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Animal rescuers fear for the welfare of a sea cow that was last reported in the Kill Van Kull near the Atlas Yacht Club in Bayonne on Monday, several hundred miles north of its native Florida waters, according to the Marine Mammal Stranding Center.
LINDEN -- The manatee that took refuge in a creek outside a Linden oil refinery last week disappeared in stormy weather Friday afternoon. Now an expert who had hoped to return the sea cow to Florida fears the worst.
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — A rescue attempt is being planned for Ilya, a Florida manatee stuck near an oil refinery in New Jersey where plunging temperatures and a lack of food are endangering his life.
The gentle sea cow has been known to marine scientists for 10 years as he made his way up and down the East Coast. He has recently been spotted in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maryland.
NOAA has joined with private industry and conservation groups to launch Whale SENSE, a new voluntary program that encourages whale-watch tour operators from Maine to Virginia to practice responsible viewing. The program will also recognize businesses that discourage the harassment of whales in the wild and promote good stewardship.
The program was developed by NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service's northeast region and Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary in partnership with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, and several New England commercial whale watching companies.
An armada of commercial fishing boats has been organized to make the trip across Vineyard Sound from New Bedford today to deliver a protest message to President Obama, vacationing on Martha's Vineyard.
Richard Canastra, a pivotal figure in the New England fishery, said the boats will swing through Vineyard Haven carrying banners in an effort to get the attention of the president.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke today approved a plan to prohibit the expansion of commercial fishing in federal Arctic waters until researchers gather sufficient information on fish and the Arctic marine environment to prevent adverse impacts of commercial harvesting activity on the ecosystem.
"As Arctic sea ice recedes due to climate change, there is increasing interest in commercial fishing in Arctic waters," said Locke. "We are in a position to plan for sustainable fishing that does not damage the overall health of this fragile ecosystem. This plan takes a precautionary approach to any development of commercial fishing in an area where there has been none in the past."
The Arctic Fishery Management Plan, approved today, will be implemented through regulations to be published in the Federal Register. Fisheries managers have identified Arctic cod, saffron cod, and snow crab as likely initial target species for commercial fishing in the region.
The plan governs any future commercial fishing for finfish and shellfish in federal waters, except Pacific salmon and Pacific halibut, which are managed under other authorities. It does not affect fisheries for salmon, whitefish and shellfish in Alaskan waters near the Arctic shore. The fishery management plan also does not affect subsistence fishing or hunting in the Arctic.
Under the plan, in any new Arctic fisheries that may be approved in the future:
* fishermen will be required to keep records that will help determine catch, production, effort, price, and other information necessary for conservation and management
* fishermen may be required to carry certified fisheries observers on board in order to verify catch quantity and composition, track at-sea discards, and collect biological information on marine resources
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA’s Fisheries Service will establish prescribed procedures before authorizing a future fishery, and will monitor and adjust the plan periodically. These adjustments might include annual total allowable catch levels and in-season adjustments through gear modifications, closures, fishing area restrictions, and quota restrictions.
In 2006, the council began considering options for fishery management in the Arctic. The council talked extensively with communities on Alaska's North Slope and other stakeholders to consider management options. The council voted to prohibit commercial fisheries until researchers gather sufficient information on fish and the Arctic marine environment.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources. Visit www.noaa.gov. To learn more about NOAA Fisheries in Alaska, visit alaskafisheries.noaa.gov or: www.afsc.noaa.gov.
On the Web: Arctic Fishery Management Plan: http://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/sustainablefisheries/arctic/
Sector fishery cooperatives, the linchpin of federal plans to protect wild fish stocks in New England, could collapse under new catch restrictions for one of the ocean's more unpredictable species, members of the industry working on the system say.
Pollock, the low-profile relative of cod often consumed anonymously in breaded cutlets and fish sticks, is dangerously overfished in the northwest Atlantic, federal scientists say, and needs to be protected with sudden, large-scale catch reductions.
A NOAA Fisheries scallop survey off the northeastern coast between North Carolina and Massachusetts shows high numbers of juvenile "recruit" sea scallops and ocean quahogs on Georges Bank tempered with weak numbers for seed scallops in the Mid-Atlantic for 2009. This survey, which included the first successful use of a scallop dredge and high resolution underwater imaging system from the same vessel, also shows the overall biomass for the Mid-Atlantic remains high.
