More than a year after Congress was told the oceans face an immediate crisis, the House last week briefly considered appointing a task force to study the problem. But the modest proposal offered by Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md., was quickly washed away in a wave of partisan sniping. As a result, Congress is no closer to tackling a host of recommendations for action made last year by the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy.
One of the commission’s top concerns was that the government’s ocean policies are badly fragmented, with 15 federal agencies and 58 congressional committees dealing with issues ranging from fishery management and climate research to offshore drilling and deep seabed mining. The commission’s chairman, Adm. James Watkins, told the Natural Resources News Service last week that those concerns have not been addressed.
“We think the pace is too slow,” Watkins said. “We’re saying let’s put some teeth into this program.”
Gilchrest, chairman of a House subcommittee on fisheries and oceans, made a baby step in that direction last week by proposing a Task Force on Ocean Policy to deal with the ocean commission’s recommendations, rather than have numerous committees address different issues.
“This task force creates an opportunity to bypass, eliminate the bureaucracy and fragmentation of the myriad jurisdictions of this body,” Gilchrest said in the Dec. 14 debate on his proposal. “This task force creates a new dynamic.”
Well, not really. Democrats from coastal states dismissed the task force idea as a delaying tactic by Republicans seeking to avoid issues that make certain industries nervous, such as better fishery management or restrictions on offshore drilling.
“Democrats are going to oppose this task force because it does nothing,” Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J, said during the debate on Gilchrest’s proposal. “Its task will literally be to write a report on a report that itself is already quite prescriptive in its instructions to Congress. We don’t need to study what is wrong with the oceans. We don’t need more reports. What we need now is action, real action, not this task force.”
And so it went, until Gilchrest’s proposal was finally tabled, with no immediate plan to bring it back to the floor.
Watkins said he hopes the idea of a unified congressional response to his commission’s report isn’t dead. “Otherwise it’s going to be a frustrating year to try to deal with this thing in an integrated, comprehensive way,” he said.
The Bush administration also needs to work on its oceans strategy, Watkins said. One year ago this week the president tasked a White House committee, with members from all agencies involved with the oceans, to develop a coordinated federal plan.
“More action is needed now,” Watkins said, “to implement a national strategy to protect, maintain and restore the nation’s priceless economic and ecological assets – our oceans, coasts and Great Lakes.”
