information, without having to go through a rigorous oversight progress. another reason they have gone the way they have gone, these issues are hard, policy details are difficult. you're talking about, you know, an age group in terms of legislators are people often who, you know, very used to communicating on paper, let alone e-mail and text messages and everything else. the technology is like genuinely -- even for someone who is young, the technology issues are difficult to grasp. there are very few members of congress who get it. something you might say, you know, i wrote a piece last year about why this happens. you know, these legislators vote on intelligence bills they don't really understand. someone said, the classic response is, well, legislators vote on stuff they don't

understand most of the time. maybe that's true. most of the time there's someone on the legislator's staff who understands it. that's not necessarily the case with intelligence bill. on the senate side you have one dedicated staffer who is clear, who can talk to their boss about these things. on the house side they are pretty dependent on the committee staff. for example sessen brenner who wrote freedom acts bill is completely cut out of the negotiations with the administration over what to include in the final version of the reform bill. this is nothing i reported, in cq. he didn't have sufficient security clearance. you have a situation where you have some legislators for one reason or another may not be the best prepared to grasp these particular issues, who don't have the necessary staff to help them grasp it. there's another aspect to this, too. i think it's a little harder for the public and for the media to grasp it as well.

it's not like health insurance. health care policies are very complicated but almost everybody has to pay a health care bill. student loans are complicated. a lot of people have to pay student loans. with government surveillance, there's not the same direct impact on your life where you're dealing with it every month. it's a lot more abstract, i think, for a lot of people, not just legislators. so it's easier for people, i think, to get lost in the details and not necessarily follow with what's happening and rely on what politicians are saying when they are saying we're really fixing this thing and making sure american civil liberties are being protected. so i guess that brings us full circle. when the snowden disclosures happen, there was a very strong argument however you felt about these powers, secret government -- this is going to sound like a complete oxymoron.

to function american national security state has to have a certain amount of democratic legitimacy. when what they are doing is so secret we don't have a general idea what they are doing, that legitimacy is lost. i think that's what happened with snowden. what they were doing was so far beyond what they were saying they were doing, it couldn't really be said to have, you know, a democratic legitimacy to it. you have all these legislators voting on it, didn't understand it, voting not to let people -- not to disclose the kind of information that would allow people to understand it. now that those details have come out, we're on the verge of something i think for civil libertarians should worry them a lot more, on the verge of granting that democratic legitimacy to the system. now that all the disclosures have been made and congress is going to ratify that system, what are the administration's defenses of the nsa. passed by congress. this is validated by the courts. now after this bill passes and

after not much changes, that's actually going to be true. this will have been passed with everybody's knowledge at least to some extent what was happening. they are going to be able to use that to justify in a way they can't justify when some disclosures were initially made. i think i'll stop there. >> thanks, adam. conner. >> i wish i was here today with one big idea for reforming the national security state. silver bullet. i have a lot of small ideas instead. i'll start with the one most likely to fail, which would be to elect an illinois senator who makes big promises and says a lot of things about executive power and national security state and then wait for him to fulfill his promises. i'm beginning to think that's not going to happen with barack obama. in fact, at this point i wouldn't be shocked if he retires in a few years and goes

to texas and starts painting dogs in water color. america has always gone a little bit crazy in times of war. we can look back on history and see what in hindsight are clearly excesses. alien extradition acts, habeas corpse, harassing german americans during world war i and internment of japanese americans during world war ii. we see this pattern when the war ends and there's this course correction. i hope when barack obama was elected we were seeing the course correction, but, of course, we actually saw him continue a lot of the policies of his predecessor. if an avoid civil libertarian likes rand paul makes it to the white house, i would hope he would fulfill those sorts of promises. i've mostly resigned myself to the fact no democrat or republican installed in the white house is ever going to voluntarily give up power. at this point focusing on the

presidency as a vehicle for our hopes is a distraction from a more achievable goal and that's electing a congress that takes civil liberties and separation of powers more seriously than the congress we have right now, which is terrible. but i actually think a better congress is totally realistic goal. i think that here in official washington, d.c. military intervention and the national security state are much, much more popular than almost any place else in america. most places in america don't get better restaurants because of the largesse of the national security state for one thing. the beltway consensus is sustained by people like eric cantor. for years his constituents were happy to be represented by a patron of the national security state, right? as we just saw, his constituents were also happy to be represented by a staunch critic of the national security agency. it's not cause public opinion has shifted on that particular issue of i'm not saying that

house race or any house race in america turns on issues dear to me or aclu. i'm saying voters, republicans and democrats are happy to be represented by civil libertarians, but only as an afterthought. for those people these are peripheral issues. that explains how the same kentuckians who sent rand paul to the senate also kept mitch mcconnell around. it's a shame voters haven't placed a higher priority on staying out of wars, nsa spying and civil liberties. like everyone up here, i think they are very important issues. the silver lining is that it isn't as if voters have carefully weighed all sides of these things and decided that the national security status, as i call them, are correct. there's no reason that congress has to be as hostile as it is now to rein in the national security state. i live in california. its voters would be perfectly comfortable with a senator who

was as good as ron widen of oregon on the nsa stuff. inside we're represented by dianne feinstein. she's terrible on the nsa stuff. there's no reason her replacement couldn't be better if civil libertarians went about a sustained campaign and was able to persuade just a little bit of the public to care a little about more about these issues. so ring placing dianne feinstein is an achievable goal and civil libertarians in both parties can work on these goals within their respective parties. i think that often i'll talk to people that care about staying out of wars, iraq, civil liberties and they want to vote for a candidate who is better on

these things. they say, i just had mitt romney and barack obama, they are not going to be different on these issues. i'm just going to vote for my partisan affiliation. focusing on the presidency helps people underestimate how change can be, makesity hopeless and apathetic. very few voters who care about nsa, spying, even among them, they don't know how their own congressman is behaving on these issues. i'd argue if they are going to be nudged in the right direction, there are other changes that could be extremely helpful. wps with impulses are going to have to think carefully about what it means to defend liberty and uphold the spirit of the constitution. what should their priorities be

if those are their big picture goals. a small increase in the national tax rate may be prudent, may not be. we should be able to agree it's a less urgent affront to liberty than assaults on fourth and fifth amendments. i think that folks on the right often don't realize the importance of civil liberties even to the issues they do care about. you talk to someone from the nra and mention the idea of a national gun database and they are horrified by the idea, that the government would know everyone that owns guns. well, government can track all of our phone calls and e-mails and financial reports, it's effectively the same thing. you get a room full of 30 or 40 nra members and explain how this could come to be, the actual equivalent of the thing they are scared about, but it's happening in the surveillance realm instead of gun control realm, maybe you win converts.

i think these small kind of battles, getting at these issues can be effective. i would argue among democrats greater recognition when consult really blue cosmopolitans like barack obama and others as contempt i believe as george bush and joe arpaio when they have policies that do similar things, even if they are better at cloaking the policy in pretty language. they should reflect on the relative contempt on political figures. the iraq war will cost $6 billion and killed about 5,000 americans. again, to go back to eric cantor, he supported it, but his opponent is portrayed as the kooky tea partier.

i can't think of anything worse damaging, demonstrably damaging. and cantor still thinks it's a good idea. we need to start to see the relative craziness of establishment washington for what it is. you know, if you have people coming from the left or the right who are challengers, they often do say or think certain kooky things but how important are those things in the grand scheme of things. i think republicans and democrats like to underestimate the importance of war as an issue. this is evident, for example, in democrats who have always opposed iraq war and always thought it was a bad idea but still want hillary clinton to be their party's standard bearer in 2016 2016. they agree with her on domestic issues, the best to defeat the republicans and that's enough. if you look at the damage done by ill conceived war of choice by an iraq or vietnam, it's the most damaging policy that you can have in a country.

if you really take that seriously, then avoiding future wars of choice, putting a reflexive hawk in the white house should be a huge priority. i don't see that as a priority even among anti-war democrats right now. one last point, as an opinion journalist, a lot of my time is spent trying to inform my readers about the national security state and also persuade them to look at it a little bit differently. there's kind of an endless amount of work to be done on that front. it really is shocking, the amount of time federal officials willfully mislead the public, tell lies sometimes, often technically inaccurate statements egregiously misleading. they get away with it because -- first because broadcast media is very deferenial.