BREMEN, Germany -- Three research institutes from the German federal state Bremen among others have set up an observation ward for the long-term observation of a mud volcano in the Norwegian deep sea. This took place during RV Polarstern's 24th Arctic expedition from July 10th until August 3rd.
The same things that make Alaska's marine waters among the most productive in the world may also make them the most vulnerable to ocean acidification. According to new findings by a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist, Alaska's oceans are becoming increasingly acidic, which could damage Alaska's king crab and salmon fisheries.
NMFS proposes regulations to revise the criteria for rural residents to participate in the subsistence fishery for Pacific halibut in waters in and off Alaska. Currently, certain rural residents who reside in locations outside the legal boundaries of specified communities are prohibited by regulations from participating in the subsistence halibut fishery. This action is necessary to allow subsistence halibut fishing opportunities for these rural residents.
This action is intended to allow inadvertently excluded rural residents to participate in the subsistence halibut fishery and to support the conservation and management provisions of the Northern Pacific Halibut Act of 1982.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announces a status review of the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). A status review is a periodic undertaking conducted to ensure that the listing classification of a species is accurate. A status review is based on the best scientific and commercial data available at the time of the review; therefore, we are requesting submission of any such information on the all humpback
whale populations in all waters worldwide that has become available since the last humpback whale status review in 1999. Based on the results of this review, we will make the requisite findings under the ESA.
To allow us adequate time to conduct these reviews, we must receive your information no later than October 13, 2009. However, we will continue to accept new information about any listed species at any time.
The New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils (Councils) announce their intention to prepare, in cooperation with NMFS, an EIS in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act to assess potential effects on the human environment of alternative measures to address several issues regarding the Spiny Dogfish Fishery Management Plan.
This notice announces a public process for determining the scope of issues to be addressed, and for identifying the significant issues related to amending the plan. This notice is to alert the interested public of the scoping process, the development of the Draft EIS, and to provide for public participation in that process.
We, NMFS, announce a 90 day finding on a petition to list largetooth sawfish (Pristis perotteti) as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). We find that the petition presents substantial scientific and commercial information indicating the petitioned action may be warranted. We will conduct a status review of largetooth sawfish to determine if the petitioned action is warranted. To ensure that the status review is comprehensive, we are soliciting scientific and commercial data regarding this species
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), proposes regulations under the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act to prohibit vessels from approaching killer whales within 200 yards and from parking in the path of whales for vessels in inland waters of Washington State. The proposed regulations would also prohibit vessels from entering a conservation area during a defined season.
Certain vessels would be exempt from the prohibitions. The purpose of this action is to protect killer whales from interference and noise associated with vessels. In the final rule announcing the endangered listing of Southern Resident killer whales we identified disturbance and sound associated with vessels as a potential contributing factor in the recent decline of this population. The Recovery Plan for Southern Resident killer whales calls for evaluating current guidelines and assessing the need for regulations and/or protected areas. We developed this proposed rule after considering comments submitted in response to an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) and preparing a draft environmental assessment (EA). We are requesting comments on the proposed regulations and the draft EA
NMFS announces new Federal American lobster (Homarus americanus) regulations which implement a mandatory Federal lobster dealer electronic reporting requirement, changes to the maximum
carapace length regulations for several lobster conservation management areas (LCMAs/Areas), and a modification of the v-notch definition for protection of egg-bearing female American lobsters in certain LCMAs.
.... ozone depletion, combined with increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration, drives stronger winds above the Southern Ocean. These stronger winds bring more carbon-rich deep water to the surface, which reduces the ocean's ability to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Observational and atmospheric inversion studies find that the strength of the Southern Ocean carbon dioxide (CO2) sink is not increasing, despite rising atmospheric CO2. However, this is yet to be captured by contemporary coupled-climate-carbon-models used to predict future climate. We show that by accounting for stratospheric ozone depletion in a coupled-climate-carbon-model, the ventilation of carbon rich deep water is enhanced through stronger winds, increasing surface water CO2 at a rate in good agreement with observed trends.\
S.952 is "a bill to develop and promote a comprehensive plan for a national strategy to address harmful algal blooms and hypoxia through baseline research, forecasting and monitoring, and mitigation and control while helping communities detect, control, and mitigate coastal and Great Lakes harmful algal blooms and hypoxia events."
