost, because literally, frankly, three or four months ago, we asked a specific question that in anticipation of the debris coming, have you made a low-risk, medium-risk, high-risk cost analysis of what this would be. and the answer from your administrator was no, which made no sense to us after a year, knowing, i don't know, tsunami did happen, it was coming. but no analysis. then of course nothing presented to omb as a budget request, which then of course we get the budget and it's not in there and there's a cut to the debris

program. do you see the dilemma here? how does that happen? then i'll pause and i'll -- this is our frustration. it's not like the tsunami didn't happen. it happened. we know about it. no one questioned that it was coming our direction. we just didn't know what level of risk. but when asked a simple question of did you plan for it, did you have some idea, because that's how you then develop your budge tote prepare for such a thing, the answer was no. how do you respond to that? maybe you can't. maybe there's no response here. like you said, maybe it's a response i'm not going to like so therefore -- >> i don't have an answer that's going to make you happy, that's for sure. i really don't. you know, lots of priorities going on, and small program and we're out there, we don't know what the scope, don't have a clue. i think the idea was, gee, an estimate would be extremely hard to come up with. but that's not a good answer. so i think the real answer is i would like to get back to you on

the record and see if i can come up with something better than that. but, you know -- an awful lot of it is small program, very busy, just trying to get our arms around what's going on. and the scope and magnitude of what a budget might look like i can tell you even low, medium, and high to actually physically clean up all the debris that you might be able to identify is huge. >> okay. let me pause. senator snowe. >> thank you, mr. chairman. just to follow up on this issue, how much do you estimate of the $1.5 million tons debris that's out there will reach our shores? >> part of our problem. of that 1.5 -- and that's an estimate from japan, by the way. it's not ours. we've had to rely on them. in looking at the types of debris, there is virtually no research done on marine debris in the ocean that would tell you if you got 1.5 million that's floating and you leave it in there for a year, how much of that is still going to be

floating and available to come ashore. we don't have a clue. we've been talking about is there any way we could go back and find some debris and do some research, but for the time being, we don't really know. and it's an extreme -- and we've asked in a lot of places. there's just -- the national science foundation doesn't have a chair for marine debris. and so, it's not a very well studied aspect, and we don't know for sure. we certainly know that things like containers, like floats, like we're already see, the high-win damage things hafb diskutszed and the styrofoam, but a whole bunch of that 1.5 million was construction debris. and do 2 x 4s still float after a year? we're not sure. >> on the low end, and i don't know if there are characteristics that you can determine and assess the low-endage items that float at or below -- just below the surface, we have no way of, you

know, discerning how much -- >> we really don't at this point. in our modeling deliberations, we've been working hard at trying, and again there's no models generated for marine debris, so we're having to adapt oil spill models and other kinds. we are trying to work and figure out high windage versus the stuff that either is on the surface or subsurface is going to come in at a different level. that's why we're saying the next couple years because currents are going to drive some of that stuff that's right at the surface or below the surface a lot more than the winds will drive the other. but, again, a lot of speculation guessing at this point. >> i just can't understand why in the president's request there was an a reduction in this program in terms of cost in the marine debris program. from the beginning of its creation back in 2005, the high was a little more than $6 million, $6.3 million. now we're down to what the president requested was $3.9 million, whatever the

appropriations -- i don't know if they've decided on a number. but $600,000 last year was appropriated specifically for this program because of the tsunami. why, then, wouldn't we continue at that level? why wouldn't the president -- >> why would we not continue at that sflelevel? >> yes, at a higher incorporating the assumption that we have an ongoing issue here with the tsunami debris. we're just beginning the process. it's not the end of the process. we're just beginning. >> mm-hmm. well, the main answer is there's severe cut ace cross the federal government certainly wnl noaa and decisions have to be made where you get all the cuts. and so that's it. now, to me the marine debris program started with me in its infancy. i think it's a very important program. we absolutely appreciated the ability to have that 600 plus, because if we didn't we wouldn't