i read about drone strikes a lochlt you hear obama administration characterize drone strikes as surgical. it makes them surgical and exacting. i don't know about you, if a surgery was going down next door i wouldn't worry about my safety. it's rare they slip and the building next door blows up. surgical drone strikes. it's easy to think about rhetoric and the way it's used and for me to write about that and hopefully people respond to drone strikes by thinking of the language used. it's much easier to call out the way someone like keith alexander, who just stepped down as the head of the nsa, the way that he misleads an audience. he's very good at it.

very good at saying things technically accurate but actually very misleading and figuring out what exactly it is, how exactly he's misled you. often for me it takes reading his statement three or four times, having 16 tabs on my firefox and have it crash three times and pull it back up. finally i get at it. that's the tricky thing he slipped in there. it's a fulltime job. i'm a generalist and i don't write about the nsa all the time. i write about a lot of things. for doing the job of really digging into these things, i'm constantly indebted to people like marcy, whose blog is indispensable on these things, also people like julian sanchez and trevor at freedom of press and jason, a lot of requests throughout the national security state and federal government. it's hard and thankless work to unearth these facts that are far too deep in the weeds to attract

a mass audience but critical to inform leaps making policy as well as journalists trying to give mass audience the most accurate overall impression possible. i couldn't do my job at the atlantic as well without them. also, other generalists like adam who see things i don't see, partly drawing on other sources, partly doing their own reporting. these things really matter and they filter through the rest of the media ecosystem and eventually get down to the level of the important business of persuading people all over the place that things are not as they are being told by u.s. officials by the national security state. and so in addition to all the other things we talked about, if you can -- if you want to do something about these issues, support those people who are doing that thankless work. i guess i'll leave it there. >> thanks, conner.

in the spirit of asking experts to articulate issues that are beyond the understanding and the knowledge of laymen and nonlaymen, i thought we might spend a little while talking about usa freedom act and what it does and doesn't do. rand paul, ron widen published an op-ed in the "new york times" criticizing the billing it's conform for its shortcomings. what are those shortcomings and how serious are they for people who care about these issues but also see the necessity of working with the congress we have rather than the one we might wish to have. >> i can rundown and you guys can explain what i just said. the bill purports to end bulk collection. the way they define bulk collection, anything without a

discriminator, without a collection term. they now admit the phone dragnet is bulk collection because oextensively they can get all the phone records in the united states. so as soon as they use any kind of discriminator, however broad, they then no longer consider that bulk collection. what we call upstream, 702 upstream collection where they sniff the packet that cross telecom switches and pull certain things, certain e-mails, certain phone numbers, certain malware signatures, that stuff collects in a year at least 56,000 communications of americans that are completely unrelated or completely innocent. domestic communication, yet they do not consider that bulk collection. the original internet dragnet program was targeted at certain switches where presumably ones that serve the middle east and

that wasn't considered bulk collection because they use discriminators, these switches where more potential terrorists traffic will cross. so the current bill ends bulk collection by requiring a specific collection term to be used before you collect anything. it applies to section 215, which is used for the phone dragnet. it applies to pen register, internet dragnet and it applies to national security letters. that's not going to work. and it's not going to work because of the way they define specific collection terms that includes things like entity. al qaeda is an entity. so you could say i'm targeting al qaeda and pick and say what they said in 2004. all of these switches are switches where al qaeda's traffic crosses. therefore we need to collect all of the data off those switches.

in addition they use the term, they say, specific selection term includes blah blah blah such as, and they are currently using that such as term, or they did when they testified before privacy and civil liberties oversight board to hide some of the more privacy invasive upstream collection. that's so broad and they are hiding the most troubling aspect they plan toia that that should be torn out. also in the bill basis for it. a pen register, i'm going to use a specific selection term as a basis for picking which switches to collect. again, each of these involve interpretations and get broader. the bill doesn't really end what you and i would call bulk collection, it ends what the intelligence community thinks of as bulk collection. they would say -- deputy attorney general, the congressional record says you don't want bulk collection so

it's kosher. in fact on the house side, i don't think people figured out they were using the intelligence community definition of bulk collection and therefore they were laying a legislative record that served the purposes of the intelligence community. people figured it out as the bill was passing the house floor. people were saying you could use this to collect -- it's fun y, people are saying you could use it to collect all of the phone records from the zip code. this is keith alexander's latest trick, although not keith alexander doing it. wouldn't be used to collect phone records from a zip code. what they won't say, no, won't be used to collect phone records from an area code, which is how they use it. right? no reason to collect phone records from a zip code. zip codes are generally more narrow than area codes. so that's an example of the game they play. they deny the thing they are willing to deny but not the thing they would get in trouble

for. nevertheless doj is ignoring congressional intent on fisa going back to 1978, on whether defendants get review, doj is required to inform defendants that section 702 has been used to collect on them. so it is an act of incredible bad faith to say that the legislative record that for 38 years has not bound them under fisa is all of a sudden going to start binding them, because it's just not going to happen. there are other ways where the bill i think is -- the bill at least gets official review before you do a phone dragnet. good thing. the judge is reviewing whether the target is an agent of a foreign power or associated with foreign power, not whether the target is a terrorist.

so in fact the bill expands beyond terrorism. it does so in several different ways, which actually reverts back to what they were doing until 2009 and it was considered a violation at that point. but now they are going to have it legislatively approved. so there's a couple of other ways it's qualitatively worse. the one other way it's important to know it's qualitatively worse, right now when alexander testified about this, he's always said, call people in the united states, they call people, they call people. three degrees of separation of separation of phone calls by anwar al awlaki, they can do anything full analytical trying with this people. in 2012, fisa approved the contact chaining on connections.

i have no idea what that means. behind a redaction in primary orders by fisa. it means throwing out burner phones. if i throw out my phone they are going to find my new phone by figuring out my call pattern. it's also going to include geo location. right now all four of us are chained, not because we've ever called each other but because our cell phones are sitting next to each other. who knows what else it's going to cover. we know overseas nsa is using things like address books and photos and to do the same kind of contact chaining. we assume they would want to do that with this approach and that should scare everyone or at least alarm everyone we are approving it blind again not understanding what connection contact chaining is. >> this all kind of raises a

larger big picture question. that's what kind of surveillance policy ought we to have? i would say one feature ought to be you could sit down with a room of educated people and explain to them what the government can do and what the limits are on what the government can do and have it be comprehensible to them. honestly, i don't think that is the case. i'm saying one of the reason why marcy's blog is indefensible, i've covered this quite a bit and tried very hard to understand it. she'll lay something out as clearly as anyone could possibly lay it out and take me three times reading it to understand the nuances. this complication is not a coincidence, right? this is -- complication is a good thing for national security state and its lawyers especially

because you can find national security lawyer if you're the president to tell you almost anything is legal. the idea that we're going to have reform with this degree of complication that the nsa a few years from now won't wriggle out of somehow to me seems highly implausible. so i would go a lot farther restricting them and demanding transparency than anything we'll ever get through congress unfortunately. >> adam? >> marcy mentioned the 70 2 program. that's what governs what everybody now colloquially known as prism. interesting thing about freedom doesn't touch 702 of the fisa acta law that contains an acronym that contains an acronym. >> but that has nothing to do with complexity. >> so what 702 does, it

authorizes collection of actual communications and it's supposed to be targeted at people abroad. but functionally what it means is that, as marcy said, domestic communications of americans get swept up in it. we're talking content here. barack obama likes saying nobody is listening to the content of your phone calls. sometimes it does sweep up content. technically they are not supposed to target it. if they get it, they can listen to it. this is what's called a back door search. anything to do with that was completely eliminated from the bill much to the anger of ron widen who says he's going to fight to get it back in. but that was one thing that i think marcy mentioned, deserves to be emphasized. there is a lot of things meant originally to be in this bill that aren't in this bill anymore.

i would say the way the aclu, which is tentatively at this point supporting the bill, although i think they may eventually withdraw their support. they refer to it as authorizing bulky collection instead of bulk collection. what it does prior -- before snowden they were doing, quote, unquote, three hops when they were collecting people's records, three degrees of separation from a target. this allows two hops and allows them to keep those records. so you know, two hops is potential potentially. fine, we're not getting every single verizon customer anymore but still get a lot of people. like marcy says, by any colloquial use of the term, that's bulk, even if legislators would prefer you not refer to it that way. ?