Harmful Algal Blooms and Hypoxia Research and Control Amendments Act of 2009 - Amends the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act of 1998 to require the Secretary of Commerce, acting through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to establish criteria for determining which states should serve on the Inter-Agency Task Force on Harmful Algal Blooms and Hypoxia and to implement a nominations process to select representatives for such Task Force.
From August 2-21, a group of doctoral students and research volunteers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego will embark on an expedition aboard the Scripps research vessel New Horizon to explore the problem of plastic in the North Pacific Gyre. The Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) is the first of its kind and will focus on a suite of critical questions.
How much plastic is accumulating, how is it distributed, and how is it affecting ocean life? The researchers hope to provide critical, timely data to policy makers and combine Scripps' long tradition of Pacific exploration with focus on a new and pressing environmental problem.Visit the SIO SEAPLEX web site.
Project Kaisei consists of a team of innovators, scientists, environmentalists, ocean lovers, sailors, and sports enthusiasts who have come together with a common purpose. To study the North Pacific Gyre and the marine debris that has collected in this oceanic region, to determine how to capture the debris and to study the possible retrieval and processing techniques that could be potentially employed to detoxify and recycle these materials into diesel fuel. This first research expedition, scheduled for the summer of 2009, will be critical to understanding the logistics that would be needed to launch future clean-up operations and testing existing technologies that have never been utilized under oceanic conditions.
The world's peak ocean science body has adopted a new definition of seawater developed by Australian, German and US scientists to make climate projections more accurate."The new approach, involving Absolute Salinity, takes into account the changes in the composition of seasalt between different ocean basins which, while small, are a factor of about 10 larger than the accuracy with which scientists can measure salinity at sea."
"The new description allows scientists to calculate the errors involved by using this approximation while also presenting a much more accurate measure of the heat content of seawater, namely Conservative Temperature."
An international team of scientists with divergent views on ocean ecosystems has found that efforts to rebuild many of the world’s fisheries are worthwhile and starting to pay off in many places around the world. Their study puts into perspective recent reports predicting a total collapse of global fisheries within 40 years.
“A large and diverse group of leading fisheries scientists and ecologists have concluded that the common benchmark now used to determine the amount of ocean fish to catch is not a viable approach for managing our oceans. The study disproves the notion that we can push catch targets to their limits and still maintain healthy ocean ecosystems. Fishing targets must be more conservative than they have been in the past." [More]
Until yesterday, the academic-science-media crusade against alleged "overfishing," mobilized by the Pew Environment Group and the Environmental Defense Fund, suffered from a bad reputation in some circles.[More]
A group of researchers is claiming an "unprecedented restoration" of oysters in the Great Wicomico River, a small tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. Thanks to a large network of reefs created in 2004, a booming population of native oysters has taken hold, the group reports in a paper published online by Science this week. Some researchers herald the accomplishment as a model for restoration, but others say that the new populations have yet to prove they can survive now-endemic diseases.
The massive blooms of red tide algae that have shut down much of Maine’s shellfish industry for weeks may be abating, according to the Department of Marine Resources.
H.R. 1080 would strengthen the authority of the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration (NOAA) to enforce fisheries laws and combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing by foreign vessels. The bill would establish uniform enforcement policies and procedures among the many federal statutes that govern the regulation of commercial fishing and would reauthorize funding for certain international enforcement activities through fiscal year 2015. Finally, the bill would authorize the appropriation of $5 million a year through 2015 to assist other nations with fishery conservation programs and enforcement activities.
When it comes to churning up the world's oceans, Mastigias jellyfish are quite the little blenders. New research suggests that large groups of the small, placid creatures--along with all of the sea's other motile beings--can mix as much heat, gases, and nutrients through the water column as the winds and tides do.
