[House Hearing, 105 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON PFIESTERIA AND ITS IMPACT ON OUR FISHERY RESOURCES
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OVERSIGHT HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FISHERIES CONSERVATION, WILDLIFE AND OCEANS
of the
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 9, 1997, WASHINGTON, DC.
__________
Serial No. 105-63
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
46-477 CC WASHINGTON : 1998
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For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman
W.J. (BILLY) TAUZIN, Louisiana GEORGE MILLER, California
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia
ELTON GALLEGLY, California BRUCE F. VENTO, Minnesota
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee DALE E. KILDEE, Michigan
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland Samoa
KEN CALVERT, California NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
RICHARD W. POMBO, California SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming OWEN B. PICKETT, Virginia
HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
LINDA SMITH, Washington CALVIN M. DOOLEY, California
GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California CARLOS A. ROMERO-BARCELO, Puerto
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North Rico
Carolina MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York
WILLIAM M. (MAC) THORNBERRY, Texas ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam
JOHN SHADEGG, Arizona SAM FARR, California
JOHN E. ENSIGN, Nevada PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
ROBERT F. SMITH, Oregon ADAM SMITH, Washington
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
KEVIN BRADY, Texas CHRIS JOHN, Louisiana
JOHN PETERSON, Pennsylvania DONNA CHRISTIAN-GREEN, Virgin
RICK HILL, Montana Islands
BOB SCHAFFER, Colorado RON KIND, Wisconsin
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho
Lloyd A. Jones, Chief of Staff
Elizabeth Megginson, Chief Counsel
Christine Kennedy, Chief Clerk/Administrator
John Lawrence, Democratic Staff Director
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Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey, Chairman
W.J. (BILLY) TAUZIN, Louisiana NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
Carolina SAM FARR, California
JOHN PETERSON, Pennsylvania PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho
Harry Burroughs, Staff Director
John Rayfield, Legislative Staff
Christopher Stearns, Democratic Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held October 9, 1997..................................... 1
Statement of Members:
Castle, Hon. Michael N., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Delaware...................................... 4
Clayton, Hon. Eva M., a Representative in Congress from the
State of North Carolina.................................... 3
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Gilchrest, Hon. Wayne T., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Maryland...................................... 1
Jones, Hon. Walter B., a Representative in Congress from the
State of North Carolina.................................... 2
Young, Hon. Don, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Alaska, prepared statement of........................... 6
Statement of Witnesses:
Anderson, Donald M., Senior Scientist, Department of Biology,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, prepared statement of 195
Baden, Daniel, Director, National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences, Marine and Freshwater Biomedical Science
Center..................................................... 32
Prepared statement of.................................... 60
Boesch, Donald, President, Center for Environmental Science,
University of Maryland..................................... 11
Prepared statement of.................................... 59
Burkholder, JoAnn M., Associate Professor, North Carolina
State University........................................... 9
Prepared statement of.................................... 78
Clark, Jamie Rappaport, Director, United States Fish and
Wildlife Service, Dept. of the Interior, prepared statement
of......................................................... 203
Dove, Rick, Neuse River Keeper, Neuse River Foundation....... 42
Prepared statement of.................................... 167
Garcia, Terry D., Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for
Oceans and Atmosphere, Department of Commerce, accompanied
by Donald Scavia, Director, NOAA Coastal Ocean Program, and
John Steven Ramsdell, Associate Professor, Marine
Biomedical and Environmental Sciences, Medical University
of South Carolina.......................................... 6
Prepared statement of Terry D. Garcia.................... 63
Griffin, John, Secretary, Maryland Department of Natural
Resources.................................................. 34
Prepared statement of.................................... 97
Immanuel, Henry Werner Meseke, Elliott, Maryland, prepared
statement of............................................... 192
McDevitt, Wayne, Secretary, North Carolina Department of
Environmental and Natural Resources........................ 38
Prepared statement of.................................... 109
Perciasepe, Robert, Assistant Administrator, Office of Water,
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, prepared statement of 179
Schaefer, Dr. Mark, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water &
Science and Acting Director, U.S. Geological Survey,
Department of the Interior, prepared statement of.......... 198
Tulou, Christophe A. G., Secretary, Delaware Department of
Natural Resources and Environmental Control................ 40
Prepared statement of.................................... 162
Wright, L. Donelson, Dean and Director, Virginia Institute of
Marine Science, accompanied by Eugene M. Burreson, Director
for Research and Advisory Services, Virginia Institute of
Marine Science............................................. 13
Prepared statement of L. Donelson Wright................. 90
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON PFIESTERIA AND ITS IMPACT ON OUR FISHERY RESOURCES
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1997
House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Fisheries
Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans, Committee on
Resources, Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m., in
Room 1334, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Jim Saxton
[chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Members present: Representatives Saxton, Gilchrest, and
Jones.