>> in the spirit of conversation among educated nonexperts, i'd like now to open the floor for questions. i think we have time for just one or two, so please come to the microphone and speak into it so that c-span can record your question. >> adam, what are your thoughts about the danger of the national security state using this information to black mail their opponents? >> well, look, american history has a lot of pretty prominent examples of dissidents having their personal information used against them. martin luther king being the obvious example. fbi under j. edgar hoover behaved practically like the mob in terms of the use of private information to coerce people. we haven't seen that in the united states. the risk is there.

it's not even controversial for legislators to bring this up. they talk about this when they talk about why the national security agencies powers need to be reformed. i think eventually the more people become used to the idea of the government watching them all the time and the more it shapes their behavior, the more it becomes part of the plan. i think the more likely it is that government is going to feel more comfortable doing things that would have before seemed inconceivable. >> there's a degree to which if the government has a sufficient amount of information, they don't necessarily have to go so far as to say i'm going to blackmail you with this. you just know that they know everything. so you're a little bit more docile, a little less likely to make waves. that's not true of anyone who is going to be dissident, going to object no matter what.

but not everyone is that courageous or that willing to give up their life. i think the so-called chilling effect is a very real thing that changes the way that people relate to the government in a surveillance society. you see this not just with the nsa. for example, if you think about facial recognition technology and the ability to take a picture with a digital camera of a crowd and to now identify everyone in that crowd, can you imagine a future war in an anti-war protest that you might be a little less likely to go to if you knew that you could be identified by name just as easily as an fbi agent taking one picture and sort of mapping the whole crowd. i think that that would dissuade some people from going to an anti-war protest. we're going to see technology outside surveillance we've been talking about raise those issues more in the very near future. >> they are doing it as well

with collecting cell phones. they will go to protests and collect all of the cell phone numbers present at the protest. it's the same kind of thing. you're seeing this collection of selectors at a very localized level and data sharing back and forth. so the threat is very real for that. >> another thing off the radar are license plate scanners where cities all over the united states are installing these license plate scanners that just take a little photograph of every car that goes by and are generating mounds and mounds and mounds of data and they are not all connected yet. but it wouldn't be so difficult to transition this into a system that basically track all car trips. of course, if you're carrying a cell phone, there's a redundant tracking of all car trips. >> well, yes. we have time for just one more question.

>> thank you all for coming and speaking here. i have a question. all of the attention that surveillance has gotten is very gratifying. it's good people are paying attention to it. i'm just -- it seems to me one of the things national security does, i'm more concerned about torture, keeping people in jail for years on end. snowden seems to have gotten more people aroused than some of these other issues. do you have any thoughts on why that is? >> because they actually affect people in this country. i hate to say it but america -- things like indefinite detention at gitmo and drone strikes and torture, those things happen to someone else. i think when the snowden

disclosures came out the fisa order was leaked, it said they were taking americans' records. if you recall it was last year right before the snowden stuff came out, we were having a big conversation about the use of -- executive use of lethal force against american citizens with drones, this whole rand paul and eric holder thing going on. that's what people were talking about. that animated people, even though there's a possibility of a drone incinerating you at a starbucks in milwaukee is not high at all. whereas that kind of thing happens at weddings in pakistan often. i mean not often but often enough it seriously affects people's lives. as long as it's happening to other people, in some ways during a time of economic hardship, it's harder for people to care about it. >> even within the united states, you've seen nypd put

together not digital surveillance but actually putting undercover officers into student groups of muslims. not because they were suspicious of the particular student group but really just because they were muslim. this whole program that ultimately generated zero counter-terrorism leads, which gives you an idea of how much reason there was for them to be suspicious in this way, these particular people. you know, actually putting someone under cover in a group full of college students river rafting, one of these undercover agents went on a river rafting trip and befriended them. this is arguably surveillance much more intrusive than anything that the nsa is doing and yet it caused much less of an uproar, i think, because people -- they were muslim. i think there is a double standard that's gone on since

9/11. the snowden revelations were different in that it wasn't a foreign people. like adam said, it wasn't an ethnic minority in the united states where people can think, well, i'm not them. it was everybody. >> it's important to understand that they are all connected. john brennan in his confirmation hearing admitted he's abused stuff that came out of the cia's interrogation program in fisa court, had to have a bad, bad, bad threat. torture, all derived from fear among herring, torture, used it to find informants and send fbi out to go find it. it's all interlocking. i do think it's true that average white people see themselves as part of a surveillance in a way they don't see themselves as indefinite

detention or having our faith communities infiltrated or what have you? >> if i may again exercise the moderate prerogative and take the last word, it seems to me a final reason is that torture, war, drone strikes, all those certainly abuses don't cut at the heart of our possibility for self-government the way the prospect of whole surveillance does. that may be one reason, too, why it's attracted so much resistance. unfortunately we have to conclude, so i'd like to ask you to join me in thanking the panelists. [ applause ] and i hope you'll remain where you are or tuned in for the next panel on political realities prospects for realism and reform in the democratic and republican parties. so thanks again very much.

>> health and senate negotiators will work to combine competing bills. this conference committee scheduled to get to work at 2:50 p.m. eastern. we'll have that for you live on c-span3. today is primary day in five states. utah, colorado, oklahoma, new york and maryland. in addition there's a runoff between republican senate candidates and mississippi with incumbent thad cochran tea party challenger chris mcdaniel. also a special election in florida to replay tray raidel who resigned. results from all the voting when the polls close.

that plus analysis from reporters, tweets and facebook comments. some news out of washington, vice president joe biden swore in sylvia burwell as next health and human services secretary. here is a picture with mrs. burwell's husband holding the bible. she replaces kathleen sebelius who resigned earlier this year. >> now you can keep in touch with current events from the nation's capital using any phone any time with c-span radio on audio now. call 202-686-8888, congressional coverage, today's coverage, washington journal, a recap at 5:00 p.m. eastern on washington today. you can hear audio of five sunday public affairs programs at noon eastern. c-span radio on audio now 202-686-8888.

long distance or phone charges may apply. a house natural resources subcommittee assessed recent advancements and new technologies for studying earthquakes earlier this year in marks, his agency developing an early warning system and the risk in the united states is very real. this is an hour and ten minutes. >> the committee will come to order. the chairman notice the presence under committee 3e is two members. subcommittee on energy and natural resources is hearing today to hear testimony on an oversight entitled advances in earthquake science 50th anniversary of the great alaskan quake. under committee rule f 4 statements for the chairman and

subcommittee. however, it is the practice to allow either the ranking member of the subcommittee or chairman of the committee to make statements if they are here at the subcommittee meeting. i would ask unanimous consent to include any other members opening statements in the record if submitted to the court by close of business today. hearing no objection. >> no objection. >> so ordered. ask unanimous consent the gentleman from alaska be allowed to participate in today's hearing if and when he's able to be here. hearing no objection, so ordered. i now recognize myself for five minutes. today marks 50th anniversary of good friday alaska earthquake. a massive 9.2 magnitude quake making is the second largest ever recorded with mod inch seismic equipment and the largest in the u.s. it occurred along 185 mile stretch of the

fault and the aleutian trench and lasted 4.5 minutes. it caused greatest amount of vertical uplift ever measured, almost 34 feet. southern alaska used more than 65 feet seaward. the quake caused the largest tsunami to ever hit the west coast of the united states and canada. the largest wave, 222 feet high hit valdez at shup bay. earthquakes and tsunamis called 129 fatality in alaska, oregon and california. many of the deaths were actually a result of the tsunamis and not the actual earthquake. the town of valdez was destroyed and 30 people lost their lives, many children who had come down to the dock for the ship delivering fresh fruits and vegetables. astra addition would have it,

the ship would toss fruit to the children who had oncome to meet the ship. two were filming as the earthquake hit and they captured the tragic destruction on film. it diss to play the film. >> at valdez, the ship is coming, a red letter day in the town. for them the first payday of spring working cargo in the hold and down on the dock. for the women it brings fresh fruit and vegetables to valdez, the first they have seen since winter came in. for the kids it's like christmas. they flock down to the dock when the ship come in. deck hands will greet them with fruit and candy. it's dusk, almost too dark for

good photography. aboard the ship, two men have their 8 millimeter movie cameras trying to get pictures of the grinning youngsters and their dogs below. at 5:26 beneath the mountains, the earth shifts, begins to move. suddenly the whole harbor at valdez begins to empty, drains almost dry. a chasm opens directly along the ship. soon it sinks into it. soon only the mast can be seen by the town.

crewmen try frantically to reach the people on it. out in the gulf of alaska, ocean bottom plunges and heaves upward 50 feet and waves start rashing for shore. >> smashes it down where the heart has been and through town. fred holding, keeps his camera running. no one on the dock at valdez will survive. the longshoremen, the kids, or their dogs.