have been able to put even the attention we've tried to put on debris program. it's been very important to us, and we hope we'll be able to find a way to continue to have some resources to focus on the issue because it will be around for a while. but there is a president's budget. >> yeah, i know. and i think we should be discriminating in terms of what's essential as a priority, and obviously this is a priority and we should have some preplanning and some fore thought involved knowing that the bulk of this debris is going to cur, you know, presumably in 2013 and 2014. correct? >> yes. >> you think the bull lk occur in 2013 as some scientists are saying? >> yes. >> you do. >> potentially yes. >> here we are facing reductions in the very program that's going to be essential. okay. well, obviously, it doesn't make sense. and that's something that has to be remedied. admiral thomas, do you have a characterist characteristics, i mean, in

terms of determining the low- d low-endage items, capable coast guard in making those distinctions? >> so, senator, what we do when we prosecute a search-and-rescue case, for example, is we take into account, because of the information noaa provides us, information -- what we'll do is try and figure out what we're looking for. are we looking for a person in the water. are we looking for a boat. are we looking for debris. and then how time passes, the effects of the winds, the effects of the current, all of that has on our ability to search for something, how long we're going to need to search for. i had a case when i was in miami, we were looking three days an area about the size of connecticut for an 18-foot boat we thought with three men. we found them on the third day about 150 miles away from where they started.

and that was, you know, compared to the 6,800 miles between the u.s. and japan, a significant problem set because it is a very vast ocean. and so, the coast guard, you know, in the process of prosecuting our cases uses noaa's weather to help guide our actions. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. kennedy, dr. lu chain coe was here in march, and she said, quote, it's not clear the tsunami debris is going to have a devastating impact by any stretch of the imagination. is that noaa's view? is that still noaa's view? >> i think the jury's still out. we have been doing a tremendous amount of work trying to locate any of the debris that would be

in the ocean in where we have projected -- modeling has projected that that debris would be. in my testimony, i mention that we've been every possible venue to try and find d debris including a lot of looking with high-resolution satellite imagery in quad ranlt where is the models say the debris should be. we haven't been able to find any debris. that's not to say it's not there. it's not to say we're not still looking. but i think the concern is not overreacting right now. we know that there are place where is there's more debris ashore. we've seen that in alaska. but we've been out there with our partners trying to identify that debris specifically from the tsunami, and for the most part we have not been able to do

that. we know we had 1.5 million tons in the water. how much of that gets to the other end. so i don't think we want to get over overly alarming with anyone in that. we're continuing not to have any evidence of major debris on the ocean that's going to come ashore. so that's i think more the thinking than it's not an issue because if 1.5 million tons of debris comes ashore on our coasts that's going to be a problem. we know that. >> well, mr. kennedy, i'm definitely going to react when thousands of cans of hazardous materials wash ashore and they have things like rat poisoning and gas in them. we are going to react. >> mm-hmm. >> so that has happened, and so the notion you said earlier to senator beckage that we don't have a clue about the debris, i've heard what you've just said. have we gotten all the information from dod about the

satellite imaging and what we need? have you requested it from noaa? have they responded and given it to you? or is there more data and information that should be being made available? >> we started with commercial and available satellite imagery that we had, but we have progressively gone -- i mentioned the nga. we've progressively gone to other types of imagery including classified and are continuing to have discussions for further classified satellite imagery. so we're working down that path and have begun to get classified imagery and we're using it to look in several quadrants right now to find debris. have we done every satellite out there that may be generating imagery? i don't think so. but we're having discussions on how we get to that next level right now. by the way, i'm certainly not suggesting that debris won't

come ashore and that some of that may be hazmat. the first thing we did when we started hearing about increased debris on montague and some of the places in alaska is get out there with the coast guard to do surveys to find out if there's any hazmat in it. we're acutely ware of hazmat being an issue. it's a different kind of issue if and when we have hazardous material s debris come ashore. >> did you see the ship behind me coming? because it's a pretty large vess vessel. >> did we see it coming? >> yeah. >> the first time we saw it was on a commercially chartered surveillance flight by the canadians. we did not see it on satellites or any other efforts we had under way. that's the first we knew about it is when this commercial charter reported it to the canadian authorities. >> is there something top secret about this information? because -- is there some reason we can't use all satellite information that -- is there something that's stopping us from getting access to this?