Also present: Representatives Clayton and Castle.
Mr. Saxton. [presiding] Good morning. The Subcommittee on
Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans will come to order.
The purpose of this oversight hearing is to discuss the
status of the Federal research incentives into Pfiesteria and
the need for further investigation. The Subcommittee will also
focus on scope of the harmful algal blooms and marine toxins
that have been identified in other regions.
In particular, today's witnesses have been requested to
address the scope of these harmful alga blooms, what ocean and
estuarine conditions are necessary for the proliferation of
these organisms, what ocean conditions are required for the
organisms to enter the toxic phase, the ability of scientists
to detect or predict outbreaks of these organisms, and whether
a sufficient amount of research is being conducted to formulate
solutions to these problems.
In addition, the Subcommittee will focus on the current
coordination among Federal agencies and with State agencies in
plans for future joint efforts, especially among researchers.
Federal resources are already being targeted to address the
Pfiesteria outbreak, and I look forward to hearing from our
distinguished witnesses on how Federal funding can be
effectively used to deal with these marine organisms.
The Ranking Member isn't here at the moment, although I am
sure he will be shortly, and I know he is interested in this
issue. Let me turn at this point to the gentleman from the
eastern shore of Maryland, Mr. Gilchrest.
STATEMENT OF HON. WAYNE T. GILCHREST, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
fact that you're holding this hearing, and I also welcome all
of the witnesses. We look forward to your testimony.
This is a phenomenon that is serious in that it has caused
physical harm to humans, it's my understanding. It's also
serious from an economic perspective, but I would also comment
that I think it is fascinating that this phenomenon has drawn
such national attention, so that many more people other than
the scientists in a lab will have some understanding of the
nature of the mechanics of natural processes, and how they work
in their natural habitat, and then how they work in their
natural habitat impacted by human activity. And it's my
understanding as a nonscientist that the potential impacts and
the potential changes in natural organisms is, from a molecular
structure, very difficult to predict, and probably there's an
infinite number of possibilities.
So as we deal with this as nonscientists, we hope that you
will help us draw a clearer picture of what we as people can do
to try to resolve these issues, reduce human activity that
perhaps has caused these, and head down the right direction. So
we appreciate the fact that we know all of you are very busy,
and we appreciate that you have come in here to address us
today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Saxton. Thank you. I thank the Ranking Member.
Let me just ask unanimous consent at this point that two
Members who are here this morning who are not members of this
panel--let me ask unanimous consent that Mr. Castle and Ms.
Clayton be invited and permitted to join us on the panel.
Mr. Jones, would you like to make your opening comments?
STATEMENT OF HON. WALTER B. JONES, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA
Mr. Jones. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd join and
associate myself with the statement made by the gentleman from
Maryland, Mr. Gilchrest, that I very much appreciate you and
the staff allowing this hearing to take place today, because it
is an extremely serious problem in my district, as well as the
district of Mrs. Clayton, because we share many of the same
counties.
And it's gotten to a point that the people of eastern North
Carolina that live along the waterways are very frustrated
because we have seen this problem become worse each month and
each year, to the point that it has become extremely
detrimental to our packing houses that pack crabmeat, that sell
to the North. Many of our industries, commercial fishing
industries, are beginning to feel the economic problems that
come when your sales drop. And, in addition, tourism in eastern
North Carolina has been adversely affected by this Pfiesteria
problem that has been growing in our region of the State.
So I really very much appreciate the opportunity to hear
from the scientific community, as well as those from the State
of North Carolina, as well as a gentleman that will speak with
the second panel, Mr. Chairman, that has been so concerned
about the Neuse River, which is in my district, that he has
taken this cause on himself. I'm delighted that Rick Dove is
here.
And so, with that, Mr. Chairman, I look forward--like the
gentleman from Maryland, I have a lot to learn. I want to see
what the Congress can do to work with the States to see if we
can find a solution to the problem. So, again, I thank the
witnesses for being here today, the panel, and we look forward
to learning from you. And thank you very much.
Mr. Saxton. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for
his comments.
Ms. Clayton, do you have a statement that you'd like to
make?
STATEMENT OF HON. EVA M. CLAYTON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA
Ms. Clayton. Yes, I do, and I ask unanimous consent to put
my full statement into the record.