>> the great alaskan earthquake is one of the most studied natural disasters. the federal response was significant not only in economic relief and reinstruction but also in research. geologists from the u.s. gs were some of the first scientists on site conducting field mapping, surveys and taking core samples. their findings published in six professional papers and national volume of science published research. research on the quake gave contributions to the theory of plate tectonics. today earth scientists recognize it resulted from the convergence of the north american plate overriding pacific plate where it is b being sub ducted into the earth's mantle along aleutian trip. according to u.s. knowledge gained from research conducted on the alaska quake has provided the geologic framework for

assessing the earthquake and tsunami hazards at convergent plate margins around the world. many other contributions to earthquake science and hazard redux were also made that provided geo scientists with tools they could use to identify other plate boundaries that have had major ruptures in the past and are susceptible to future structures such as cass caddia in the pacific northwest. hazards caused on movement by secondary fault structures, a better understanding of liquefaction, better understanding ofeshes in general, tsunami hazards, assessments and warnings. these are all things we've learned more about since the great alaskan earthquake. as was evident in that earthquake and others we've experienced in 50 years since, death and destruction from the tsunamis can be greater and more widespread than the damage caused by the shaking. the tsunami can happen thousands of miles away from the epicenter of the earthquake. in recent years massive

earthquakes and tsunamis have wreaked devastation across indonesia, japan, chile and haiti. in each of these massive movements of the earth there are lessons. earthquakes in haiti and chile have nearly the same magnitude have caused massive differences in deaths and damages. much of the differences are the direct result of efforts to establish standards and mitigation of earthquake hazards. in japan, the early warning system allowed japanese transit system to shut down every train so not a single derailment occurred as a result of honshu quake. today we are here to remember those who have lost their lives in the great alaskan quake. we have to remind ourselves we cannot be com place anti-in protecting against hazards and to remind ourselves the advancement of science depends on our vigilence. i would like to thank our witnesses for being here today. i look forward to hearing their

thoughts on what we know about advances in earthquake science over the last 50 years. i would now like to recognize ranking member from new jersey. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'd like to change our very distinguished panel for being here today on the 50th anniversary of the largest recorded earthquake in north america. it's sobering to think that when the earthquake happened, we weren't even familiar enough with the theory of plate tectonics to understand what was going on. that takes us really to the point for this hearing. we needed them and still need now significant research and scientific development in geological sciences and earthquake sciences. the past half century has seen some impressive advances, but there is quite a bit more to learn. i'm a little surprised, mr.

chairman, that you didn't originally invite the u.s. geological survey to testify at this hearing, and i thank you for allowing us to invite the usgsusgs is one of the world's leading authorities on the topic. in addition to the general knowledge of the usgs about earthquakes, i'm interested to hear more today about other aspects of earthquake science. in particular, i would like to hear about induced earthquakes, hydraulic fracturing, waste water injection and so forth and earthquakes. so, i understand, fracking itself doesn't cause earthquakes, at least not large ones, but fracking creates a lot of waste water. there are now numerous examples of earthquake that is appear to have been induced by injection of this water, the waste water

back into the ground. i understand usgs recently reported the injection of fracking waste water was the likely cause of the largest earthquake recorded in oklahoma, a magnitude of 5.7. the cause of millions of dollars of property damage. the impacts of quakes induced by fracking related waste water aren't limited to oklahoma, there have been quakes in ohio, arkansas, texas, kansas, colorado and elsewhere. so, this is certainly a concern for people who live in these areas who maybe thought fracking was just a mom and pop operation like drilling a water well. but, it turns out to be a major industrial undertaking. in some cases, i think establishing the link between

waste water injection and earthquakes to the untrained person might seem obvious, new injection wells start up and all of a sudden, an area might have, that's never had an earthquake might have some of these shakes. then the injection stops and the quakes stop, but i understand that it's not that simple, so, i will be interested to hear what we do know, what we have yet to learn in that area. you know, it's a topic that we might devote an entire hearing to, ranking member defazio, previously, along with then -- well, with ranking member waxman of energy and commerce requested just such a hearing on reduced seismic activity. i'm pleased they have called for

such a hearing. we can touch on this sub sect, i believe, in this hearing. dr. leith is here and able to answer questions about what the usgs has been doing on the activity. i'm sure there are other points that all the witnesses can make about what we have yet to learn. what research we have yet to sponsor. what studies yet need to be done to understand earthquakes that continue to happen in usually unpredictable ways and very -- with very important consequences, so, thank you. >> all right. as i said earlier, if either the committee chairman or ranking member are invited to make a

statement. i see we have the ranking member, peter defazio of oregon. you are now recognized. >> thank you mr. chairman. thank you for calling this important hearing. as the testimony points out, the impact of the good friday earthquake 50 years ago was not limited to alaska or those devastating in alaska. the tsunami that was generated killed four oregonians in part because there was no and is no early warning system to alert people a tsunami was bearing down on the oregon coast. the tsunami early warning system 50 years ago could have saved lives, giving some warning. even a few minutes can save lives. oregon doesn't just face a threat from tsunamis generated elsewhere, we have our own fault. a rather big one, it turns out.

the same type that generated the great alaska quake. the 2011 japan earthquake and the indonesia earthquake. according to geologic history, we are overdue for a major quake in the northwest. it has been quiet or fairly quiet for a few hundred years, but as i said, it is being judged to be overdue. you know, some day it's going to wake up and our coastal residen residents, not only arkansas, washington and california and potentially sending north like it was south from alaska. we need that early warning system finished and deployed in the ocean and as needed on land. the usgs is developing that system and, you know, we know we are not going to be able to

predict a quake days in advance, but just those few minutes, you can stop the trains, we have evacuation plans in place all around the coast and warnings, practice drills in schools around the coast. i have measured impacts and found safe havens and, you know, we would benefit tremendously from just a little bit of a heads up if this was coming. dr. holt made an excellent point and i won't belabor it, but i have asked for a hearing on induced size misty. it should have an individual hearing of its own, but i think we'll be able to touch on it a bit here today. it is relatively recent phenomena, which is not yet well studies or well known. there have been swarms of quakes in areas where they have not been before. it's attributed to the reinjection of waste, which

includes lubricants, oil and chemicals which we are not allowed to know about. this is all regulated under the safe drinking water act because the initial thought is we want to protect the water table. it turns out there are other asset that is need to be protected. if you have induced activity in an area with dams or with a nuclear plant, induced seismic activity in areas at risk, we need to know about that. we need to know a lot more about that to avoid these problems. so, i'm going to ask usgs a number of questions about this today to see whether their budget is adequate to research this and whether or not congress, i believe, should be paying attention to it. i don't think the safe drinking water act is adequate. some agencies are a bit reluctant to get into this

controversy. we are not saying we are going to bring oil, gas and fracking in the u.s., but we have to decide whether or not the reinjection of the waste is wise in certain areas and whether alternatives should be developed to prevent the problems. thank you for holding the hearing. i appreciate the opportunity to hear from the witnesses. >> thank you. i would now like to ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from alaska be allowed to make a statement. seeing no objection, so ordered. >> i thank the chairman and the members. i'm not on this committee. i want to thank you for holding this hearing. as one that lives with a great earthquake in alaska, very interested in what's going to be testified through the day. primarily the warning, the tsunami warning. during an earthquake, we lost 148 lives, none of them in the earthquake. it was all because of the tsunami. there was no warning.

with a 9.2 earthquake, i believe the largest one that's ever occurred in the united states and being on the ground when that occurred was an awesome experience because of the length of the quake. it wasn't a sharp jolt. i have been through 7.8 and 8 pointers and it was a jolt and done. this lasted ten minutes. it was a puddling effect. all the houses and landslides et cetera that slipped into the ocean but the bigger thing that intrigued me the most was not only the tsunami, but in kodiak, that is a rock island and it won't tip upside down, by the way. it is a rock island and nearly tipped upside down. it dropped eight feet on the south side and raised eight on the north side flooding houses and homes before the tsunami on the south side and then the north side any of the docks or any place that have boat landings was prohibited and it

stayed that way. it was a massive quake that if we continue and i am disappointed in the congress because we lack the money, we have cut back on the tsunami warnings. that's the biggest danger. i believe we can identify when earthquakes can occur. it always worked in california, it will tell you when an earthquake is going to happen five seconds before it happens. they curl. that's the unique thing, before man got involved. i want to thank you for holding the chairman. living through it is an awesome experience of the power of a quake and how helpless mankind can be. there's nothing you can do. we can be warned ahead of time so we can avoid that tsunami and i think save a lot of lives. thank you mr. chairman and members of the committee. >> i thank the gentleman. i would like to introduce our four distinguished witnesses.