>> some of the discussions we've been having is that imagery is available but do we divert resources looking at things that are pretty important with security, national security issues, to do marine debris instead. it's kind of an either/or discussion we've been having. >> i don't know if it's an either/or discussion, but i guarantee we'll get to the bottom of it because we definitely believe academics in the northwest and perhaps throughout the country can help with better modeling. we've seen time and time again when noaa has the information and resources, great modeling can happen. we have great modeling right now, for example, on tsunami response, if something happens with our cascade ya fault, we can have information and have plans and get that to local communities. so the notion that we aren't getting, as snoring beckage

said, a high, moderate, and low estimation and here are response plans to go with it so we can adjust, what we're doing is we're getting caught off guard with this vessel showing up, various -- as i said, thousands of cans of hazardous material showing up opinion and the notion that states ooh. oop are going to be left to respond is just not what we're going to do to protect our coastal communities. so i thank you for your statement on this. i'm sure we'll have more questions. i see my time is up, mr. chairman. >> if i could, just one thing i wanted to make sure you were aware of if you're not, that the modeling that we're doing is not done in a vacuum. in fact, university of washington in particular is at our table and working with us on models. we've been working with a number of academic communities throughout the west coast and hawaii, university of hawaii model. and we are working with the local academic communities right now to try and make sure that we pick um their specific science, their models, their data so that

as this debris -- and we can begin to identify it -- gets closer to shore, we're using their models, not just ours. so we're trying to engage them. >> if i'm correct, and i'll find out, mr. chairman, i think we actually used the university of hawaii model at a previous hearing, not even the the last one we had with the secretary, but a previous mark-up in the committee when we were trying to make sure that your marine debris program wasn't cut. so the modeling that was used by the university of hawaii showed a very, very large field of debris as someone said in their statement, the size of one of our large western states approaching us. so that seems to be something that would be hard to miss. and so hopefully we can get to the bottom of this about the data. >> okay. >> if i can, we'll probably have enough time for another round. let me follow up very quickly. i want to make sure -- you were very careful on your words and i

want to make sure you understand. is there data that -- i mean -- you know, this ship is a great examp example. my guess is the military data probably knew this ship was out there. if they didn't, we've got bigger problems, to be frank with you, if homeland security and the military didn't know this ship was this close to the united states and it was just floating unmanned, i doubt they did not know this. i sit on the armed services community, homeland security community. my bet is they knew. are you getting the data you need -- and i understand it's not an either/or either. i think it's a question of you getting access. they can still do their stuff. the military is never going to let you take priority. but getting access so you can at least observe areas that may have something of that size. i mean, it's big. and i literally learned about what was happening when i was in seattle that day when it turned

its course toward alaska and then it was a week later the coast guard took action. but that's not how we should find debris. so are you getting access from the military and/or homeland security that you need in order to do better modeling? >> we are getting access. here's part of my problem. i'm not in the middle of the day-to-day discussions and they're takes place. we have experts on our side working with nga and defense. and so i want to be very measured in what i say. we are getting access to classified data. are we getting access to all classified data? well, i don't know. we certainly admit nobody saw that ship coming that we've been discussing this with, and i think what we know is there's

probably other layers of data out there that we may not know how to ask about. >> could be helpful. >> yeah. we are in some discussions, and i don't want to have it seem like -- it seemed that not everybody has been cooperative. for the most part they have. part of the problem is noaa stepping into this arena is one we're not very familiar with and we probably don't know who all we need to be talking about. >> i guess we would respond and the committee is interested in helping you get that data. a letter senator cantwell and i sent a month and a half ago to the president saying get you this data, which for the record we don't have a written response yet. not your issue. that's the white house. the second thing is have you asked, the rapid program funding money that they have, for these kind of emerging issues, has noaa asked for some of this money to help you move faster?

>> we had a conversation and used them effectively during rop id response grants with deep water horizon. >> exactly. that was something you saw right away and they jumped. but here's something a slow drag. >> they have money on ground for us on focused research areas. >> are they receptive? >> they are receptive. but as i understand it, and again, i'm not the one that has these discussions. they're receptive but did not feel like they had the funds to engage. >> okay. let me ask, and on one issue i'm concerned about, and that is one of the parts of the debris, there's a sizable amount, and either one of you can answer this. i think, mr. kennedy, you will probably be more knowledgeable. that's the whole issue of plastics, styrofoam, these items that when they come ashore, they stay for a long time. they're not disappearing