Here we report the results of nearly 20 years of time-series measurements of seawater pH and associated parameters at Station ALOHA in the central North Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. We document a significant long-term decreasing trend of −0.0019 ± 0.0002 y−1 in surface pH, which is indistinguishable from the rate of acidification expected from equilibration with the atmosphere. Superimposed upon this trend is a strong seasonal pH cycle driven by temperature, mixing, and net photosynthetic CO2 assimilation.
NMFS issues a final rule to initiate collection of a permit fee for vessel owners participating in commercial and charter recreational fishing for highly migratory species (HMS) in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the West Coast of California, Oregon, and Washington. The HMS permits are issued under implementing regulations for the Fishery Management Plan for U.S. West Coast Fisheries for Highly Migratory Species (HMS FMP).
The Administrator, Southwest Region, NMFS, determined that this regulation is necessary for the conservation and management ofthe U.S. West Coast Fisheries for Highly Migratory Species and that it is consistent with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and other applicable laws. This final rule has been determined to be significant for purposes of Executive Order 12866.
... reduced body size is the third universal ecological response to global warming in aquatic systems besides the shift of species ranges toward higher altitudes and latitudes and the seasonal shifts in life cycle events.
... using tracked pelagic seabirds and some of their own feathers which were known to be grown at different places and times within the annual cycle, we proved the value of biogeochemical analyses of inert tissue as tracers of marine movements and habitat use....
Our findings shed new light on the simple and effective assignment of marine organisms to distinct oceanic areas, providing new opportunities to study unknown migration patterns of secretive species, including in relation to human-induced mortality on specific populations in the marine environment.
We, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), announce a 90-day finding for a petition to revise elkhorn (Acropora palmata) and staghorn (A. cervicornis) corals' critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973, as amended. Elkhorn and staghorn corals are listed as threatened throughout their ranges and have designated critical habitat consisting of substrate of suitable quality and availability to support larval settlement and recruitment and the reattachment and recruitment of asexual fragments in water depths shallower than 30 meters in four areas in Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The petition seeks to extend the northern boundary of designated critical habitat in the Florida area to the Lake Worth Inlet, approximately 15.5 miles (24.9 km) north of the current boundary at Boynton Beach Inlet. We find that the petition presents substantial scientific information that the revision may be warranted. We are soliciting information and comments pertaining to this request for
revision of critical habitat.
The chief of biological resources at Everglades National Park said the thousands of fish floating dead in Florida Bay this week may have died from the heat.
Thousands of fish popped up dead this week in Florida Bay -- possible victims of what might be described as a marine version of heat stroke.
The fish kill was unusually large for the waters of Everglades National Park, with floating redfish, snook and other species covering nearly 20 acres in between Buoy Key and the coast, said Dave Hallac, the park's chief of biological resources.
Thousands of dead fish bobbed to the surface of Florida Bay this week, an unusually large kill that scientists are blaming partly on hot weather.
The dead fish - snook, redfish, mullet and even the tougher catfish - surfaced suddenly and mysteriously along with tangles of dead sea-grass blades across 20 acres of the north-central bay near Buoy Key, about five miles off Florida's mangrove-lined southern coastline.
NOAA is taking steps to respond to the New England red tide in the Gulf of Maine that has caused a near-complete shutdown of shellfish harvesting in Maine. Today the agency awarded $121,000 to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in partnership with the University of Maine to conduct research cruises to monitor the toxins. The information obtained will help managers determine how long the severe red tide conditions may last, if there are regions where the bloom is receding, and whether the bloom will expand to new areas.
The New England Fishery Management Council (Council) is scheduling a public meeting of its Research Steering Committee (Committee), in August, 2009, to consider actions affecting New England fisheries in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Recommendations from this group will be brought to the full Council for formal consideration and action, if appropriate.
DATES: The meeting will be held on Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 9:30 a.m.
ADDRESSES: The meeting will be held at the Radisson Hotel Plymouth Harbor, 180 Water Street, Plymouth, MA 02360, telephone: (508) 747-4900; fax: (508) 747-8937.
Council address: New England Fishery Management Council, 50 Water Street, Mill 2, Newburyport, MA 01950.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Paul J. Howard, Executive Director,
New England Fishery Management Council; telephone: (978) 465-0492.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announces that the Draft Southern California Steelhead Recovery Plan (Plan) is available for public review and comment. The Plan addresses the Southern California Steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) Distinct Population Segment (DPS), which spawns in watersheds from the Santa Maria River (just north of Point Conception) south to the Tijuana River at the U.S.-Mexico border. NMFS is soliciting review and comment from the public and all interested parties on the Draft Plan. In addition, public meetings will be held on August 25 and September 1, 2009, as opportunities for providing comments on the Draft Plan.