dr. william leith, senior science adviser for geologic hazards from the u.s. geological ser va. lisa grant ludwig graduate director of the program in public health of the university of california at irvine. dr. john vidale, professor in the department of earth and space sciences university of washington and dr. reg nabld desroches at the georgia institute of technology. like all of our witnesses, your written testimony will appear. our microphones are not automatic. you need to press the button when you are ready to begin. when you begin to speak, the clerk will start the timer. after four minutes, a yellow

light appears. at that time, begin to conclude your statement. at five minutes, the red light comes on. i ask you conclude at that time. dr. leith, thank you for being here. you may begin. >> mr. chairman, members of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to discuss the advances over the past 50 years. the usgs is proud to be a partner with the state university private sector and colleagues in ongoing research and monitoring needed to strengthen the nation's resilience. as you mentioned, the magnitude 9.2 great alaska earthquake that struck southern alaska 50 years ago today was the largest earthquake in u.s. recorded history and the second largest ever recorded. it may be relevant to understand that the earthquake shaking lasted for five minutes, about the length of time i'll be

speaking with you today so consider that. age the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis -- >> could you speak closer into the microphone? thank you. >> certainly. >> a major leap in scientific understanding followed the 1964 earthquakes including breakthroughs in earth science research worldwide that have continued over the past half century since. the '64 earthquake provided compelling evidence, for example, for the then new theory of plate tectonics and earth cake safety policies. it showed how disruptive an earthquake can be to modern society and second it showed the

earthquake effects such as landslide and tsunamis that need to be addressed in any national mitigation policy. third, through the iconic scenes of houses broken apart by landsliding in the turn again neighborhood of anchorage it showed the urban planning and development. the usgs national seismic hazard program is the component of the earthquake hazards program. that by the national institute for science and technology. the other partners are the federal emergency management agency and the national science foundation. within this partnership, we provide scientific information and assessments necessary to reduce deaths and injuries and economic losses from earthquakes and earthquake induced tsunamis, landslides. usgs is the only agency that

routinely and continuously reports on current domestic and worldwide earthquake activity through our advanced seismic system or anss, the usgs and university partners monitor and report earthquakes on all 50 states, u.s. territories and around the globe. there are four components, monitoring the activity and crustal formation, assessing earthquake hazards, conducting and supporting targeted research into earthquake causes and effects and safety information for loss reduction. all these components rely heavily on university and private sector partnerships. we are looking into the future for opportunities to apply science to reduce earthquake losses. for example, the next step in public safety.

a test system is successfully operating now in california. another opportunity is to incorporate the nsf funded portable size monitors that are deployed across the eastern u.s. even though it's been two decades since a major earthquake disaster in the united states, the risks are real and the resilience of the nation will be tested when, not if, the next earthquake disaster strikes. giant earthquakes, like the one that struck alaska 50 years ago trigger landslides and other damaging ground failures. they occur in predictable locations, like wise areas of tsunami run off can be estimated in advance. modern earthquake and tsunami planning scenarios give community planners much needed improved visions of what can be expected in a future disaster.

such scenarios are being played out today in the alaska shield disaster response exercise. but, rapid earthquake loss assessments are still uncertain because of sparse seismic network coverage. the anss is only one-third comple completed. a limited -- damage modelling and uncertainty about how buildings and infrastructure respond to extended strong ground shaking. that's the critical engineering part of this. now, if you are keeping time, anchorage just stopped shaking. i will conclude by saying i appreciate the opportunity to discuss this. these efforts over the past oo years have made the nation and the world saver and more resilient to earthquakes. i'd be happy to take any questions you may have. >> thank you. dr. ludwig.

>> chairman lamborn and members of the subcommittee. thank you for inviting me to testify. as a professor at the university -- is it not on? as a professor at university irvi irvine, i deal with it -- >> even closer, if you could, please. >> the core purpose of ssa is advanced seismology for the benefits of society. my message today is three-fold. first, in the 50 years since the great alaskan earthquake, there's been an understanding. second, federal investment in science is responsible for the advances and third, this investment yielded valuable returns helping us become an earthquake resilient nation. i want to start with the account of the great alaskan earthquake. i heard the stories from extended family many times. donna grant was shopping in

downtown anchorage when it struck. as it has buildings collapsed in front of her and chaz ms opened in the streets, she grabbed a parking meter and hung on for dear life. the shaking lasted five minutes. she thought it must be the beginning of world war iii and the end of the world as she knew it. when downtown anchorage was collapsing, neither donna grant nor anyone else knew what it was cause zed by. at that time, in 1964, networks were monitoring nuclear weapons testing in the cold war and monitoring earthquakes. this data was critical to the discovery of plate tectonics. the alaskan earthquake was so big, seismologists had to develop a new scale to mesh it. it caused a tsunami that affected the west coast and hawaii. the recent japanese tsunami

provides an example of devastation that can follow an earthquake. plate tectonics is a powerful tool to identify areas susceptible to earthquakes. modern seismic instruments and data processing allow the locations of earthquakes to be precisely determined. it's similar to ultrasound used in medical imaging. the locations reveal active faults. some faults reach the surface such as those in california can be investigated by geologists like myself. research has shown the average time between large earthquakes is about a century. they are a call to action. the last big one was 1908 and 1957 occurred more than a century ago.

it's important to prepare for the next one. i joined the program in public health to work on protecting health and safety in addition to the earthquake science research. earthquakes are not just a california problem. the potential for large earthquakes in many areas along the coast of washington, oregon and california. they occur every few centuries and the last one was way back in 1700. those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it should not apply to earthquakes in the u.s. we know, as a direct result of research and seismic monitoring we have an earthquake problem. we know the areas most likely to be affected and the types most likely to occur. scientists are developing scenarios used for planning and preparation, advanced computing has calculation of shaking. the 2008 shake out preparedness

exercise is an annual drill throughout the u.s. and regions of the world with 25 million participants last year. unfortunately, earthquakes cannot be prevented. we can trigger them, but we cannot stop them. in my opinion, we must protect ourselves from the natural terrorist beneath our feet and congress is our first line of defense? how? through support of realtime earthquake early warning systems. through continued funding of the advanced national seismic system and reauthorization of the hazard reduction program. earthquake early warning is a proven technology and the systems have been deployed in japan and mexico. created by congress in 1977, it led to significant advances in understanding earthquake risk and the ways to mitigate it. it was reauthorized in 2004. this authorization expired in 2009 months before the devastating haiti earthquake.

as chairman lamborn said, march 9, 2011, earthquakes can and do kill hundreds of thousands of people. in haiti, an earthquake killed 237,000 people. the tragedy in haiti was surprising to many, but not seismologists who were familiar with the fact that haiti is on an active plate boundary. i'm here to tell you the federal investment in earthquake science has given us the knowledge we need to protect ourselves. in science, as in life, you get what you pay for. it's in the best interest to invest in earthquake science. thank you for inviting me to testify about this important and urgent problem. >> all right. thank you. dr. vidale. >> is this working? okay. good morning, chairman lamborn, ranking member holt and members of the committee. i appreciate the opportunity to

speak about a proposed path forward to fortify the west coast. i'm john vidale director of the pacific northwest seismic network. many earthquakes are great -- a magnitude bigger than 8 receive the title of great from experts. the one in alaska that we are discussing was a magnitude 9 with vastly wider reach and unimaginable power. these magnitude nine earthquakes threaten two places in the u.s., alaska and the pacific northwest coast and only the pacific northwest is heavily populated and industrialized. puerto rico is prone to smaller earthquakes. hawaii and california get the tsunamis from the earthquakes. the magnitude nine coming to the pacific northwest might not come for a long time or might come tomorrow. the cascade fault is locked and loaded. when it comes, a severely shaken region will come from california