overnight. they're not biodegradable. tell me the thought on that and where, as it ends up on the shores or a huge garbage patch, i'm assuming a sizable amount of this is going to end in the garbage patch or our shores, the united states' shores. is that a fair statement? i don't know if people are comfortable answering this. i know you can't. but this is one of the products that's not sinking, not going to disappear in the water. it's gone somewhere. is that a fair statement? it may break down, but it's plastic. >> i think that's a fair statement. part of the -- it's a fair statement. i mean, i don't think there's any question. i spent a lot of time on remote shores and alaskaened everywhere. it's there. >> plastic is everywhere. is that a big concern, do you think? not the quantity. put that aside for a second. but that type of product. >> it is a big concern, and it's one of the things that the marine debris program has been

looking at in general kai triing to get a better handle on the toxics, the biological implications and the socioeconomic -- all of that because the stuff is so long-lived and it's going to be around forever and it's going to get adjusted and tangled. it's a huge problem. i think part of the complication with that debris and how you digest it, you mentioned the garbage patch. the circulation can't come straight across the ocean. some of this stuff could be sprained for a long time before it ever pops out in one of the patches. >> i'll close on this, admiral, and i appreciate you being here also. i just saw one of your new cutters. very impressive piece of equipment down at the dock here. the comment that mr. kennedy said in regards to that plastic is toxic, and i know you deal with waste. does this fall anywhere into

your arhee no or not because it's still a product and not turned into a, quote, hazardous waste like an oil or a fuel or chemical? >> thank you, mr. chairman. the authorities that we have deal with oil and hazardous substances. >> chemicals. >> so, for example, in the ship that senator cantwell referred to, what we did when we realized that the owner wasn't going to take responsibility for that ship, is is that we opened up our oil spill liability trust fund and then sent divers down to close up the leakage area, then they're recovering the oil from that ship. and so that's really the procedures that we do -- >> talked about in your opening testimony. >> yes. the deep sea, i think, is the name of the ship, 128-foot commercial fishing vessel. and so the plastics would not apply. >> okay. >> in this case. >> very good.

let me end there. senator snowe? >> do you work with the coastal communities in terms of the potential of these a hazardous materials? is the environmental protection agency involved? >> yes, senator. the national contingency plan that was developed after the oil spill act of 1990 calls for a framework in which then there are regional plans that need to be developed, there are exercises periodically that come about. you need to have local strategies that are refreshed and that include the community and the education process of what you would do in the event of an oil spill or in the event of a hazardous materials release. >> and we probably have done a hundred meetings with the local communities, all up and -- from hawaii to alaska, up and down the coast, talking with them about what they might expect, what some of the issues are that

would be associated with this. and that's in addition to all of the planning we've been trying to do with a contingency plan. we've been all up and down the coast at the local level trying to make the communities more aware. >> on the interagency communication, because i gather there are nine agencies and departments that are involved in this, and you had the coordinating committee for response to marine debris. how is that work ining? would it be responding quickly? do you have the ability to respond quickly, particularly admiral thomas, the coast guard? flowing debris that could be a navigational hazard for mariners. what do you do in that instance? does it work well and effectively? >> i'll defer to noaa because they're the chair. but i can say that these interagency committees, we do it for a policy on search and rescue. of course we saw the national response team interagency group during the deep water horizon oil spill. so these interagency ways in which you're in limbed resource

times but you need important work to be done, you have to bring all of these agencies together. the army corps of engineers is is a truly important part of this process as well to make sure that those waterways with stay open so that the ships can keep moving in and out of the united states. >> so it's been interesting. the national level coordinating committee has been more of an information exchange and more of a -- do you have a resource that you ought to have as we discussed this. the real effective part of the coordinating has been going on in the regions. and we've had tremendous participation by most of the federal agencies. routinely epa, coast guard, different manifestations of mmi to parks and rec and what have you. the real strength has been at the regional level. and my team has repeatedly commented on how people -- and

that's, again, all the federal family, but then state and local have been stepping up to be engaged in the region. and of course part of the issue here is, you know, we have tremendous monuments, parks, all of which are going to be affected by marine debris just like anything that comes ashore in a state-owned part of the coast. so all of them have to be prepared, too. it's not just ultimately the states that have issues. >> mr. kennedy, in your testimony, i read that with respect to contingency planning, it's well under way in hawaii and washington, but the process is yet to start in oregon and california and alaska. how long does that process and planning require? >> what it requires is a complete willingness of all appropriate party, and that's why we kind of emphasize that.