if this was a one-time event all at once, we'd declare an emergency and be on the ground like that. but this is going to be a slow drag of stuff for who knows how long which will impact. so i guess, first, mr. kennedy, you had mentioned -- i have several questions, but i want to go to your comments. you said there will be a need for significant funds, but states are going to be responsible. to be very frank with you, it's somewhat frustrating to hear that statement because the role of the federal government in emergencies is to assist states, not just say it's your responsibility, good luck, because that's not acceptable. i understand you're having discussions with them and so forth. do you think the federal government has a role to partner and put some hard cash on the table? monitoring for the next two years, it will be easy to monitor because there will be a pile of junk piled up that we'll say, well, it's there.

but that's not a plan. that's just more studies about what might happen after the fact. i think what we're anxious for is what are we going to do to prevent a lot of this starting to come ashore. so can you give me some more commentary on what noaa's role should be, and do you have the funds to do it, and why are we not stepping forward and saying we are going to develop plans of action to clean it up with the federal government participating financially and otherwise? help me -- your testimony, i've read it well. a lot of good 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 you have a small budget which the president did cut. appropriators put it back in, and they want to shift it to another agency, which luckily the appropriator 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 afraid i'm going to answer at least in part 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. certainly 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. >> that do cleanup. >> 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 you have the ability. >> we do. >> you don't have the money is what you're saying. >> i 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 that we wanted to remove, 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. 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 so you know what something costs. we don't know what you need because we don't know what the overall cost, because literally, to be very frank with you, three

months ago or four months ago when we had the hearing, we asked a specific question 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, well, did you plan for it, did you have some idea, because that's how you then develop your

budget to 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 is, 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 of 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-windage things that have been discussed and the styrofoam, okay. 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 windage, and i don't know if there are characteristics that you can determine and assess the low-windage 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 level? >> yes, at a higher level 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. >> well, the main answer is there's severe cuts across the federal government certainly 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.

we should have some preplanning and some forethought involved knowing that the bulk of this debris is going to occur, you know, presumably in 2013 and 2014. correct? >> yes. >> you think the bulk will 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 the characteristics, i mean, in terms of determining the low-windage items? are you capable, coast guard in making those distinctions? >> so, senator, what we do when we do 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. senator cantwell? >> thank you, mr. chairman.

mr. kennedy, dr. luchenko was here in march, and she said, quote, it's not clear the tsunami debris is going to have any kind of -- 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 debris including a lot of looking with high-resolution satellite imagery in quadrants where 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 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 there's increased debris here and there. we weren't able to find it at sea. 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 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 begich is 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 we 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 some 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 aware of hazmat being an issue. it's a different kind of issue if and when we have hazardous materials debris come ashore. >> did you see the ship behind me coming? because it's a pretty large

vessel. >> yes. 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 recently are that imagery is available, but do we divert resources looking at things that are pretty important from 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 cascadia fault, we can have information and have plans and get that to local communities. so the notion that we aren't getting, as senator begich said, a high, moderate and low estimation, and here are response plans that 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 and the notion that states 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 up 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 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.statement, the size of one of our large western states approaching us. >> let me, we might have enoughe for another round. in, i want to make sure you were very careful on your words. is there data that, i mean -- this is a great example. my guess is the military data probably knew this ship was out there. if they did, then we got bigger problems to be frank with you. the military didn't know the ship was this close to united states and it was just floating

unmanned i doubt they did not know this. are you getting the data you need and i understand, it's not either/or. i think it's a question of you getting access. they just go do their stuff. military's never going to let you take priority, but getting access so you can at least observe areas that may have something that size. 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, then it was a week later coast guard took action. that's not how we should find debris. so are you getting access from the military or homeland security you need in order to do better modeling? >> we are getting access. here's part of my problem. first of all, i'm not the one in the middle of these day-to-day

discussions and they are taking place and we have experts on our side. they're 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? i don't know. we might be. we have nod had nobody admit we saw that ship coming we've been discussing this with and i think what we know is there there's probably other layer of data out there that we may not know could be helpful. we are in some discussions and i want to have it seem like nobody, that everybody has not been cooperative because i think for the most part, they have. but i think part of the problem is stepping into this rooep is one that we are not familiar with and we probably don't know who all we need to be talking

to. >> i think the question is interested in helping you get that data. a letter that senator can't well an i sent saying get you this data. just for the record to have a written response yet. this is the rapid program funding money that they have, has noaa asked for some of this money to help you move faster? >> we have had a discussion with the national science foundation. we used them effectively. they're very, very helpful. >> a money on the ground for us on focus research areas. >> are they receptive? >> they are, but as i understand it, i'm not the one that had these discussions, but they did

not feel they had the funds to engage? >> one issue i'm concerned about and that is one of the parts of the debris is a sizable amount. either one could answer this. that's the whole issue of design -- when they come ashore, they stay for a long time. they're not disappearing overnight and be biodegradable. tell me kind of the thought on that. unassuming a sizable -- on our shores. is that a fair statement? but it seems like this is one of the products that's not sinking. not going to disappear in the

water. it's going somewhere. >> may break down, but it's plastic. it's a fair statement. i don't think there's any question. a spent a lot of time on remote shores and it's there. >> is that a big concern do you think? that kind of product. not the quantity. 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 try iing to get a better hane on. it's going to get ingested, get ta tangled. it's a huge problem. i think part of the complication with that debris and how it gets here is you mentioned the garbage patch. well, there's two or three as you go across the ocean, the

circulation doesn't just come straight across the ocean. it rolls and some of this stuff could be there for a long time before it ever pops up in one of the patches. >> i'll close on this part, 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 dr. kennedy said and mr. kennedy said in regards to the plastic is toxic. now, i know you deal with hazardous wastes. does this fall anywhere into your arena or not because it's still a product not turned into a hazardous waste. >> thank you, mr. chairman. it, the authorities that we have deal with oil and hazardous substances and 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, we open up our oil spill liability trust fund and then sent divers down to close up the leakage area, then they're recovering oil from that ship. so that's the procedures we do. deep sea is the name of the shape. 128 foot commercial fishing vessel. so the plastics would not apply in this case. >> very good. senator snowe. >> do you work with the communities in terms of the potential hazards of these communities? >> yes, senator. the national contingency plan developed after the oil spill act of 1990 calls for a framework in which there are

regional plays that need to be developed. there are exercised 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 material release. >> we probably have done 100 meetings with local communities from hawaii to alaska and up and down the coast talk iing with tm about what they might expect. what some of the issues are, and that's in addition to all of the plans we've been trying to do. we've been on the ground all up and down the coast at the local level trying to make good communities more aware. >> on the inner agency communication, i gather there are nine agencies involved in this effort and you have the coordinating committee for response to marine debris. how is that working? would it be responding quickly?

do you have the ability to respond quickly, particularly as the coast guard is floating debris that could be a hazard for mariners. >> wh >> i can say these interagency committees, we do it for a policy on search and rescue. we saw the national response team during the deepwater horizon oil spill. there are ways in which you are living in limited resource times, but you need important work to be done. you have to bring all of these agencies together. the -- to make sure the waterways stay open so ships can keep moving in and out of the united states. >> it's been interesting. it's been more of