up the coast to canada, including the coastline of oregon and washington. to prepare for the devastation, i'll highlight two opportunities and discuss why the zone needs to be a special focus and why the national earthquake hazard reduction program must be strengthened. one new advance in earthquake research is early warning. they use size monitors to recognize an earthquake within seconds and broadcast a warning of shaking coming to vulnerable areas. it would provide advances that mitigate earthquake risks for life safety and early warning, force all training power, halt surgeries, allow for bridges to clear, shut down elevators, warn schools and the population in general. in the private sector, companies can mitigate losses, batten down

factories and critical lifelines. emergency responders can jump start emergency operations while mass communications still work and maps predict the devastation can be more quickly and effectively disseminated. it's suited for the magnitude nine on the pacific northwest coast. we expect one to five or more minutes of warning time prior to the avooifl of shaking and gain valuable minutes and accuracy in tsunami warnings. countries exposed to earthquakes built earthquake warning systems including japan, china, taiwan, korea and romania. the 2011 magnitude nine earthquake in japan provided evidence of the benefits of earthquake warnings. there's a plan for early earthquake warning for the entire west coast. in the meantime, the regional

networks run from cal tech, uc berkeley, university of washington experimenting with early warning systems. in the pacific northwest, the performance of the earthquake warning system would be bolstered by adding instrumentation on top of the magnitude nine earthquake ground rupture. this information would increase the warning time and make warnings more accurate. the offshore instruments watch for long term signs of tectonic unrest and accelerate scientific understanding of the risk. oregon, oregon state university and university of washington have the right scientists and technicians to move forward. build resources to identify and quantify the northwest. the average expected loss from earthquakes in the pacific northwest is $1 billion a year. a large fraction of exposure for the entire united states. the realization of this risk has come in the last 25 years. much of the evidence is hidden

in thick forests or models of ocean or wiped clean by glaciers. the quake in 2001 are tens of thousands of miles deep. our problem is not simply an extension of the san andres faulting. the continued effort to characterize risks. our cities in america have not been tested since the 1994 earthquake that only hit suburbs. the funding level shower high enough to accommodate developments like warning and sea floor monitoring. in summery, the earthquake is a forerunner of the earthquake in the pacific northwest to prepare, we should build an earthquake early warning system and replace sea floor monitoring, maintain in the pacific northwest earthquake science and engineering effort and all this requires a

reauthorized program. thank you for the opportunity to speak. >> thank you. dr. desroches. >> thank you mr. chairman and members of the subcommittee. the 50 years following the great alaska earthquake launched an unprecedented period of prodesz and understanding earthquakes and how to build and minimize the impact of earthquakes. we are more prepared, safer and more resilient. however, much more can and should be done to protect the infrastructure. let me highlight a few areas where we have made progress. building codes were inadequate at the time of the 1964 earthquake. buildings built 64 years ago would sustain damage. building codes are frequently updated. two such landmarks events in

terms of building codes. advances in structural dynamics by the late 1960s, encouraged structural engineers. the ability to bend without breaking was key to earthquake resistant design. good detailing was critical and could provide sufficient details in concrete structures. a large percentage was designed and constructed prior to the introduction of the zones introduced in the early to late 1970s. the structures are vulnerable. seismic retro fitting. buildings, homes and buildings exposed to earthquakes. we have been focused on developing and testing retrofitted approaches.

it's been instrumental. many of the approaches used today develop using resources. we know that seismic design and retrofitting works. the technologies could be seen in a number of recent earthquakes, namely the 1994 earthquake. l.a. city officials say more than 200,000 people were living in retro fitted buildings when the earthquake struck. not a single death or injury was reported for the 37,000 units in 1300 strengthened buildings. the structures build and designed under the stricter codes experienced limited damage. those structure that is were not retro fitted suffered damage. progress in public policy as it relates to earthquakes. hospitals, emergency operating centers, city halls and schools didn't exist 50 years ago. the lack of safety in hospitals became a prominent policy

consideration following the 1971 earthquake. several hospitals collapsed in the earthquake. 44 people died in the v.a. hospital alone. as a result, the 1973 california state hospital safety act mandated that new hospital structures have higher seismic safety standards. according to recent legislation by 2030, all hospitals are to be retro fitted for services and continued operation to the public after a disaster. in the area of education and training, in 1964, the only earthquake engineers were located in california, japan and mexico. now earthquake engineering is taught all over the country including schools and states not thought of as being in a seismic zone such as my institution, georgia tech. in fact, just this week, researchers at georgia tech are leading one of the largest studies conducted in the middle

of downtown atlanta to develop a cost effective retro fit for buildings. this project, along with hundreds of others would not be possible without the support of these programs. they have made a number of studies a reality. from the testing of the california levy system to pipelines, the program has provided the research community with the opportunity to test a range of systems in a fashion that we can only dream of 50 years ago. finally, i would like to reiterate we have a lot more work to do to prepare for the impact of earthquakes, particularly large earthquakes. the american people are safer and cities are more resilient socially and economically than years ago. this is a result of the research, knowledge transfer and education and outreach programs. thank you again. >> all right. thank you. i want to thank all four of our

witnesses for your illuminating and enlightening testimony. we appreciate your being here. we are going to go ahead and start with questions now. i will recognize myself for the first five minutes. this is for any one of you. the transalaska pipeline was designed and engineered to accommodate movements of a major fault. there are many types of infrastructures across the structures in the pacific northwest and alaska such as transmission lines, railroads, highways, pipelines and so on. what is the status effort to ret retrofit structures and what are we doing to protect from earthquakes on future projects. i know you touched on that some, but who can best summarize that for me? or a couple of you if that would

be good. dr. desroches. >> a significant effort with the niece program. buildings have been a focus for many years because the majority of casualties occur in buildings. there's been a focus to look at lifeline systems. those are highways, buried pipelines, utility systems. i think we have made a significant amount of progress and more can be done in this area. >> in the pacific northwest, it's a real mix. we have the roads, infrastructure, the critical lifelines. we saw this week, landslides. if there's a big earthquake, we need to be ready for landslides. there's not a single answer. we are trying. things are very expensive, replacing the 520 bridge and viaduct in downtown seattle, they are $5 billion projects. it's going to take a long time to fix them.

>> one thing that is important to point out is that underlying all these efforts to construct earthquake resistant structures is the scientific understanding. engineers have to design to something from something. the more we understand scientifically, the more we can help the engineers design to be earthquake resilient. that was something i think we saw in the 2011 japan earthquake that their buildings were very earthquake resistant but they didn't expect the size of the tsunami. really underlying that is the scientific understanding. >> two comments. first is that we just started a project cooperatively with the city of los angeles that is directly focused on identifying

solutions to the problems of lifelines. that includes the water system, the communication system, power system and then just more general problems with older constructions of the type that dr. desroches mentioned. second, usgs operates a system called shake cast. that allows any user to quickly get an assessment of potential damage at any site. we run that shake cast system for all the nuclear power plants around the united states and the world. cal tran runs it for the bridges and overpasses. they are quickly using the data reported through the networks, analyzed and processed within tens of minutes to get a damage

estimate at lifeline facilities. >> thank you. dr. leith, while you are on deck here, what would you say about what's been touched on by other witnesses and earthquake early warning system. how important would it be to have a policy to institute such a program? >> we have been -- usgs has had this as an objective since 1999 when we put together the plans for the advanced seismic system. we have invested nearly $10 million so far in the research and development and modernization of the network to provide earthquake early warnings. we have a test operating system that's working now in california. it's not a public system, yet because it doesn't have the robustness, resiliency and 24/7 operations needed for such a system. but, it is testing out very well

and with further investment, it could be made public in either a part of the state, statewide or west coast wide. >> thank you. i would like to recognize the ranking member, representative holt. >> thank you. dr. ludwig, you said a moment ago that in order to prepare for, to set standards for earthquakes, we need to understand the science. i wanted to first get a sense of how good the science is. in 1964, geologists had been -- had spent the previous half century denying or ignoring that continents move and there's collisions and slippage and subduction. how -- let me turn this into a budgetary question for dr. leaf.