NMFS will consider and address all substantive comments received during the comment period. Comments must be received no later than 5 p.m. Pacific daylight time on September 21, 2009. Public meetings will also be held.
Rather than selecting areas where fishing is banned – as is usually the case with spatial management – we assess the concept of designating areas where fishing is permitted. We use spatial catch statistics for thirteen commercial fisheries on Canada's west coast to determine the minimum area that would be needed to maintain a pre-ascribed target percentage of current catches. We found that small reductions in fisheries yields, if strategically allocated, could result in large unfished areas that are representative of biophysical regions and habitat types, and have the potential to achieve remarkable conservation gains.
BOSTON — The chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is challenging the nation to reverse the decline of oceans and coasts and restore them to a "healthy, productive and resilient state" while tackling the issue of climate change.
BOSTON — New pressures on the nation's oceans, from wind turbines to fish farms, are increasingly sparking conflicts with more traditional activities such as shipping and recreational boating and show the need for better planning, the head of the agency overseeing federal ocean research services said Monday.
NEW ORLEANS -- The "dead zone" off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, where there is too little oxygen in the water for anything to live, is getting new federal attention under President Barack Obama's administration.
Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has scheduled a teleconference Monday with Nancy Rabalais, who has been studying the problem, called hypoxia, since 1970 and is currently measuring this year's hypoxic area.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The findings of a major new study are consistent with gradual changes of current systems in the North Atlantic Ocean, rather than a more sudden shutdown that could lead to rapid climate changes in Europe and elsewhere.
The research, based on the longest experiment of its type ever run on a "general circulation model" that simulated the Earth's climate for 21,000 years back to the height of the last Ice Age, shows that major changes in these important ocean current systems can occur, but they may take place more slowly and gradually than had been suggested.
A lot of lines crisscross, run parallel, and ultimately connect in this story.
The first line is a watery one hugging the East Coast between Florida and Nova Scotia, which right whales have migrated along since time immemorial. The second is an intensifying line of vessel traffic on the east-west shipping lanes in and out of Boston—and right through prime whale feeding areas. That greatly increases the risk of lethal collisions that threaten extinction for the tiny remnant population of North Atlantic right whales.
In 2005, a company called Excelerate Energy sought permission to build a deepwater port about 16 miles off Boston for large ships to deliver liquefied natural gas. Proponents believed the plan had all sorts of economic and environmental benefits, including avoiding the construction of a large gas storage facility on a populous coastline. But to conservationists, it was like allowing 18-wheel trucks to zoom through a school zone.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s attempt to shut down the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction as a penalty was prohibited earlier this week by a federal judge. It was decided that the auction cannot be closed down while a court case involving it is pending in a US District Court.
The law enforcement office of the federal fisheries service undertook an aggressive, preemptive media campaign last month to inform the public of its decision to penalize the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction with a 10-day closure for a disputed violation of a 6-year-old probation agreement.Read the Gloucester Daily News article here
"The press release on this matter was designed to ensure that all relevant factual information was made available to the public," wrote NOAA enforcement attorney Mitch MacDonald, in a judicially demanded affidavit on the purpose of the campaign.
But yesterday — a day after a federal judge issued a restraining order on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and sharply chastised the service for attempting to impose punishment before the case was resolved in federal court — the NOAA media machine went silent.
One of Florida's endangered manatees paid a social call on Havre de Grace over the weekend, swimming close enough to the dock to be filmed and even touched, officials at the National Aquarium said yesterday.
Video shot by a town police officer of the visiting marine mammal was clear enough to allow federal biologists in Florida to identify the manatee as a teen-ager named Ilya, last sighted near Miami three years ago, said Jennifer Dittmar, coordinator of the Baltimore aquarium's marine animal rescue program.
The world’s ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for June, breaking the previous high mark set in 2005, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Additionally, the combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for June was second-warmest on record. The global records began in 1880.