usgs got additional money for fy' 14, how -- this was specifically for reduced seismic research, but if you had more funding for any such thing, how would you use it? and the more basic question is, how manyture is this science? are we, you know, are there great unknowns? or lots of pieces to clean up? lots of bits and pieces. dr. leaf first. because i did want to get to the point of budget and what we might be doing in response to any inadequacies in the science. >> i would answer that, you know, i tend to -- my style is to focus on opportunities. what i see is quite a number of

opportunities for advancements and we are -- we are -- as the science progresses along and we learn little pieces about how the earth works, about how earthquakes are generated, there are always opportunities to move that forward and/or many gaps in our understanding that still need to be addressed. there are gaps on our reporting on earthquakes that need to be addressed. all of those could be addressed by additional resources. an example is one you brought up induced size misitty. we have documented an increase on earthquakes in the central part of the united states. we need to understand that better in order to map out the hazard posed by those earthquakes and to help inform decisions about land use

planning. >> i meant by question to be a softball for you to tell us your needs. let me turn to dr. ludwig and maybe the others will have comments in our brief time remaining here. >> okay. well, first of all, our understanding is only as good as our data. with the earthquake problem, it's different than the other sciences because we can't take the earth and put it in the laboratory and run controlled experiments. every earthquake, especially the large ones is essentially an uncontrolled experiment. we have to chase it. we have to have the infrastructure, the physical infrastructure, the seismic networks and the human resources, the scientists to be able to collect the data. also, you know, we have to learn from what's happened in the past. i'm a pail owe seismologist, i look at past earthquakes to see if it's happened in the past, it could happen again to get an idea of what we could expect and to use that data for

forecasting. but, you really have to have a pretty robust infrastructure physical and human to be able to do this kind of science and make these sort of breakthroughs like plate tectonics. it took a long time and a lot of data. then the alaska earthquake really helped. that was an opportunity. >> in the remaining less than a minute, if either of the other witnesses would like to take a crack at this maturity of science. >> i have a couple points. we don't understand subjections on earthquake that is well. japan had a tremendous fpunch, magnitude nine punch. we would benefit from knowing how the subduction zone. another issue is how are the basins amplified.

seattle and l.a. are over a big basin. there might be factors of two in the amplification we expected. we need to feed the engineers it right motions to build the buildings to be strong enough. those areas both need research. >> thank you. thank you mr. chairman. >> representative defazio. >> thank you mr. chairman. first, professor vidale, i didn't understand the 1 billion figure you used in relation to the northwest. >> oh, the billion a year? >> yeah. >> the fema estimate a few years ago, 800 million for oregon and washington annual losses. maybe i rounded up to a billion. >> i don't know what you mean annual. in the event of a 9.0 or greater, i assume the losses far exceed $1 billion. >> i didn't give the number for a magnitude nine. i gave a billion a year on long

term average of losses. for a magnitude nine, the estimate is $50 billion to $100 billion. >> $50 billion to $100 billion? >> right. >> does anybody think given the potential for $50 billion to $100 billion calamity, that could be partially mitigated, we are investing enough money in research or development to provide early warning? anybody think we're spending enough? anybody? okay. no one. good. i would be surprised if you did. so, you know, the issue seems to me, i think it was dr. leaf who talked about it, we spent $10 million since 1999. we are looking at a $100 billion in the pacific northwest and we spent $10 million. you talk about countries like romania, mexico, they have

deployed early warning systems and the united states of america hasn't? we have a prototype? did theirs not work? we have to develop technology. aren't there ways to mitigate life in the advent of a tsunami that we could deploy. we could deploy it later? >> is that a question? >> to either of you. >> no, i think we should build the early warning system. the physics is simple. we know how to do it. it's a bit of a challenge so we don't get false alarms. >> if romania can do it, can't the united states of america? i don't know, i guess we have fallen so far and the republicans are investing so much we cant but this is crazy. >> in these other countries, japan, mexico, turkey, that have either existing systems or developing systems, those

decisions were all made after major earthquake disasters. >> so we have to wait? >> for example, the kobe earthquake that hit japan in 1995. it was after that disaster there was a national political will to install and earthquake warning system and bring up the base of earthquake preparedness country wide. that paid off heavily in the earthquake from 2011. the tsunami damage was, of course, horrendous, but the earthquake shaking damage was much less. there seems to be a national political will in order to make the investment. >> okay. >> i want to emphasize the magnitude of the investment in japan, it's $1 billion for the monitoring system and another billion for the sea floor instrumentation they are putting down now. china is launched into a $100

million seismic system. their early warning system is quite sophisticated as well. >> if the united states could afford as much as japan, that would be 2 billion and thousands of lives potentially lost or saved. yeah. thank you. quickly on to another subject. induced seismic activity. we don't know much about it. are you getting the data you need and the resources you need? this is another issue of potential prevention, not to cause the problems in areas that could provide tremendous risk near nuclear plants and other facilities. >> on the data -- on the resources side, congress provided us an extra $1 million this year which is being put to good use. the administration requested an addition in the fiscal '15

budget. we don't have all the data we need. there's a shortcoming in the data on the injection activity themselves. the waste water disposal wells are regulated under the safe drinking water act and earthquakes. it wasn't considered when that was put together. most of the epa and most of the states don't require the kind of precise data that is necessary to both understand that as a national problem or to do the kind of forensics that one would want to do to connect a particular damaging earthquake with a particular injection activity. >> thank you. my time is expired. thank you mr. chairman. >> yeah, i want to say to the ranking member, i would like to work with him in finding the money for important issues like major earthquake research or to have the agency shift money within its budget from priority objectives to this.

this is an important issue and i agree with you on how important this is. >> i appreciate that. i had spoken to former chairman young on the way out and he was going to join me. maybe we can work out something together. perhaps representative holt and jared, too. thank you mr. chairman. >> i would like to recognize jared huffman of california. >> thank you. i wanted to be at this hearing because i represent earthquake country, tsunami country. i think it's a very important subject. i want to thank the witnesses for their contributions. mr. chairman, i wanted to be here to thank you. as a new member of congress, i think this is the first hearing i have attended of any subcommittee on the natural resources committee that wasn't a loaded partisan title full of partisan content with a loaded partisan agenda. this is a really important subject where we can all be interested and engaged.

we might actually get something done together that could help the country. we need more hearings like this. as much as anything, i wanted to be here to express that. with that, i yield the balance of my time to ranking member holt. >> i thank representative huffman. let me make two general comments. first, following on the line of our ranking members comments, the mentality here in washington is a very pessimistic mentality. mr. defazio points out one aspect of that. here, the richest country in the world, by far, undeniably doesn't act as if we have a future. one invests, one builds infrastructure and sponsors research when they believe we have a future. instead, we talk about cut, cut, cut here. it is a fundamental problem that the chairman says let's look for money.

i'll show him plenty of money. we've got it. we could invest in education. we could invest in research. we could invest in infrastructure and we should because we have a future, i believe. the other general comment i wanted to make has to do with the field of geology and seismology and earthquakes. for generations, humans believed that we experienced the happenings on earth and probably the most important development of recent years is the understanding that humans have the ability to actually change the earth. to poison entire oceans, to change the very climate of our globe and, in fact, to induce earthquakes. most of us would have thought the energy involved in injecting water into the ground is so

miniscule. there. leith, am i right, have there been earthquakes tied to water injection? >> yes. it's been known for decades deep injection of waste water and other fluids induce earthquakes. there are many examples of this phenomenon. in the 1970s, the usgs conducted an experiment in colorado and found earthquakes could be turned on and turned off by injecting or not injecting water. >> what are the problems with collecting injection data? what data do we need that, for example, the drilling companies aren't reporting? >> the -- the -- the recordkeeping for injection wells, and i'm speaking of the

oil wells, the recordkeeping the minimal. it requires the operator to collect records, report the total volume injected in a monthly average pressure and volume. report that at the end of the year with a grace period. so, forexample, i mentioned forensics. >> it was average, general data? it's not specifics about what's injected and when? >> it's not specific enough to, when asked, tie an earthquake or series of earthquakes -- >> the safe water drinking act is the only regulation that requires reporting, is that correct? >> the basis is the safe water drinking act. it delegates to the states and the states may or may not add to it. >> we probably need more federal requirements about specific

data. >> in order to really -- >> you might address your answer to the majority here. >> in order to really make progress on the research, the hazard of this phenomenon, the federal government or the states need to consider it a priority to collect more data on the injection activities and make them available in a more timely manner. >> thank you. i think the chairman observes my time is up. >> now, as we stated earlier, the full committee chairman is here, representative doc hastings of washington. we'll hear his statement, then concluding hearing at that time. >> thank you mr. chairman and thank you for holding this hearing. i apologize for coming in here at the last minute. that happens from time-to-time with our schedule. mr. leith i have not a statement, but a question and

hopefully -- hopefully we can get a, you know, be helpful. as you know, the landslide in the state of washington in snohomish county, i think all of america is, you know, listened to the news every day about what is the circumstances of that. will there be a time in the future, a time we'll be able to examine the circumstances around the slide but right now the focus should be on the rescue efforts and the clean up. we are all well aware of that. my question is simply this. where can people look to find more information about the slide hazard? is that something you can be working on? >> so yes, the usgs has a land side hazard program. we both operate, we have for the public a website which

identifies landslide prone areas of the country and presents information on research and how the public should deal with questions of landslides. the usgs -- the responsibility for the land use decisions resides with the state, county and local decision makers. our job is to provide the scientific information that supports decisions about land use planning. we also map out the locations of landslides and that includes the landslide that occurred last weekend in snohomish county. >> well, i appreciate that. i know that there's obviously going to be more awareness of that. i have had my colleagues, you know, ask in my district, number one, the underlying question is,

boy, that's a massive landslide. what, you know, people are going to be interested in that. that's simply my question is to see if there's something that you guys can do to help facilitate that in the future. if that's the case, i think it's a positive development. i just wanted to ask the question to, you know, get it out there, if you will. >> chairman yield? >> i would be more than happy to. >> i wonder if dr. vidale has any comment. in my state, doc, we have taken a step further and mapped much more exactly where we see risk and hazards. i wonder if washington state has done that? >> yeah, i know a little bit about that. with the seismic network, we notice the landslide within an hour. we have been looking at the seismic to look at the chronology. as bill said, the state has a department of natural resources

with maps of landslides. they are on the scene managing with the emergency management division supervising this. the survey came out with a lot of things to help understand the situation as well. right now rk, there's a coordind effort going ton to understand the landslide and the history of how we got to this point. >> i'm wondering predictive or risk zones. i think that's part of what doc is getting at here. >> right. right. >> it is a state responsibility. i, frankly, couldn't tell you exactly what maps they have and what they mean. >> if i may, i would be happy to offer a briefing specifically on that for you and your staff. what's done both within the u.s. geological survey federally and in the state. >> i think that would be very helpful. obviously, i mean the tragedy like this is going to raise the

awareness and to the extent you have been involved in that, that would be very, very helpful for the public to understand better, as best they can. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> i want to thank the members thoughtful questions and comments, and i want to thank each and every one of our four witnesses for the enlightening testimony. members of the committee may have additional questions for the record. i would ask you respond to those in writing. and if there is no further business, without objection, the committee is adjourned. live now to capitol hill where house and senate negotiators are meeting to negotiate the differences between the respective veterans health care bills. under the house bill, va leadership will be able to fire department officials and veterans would be allowed to get private care if they experience long wait times. the senate's bill on the other hand would create more veterans health centers around the

coverage. the conferees are gathering now. jeff miller and the center of your screen to his right, the senate chairman of the conference committee bernie sanders. live coverage now on c-span3. >> good afternoon, everybody. thank you for being here.

before we begin, i would ask unanimous consent all the statements would be added into the records, all would have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks. without objection, so ordered. today we meet to begin debate and negotiations regarding the house an employment to the senate amendment to hr 3230, the veterans access to care act of 2014. i'm going to recognize myself first and then recognize our co-chair senator sanders. following that conferees recognized in order of seniority alternating between the house and senate and majority and minority bodies. eef will have five minutes at a maximum for brief remarks and absent conferee recognized the next available slot from his or her chamber. though i recognize we have a lot to discuss, i would ask everybody to please be cognizant of the five-minute time limit so each one of us has an

opportunity to be heard on this matter. first time in 15 years the veterans affairs committee have, in fact, engaged in a formal member conference. i would like to acknowledge senator rockefeller and our colleague corinne brown of the 1999 conference and here. miss brown is on her way, as well. i thank you both for the continued service of the veterans of this great nation and alongside chairman sanders and each of you working to address the long standing deficiencies the department of veterans affairs has that has negatively impacted the care provided to america's veterans. by the department's own admission the va health care system is suffering from widespread wrongdoing. veterans by the thousands have been left to wait weeks, months and years for the care they

deserve. tragically, intoller bring, some died before receiving the care they required. for them, the work we begin today is too late. but for those veterans still waiting our work begins not a moment too soon. the bureaucratic failure that is brought us to this point are legion and can only be solved by nothing less than meaningful reform. that reform enacted after close and careful consideration in a face to face deliberation of both bodies. the work done by the house and senate veterans affairs committee is historically bipartisan and i expect this work here today will be the same. we may have differences to address moving forward all of us share the same primary goals. first, to ensure our nation's veterans have timely access to high quality health care and secondly to ensure that va leaders and employees are held accountable for actions that harm veteran patients. the work we do in this committee

will impact the way in which this country's second largest bureaucracy operates in the manner in which veterans throughout the country receive needed care for years to come. and there's no doubt that hard work and tough decisions await us in the days ahead. however, those of us gathered around this doois bring years of diverse experience in government, law, medicine and a variety of other disciplines, some of us are even health care providers. several are veterans including our friends senator john mccain who sacrificed to our country, a few of us can fathom. and senator -- [ applause ] senator, the gavel that i use over in the house was taken from the deck when the ship was sunk off the coast of pensacola but this was part of the deck of a ship you know very, very well.

>> less landing than takeoff. >> yes, sir. all of us share a passion for making the va a better place, a better service. together, we will more than meet the challenges ahead of us. we'll be responsive to the needs of both our nation's veterans and her taxpayers. and we'll live up to the example set by those who wear her uniform. i'm committed to nothing less. i want to thank senator sanders, senator bur, ranking member isho and each conferees for the work done so far and the work to come. i look forward to hearing your comments as we move forward and with that, i yield to chairman sanders for any open comments and introductions he may make. >> well, thereas co-chair of th meeting and the guy to wield the gavel, in fairness for people down on the list, i very much appreciate if all members kept their remarks to five minutes. let me begin by thanking

chairman miller and ranking members michaud and burr and all of the members of this committee for their hard work on veterans issues. despite a very partisan environment here in congress, i am confident that we as democrats, republicans and independents will come together to pass a significant piece of legislation which addresses some of the very serious problems currently facing the va. both pieces of legislation, the house bill and the senate bill, are focused on two main issues. first, the need to provide access to health care for veterans in a timely manner. and the need, also, for holding dishonest or incomp hent senior officials at the va accountable. nobody around this table, i believe, will accept va officials lying about wait times or falsifying data.

nobody around this table will accept the fact that honest whistle-blowers, people who want to improve the system, are having their legitimate concerns ignored. i am pleased that in reality there are more similarities than differences between the two bills and i'm confident that we can reach an agreement that will be satisfactory to everyone and, frankly, that is what our veterans deserve. i think everyone in this room understands that the cost of war does not end when the last shots are fired and the last missiles are launched. the cost of war continues until the last veteran receives the care and benefits that he or she has earned on the battlefield. war is as everyone here knows is a terribly expensive proposition in terms of human life, in terms of human suffering and in financial terms. and in my very, very strong view, if we are not prepared to

take care of those men and women who went to war, then we shouldn't send them to war in the first place. taking care of veterans is a cost of war. period. in terms of iraq and afghanistan, the human cost of the wars is almost 7,000 dead. the cost of war is 530,000 veterans seeking care at the va in 2013 for ptsd alone. not to mention those who were struggling with tbi. the cost of war is too many service members coming home with missing arms and legs, lost eyesight or lost hearing. the cost of war includes veterans each and every day dying by suicide, struggling with high rates of divorce, wives trying to rebuild their lives after losing their husbands. kids growing up in one-parent homes and too high rates of unemployment for returning home service members. those are some of the costs of war that none of us should

forget. three weeks ago, senator mccain and i hammered together a proposal to deal with the current crisis at the va. i think it is no secret we have different world views. john, is that correct? is that a fair statement? >> safe to say. >> but i thank him very much for working with me to move this legislation forward and to move it forward expeditiously. the sanders-mccain bill passed the senate with an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 93-3. in terms of funding by a vote of 75-19. the senate made it crystal clear that the current crisis in the va is truly an emergency and should be paid for through emergency funding. as everybody here knows, in the last four years we have seen a significant increase in the number of veterans utilizing va health care. in addition many of our veterans of world war ii, korea and vietnam require ea