Spain’s first seafloor laboratory, the Expandable Seafloor Observatory (OBSEA), located three miles off the coast of Vilanova i la Geltrú at a depth of 20 meters, has begun real-time transmissions to the laboratories of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). The data it collects will make it possible to study the Mediterranean seafloor via the Internet. This pioneering underwater platform, installed in March with the help of the CSIC’s oceanographic research ship Sarmiento de Gamboa, has successfully completed its two-month test period.
The platform will make it possible to assess water quality by studying slight variations in temperature and/or salinity, determine the level of noise pollution by studying acoustic signals from natural or manmade sources, and evaluate the degree of pollution caused by waste and sea transport. The Observatory will be able to record underwater processes uninterruptedly, thanks to a 4.5-km optical-fiber power supply cable that eliminates the need for limited-life energy sources such as batteries. The project forms part of the European Seafloor Observatory Network (ESONET).
IT'S NOT OIL: No one in the area can recall seeing anything like it before.
Hunters from Wainwright first started noticing the stuff sometime probably early last week. It's thick and dark and "gooey" and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters, according to Gordon Brower with the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department.
Brower and other borough officials, joined by the U.S. Coast Guard, flew out to Wainwright to investigate. The agencies found "globs" of the stuff floating miles offshore Friday and collected samples for testing.
lab tests conducted in Anchorage have confirmed the stuff is an algae of some sort.Read more!
Further tests are planned to see if it's toxic.
Scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have successfully conducted the first remote detection of a harmful algal species and its toxin below the ocean’s surface. The achievement was recently reported in the June issue of Oceanography.
This achievement represents a significant milestone in NOAA’s effort to monitor the type and toxicity of harmful algal blooms (HABs). HABs are considered to be increasing not only in their global distribution, but also in the frequency, duration, and severity of their effects.
For the first time, NOAA scientists have demonstrated that tsunamis in the open ocean can change sea surface texture in a way that can be measured by satellite-borne radars. The finding could one day help save lives through improved detection and forecasting of tsunami intensity and direction at the ocean surface.
“We’ve found that roughness of the surface water provides a good measure of the true strength of the tsunami along its entire leading edge. This is the first time that we can see tsunami propagation in this way across the open ocean,” said lead author Oleg Godin of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, in Boulder, Colo.
WASHINGTON—Democratic leaders of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure joined a prominent Republican Senator in a Capitol news conference today to voice support for a new authorization of surface transportation programs and opposition to an extension of current authority.
T&I Chairman James L. Oberstar (Minn.), Subcommittee on Highways and Transit Chairman Peter A. DeFazio (Ore.), and Sen. George Voinovich (Ohio) spoke against a proposed 18-month extension plan and pledged to move ahead with a six-year authorization bill. The current authorization, contained in the 2005 act known popularly by the acronym SAFETEA-LU (or simply SAFETEA), is due to expire September 30.
The bipartisan trio of lawmakers said Congress should move the bill now being developed in the House.
“The Interstate highway system gave America its greatest spurt of economic growth in the history of this country and we need to sustain that growth by sustaining the investment in surface transportation. That is what this legislation will do,” said Oberstar. “An eighteen-month extension will put us into the next Presidential election cycle. It will take four years to finish, not a year and a half. I know how Congress works. Inertia becomes the enemy of progress. We are ready to move and we should move now.”
“An eighteen-month delay of the transportation authorization is short-sighted, unacceptable, and will harm our economic recovery,” added DeFazio. ‘Our six-year authorization bill will create or sustain double the amount of jobs as an extension. We cannot afford to walk away from one million jobs at a time when we are experiencing a struggling economy and high unemployment.”
The lawmakers said a six-year bill is needed to give states and other recipients time to plan their long-term construction projects. Short-term extensions cause uncertainty and disrupt the planning process, resulting in fewer projects, fewer jobs, and less economic growth.
The Highways and Transit Subcommittee marked up a Committee print of a new authorization bill in late June, and the full Committee is preparing the bill for mark-up, pending action by the Committee on Ways and Means on the revenue title. In the meantime, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is scheduled to mark up a bill providing for an 18-month extension later this week.
Video of the news conference can be seen here