Mr. Saxton. Without objection.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Clayton follows:]
Statement of Hon. Eva M. Clayton, a Representative in Congress from the
State of North Carolina
Good morning. I would like to thank Chairman Saxton and
Ranking Member Abercrombie for permitting me to participate.
Pfiesteria is of great concern to North Carolina as the State
has over 2.3 million acres of estuary--more than any other
Atlantic Coast State. Estuaries play a critical role in the
life cycle of marine fisheries as many commercial species feed,
spawn and nurture their young there.
Pfiesteria has plagued North Carolina for many years, and
experts now think that this organism was first observed in our
waters almost twenty years ago in 1978.
While the Old North State has made multiple efforts to
address this pestilence, through estuary studies, nondischarge
rules, phosphate bans, rapid response teams, nitrogen load
reductions, nutrient limit reductions, source wetland
restoration programs and a two-year moratorium on new or
expanding swine farms; Pfiesteria is an enigma for us all as it
has been found in many Atlantic waters, from the Chesapeake Bay
south to Florida and west to Texas.
Fishing is an industry of great importance to North
Carolina, with 7,000 licensed fishermen and over a billion
dollars in revenue yearly. In 1995 alone, commercial fishermen
landed over 177 million pounds of fish, with a value of over
$112 million dollars.
In the area I represent, while the amounts are not as high
as those in the district of my colleague from North Carolina,
Walter Jones, who serves on this Subcommittee--the amount of
fish landed in the seven coastal counties of North Carolina in
the First Congressional District (Beaufort, Bertie, Chowan,
Craven, New Hanover, Paquotank and Pender) was over 21 million
pounds with a value over $10 million dollars--11 percent of the
entire state total.
Thus, the impact of Pfiesteria upon the fishing industry,
in North Carolina and other coastal states--is significant as
many of the affected counties derive most of their income from
tourism and fishing, and most are severely economically
disadvantaged to begin with.
It is imperative that we work together constructively and
effectively, Federal, state and local governments and agencies,
academic researchers, and concerned citizens--to attack and
find rapid and workable solutions to this predicament.
I am pleased to note that two North Carolinians will be
testifying today, the Honorable Wayne McDevitt, the Secretary
of the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural
Resources and Dr. JoAnn Burkholder, who we proudly claim in
North Carolina, from North Carolina State University.
Through her diligent research, we now know a great deal
about the organism itself and its life cycle. All of us owe her
a debt of gratitude for her tireless work, which put her at
great physical risk for illness.
Now, it is time to fund additional work for Dr. Burkholder,
and other scientists and researchers like her, in order to
answer the remaining questions regarding the effects of
Pfiesteria on humans, animals and watersheds.
The waters of North Carolina have certainly felt the
effects of Pfiesteria outbreaks, especially in the Neuse River,
the Tar River, the Pamlico River as well as the entire
Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary, parts of which are in my
Congressional District. There have been more than a million
fish killed in our State and many reports of human health
problems.
Given the adverse impact of such significant fish kills
upon my District, North Carolina and the Mid-Atlantic, we need
to seek solutions through aggressive research.
Mr. Chairman, we face a very serious threat that must be
addressed immediately. We should not rush to judgement,
however. Scientific inquiries are ongoing, but we should not
waste time. Further research and testing should be undertaken
at once.
It is my hope that funding for critically-needed research
and testing will come as a result of today's hearings. Only
through funding will come opportunities for solutions.
All North Carolinians that live, work and recreate in the
affected waters, share that hope. Their lives and livelihoods
depend upon it.
I was able to insert language into the House Agriculture
Forestry, Resource Conservation and Research Subcommittee
version of H.R. 2154, the Agricultural Research, Extension and
Education Reauthorization Act of 1997, to authorize the use of
research and extension grants to study the impact of Pfiesteria
and other microorganisms that pose threats to human and animal
health upon aquatic food webs.
Thanks again to Chairman Saxton and Ranking Member
Abercrombie for allowing me to participate.
Ms. Clayton. And I want to express appreciation to you,
Chairman Saxton, for affording me the courtesy to appear and to
welcome your convening this meeting and how important it is for
people in my district. I joined with Congressman Jones, and he
has more than I, but it's certainly a substantial number of our
counties, at least five of my counties, and about eight of his
counties are engaged in this. Fisheries is an important
industry in our area, and therefore, anything that affects its
economic health is a serious implication to the opportunity of
economic survival in that area.
It has grown in our area, but equally important to this
whole problem is the potential for human health, and we do not
want to diminish what that means. We don't want to be quick to
judgment, but we do want to say that we must act, and we must
act in a careful, but cautious way, but not so cautious that we
are afraid to pursue.
I have been involved in trying to get our agricultural
community involved, and Pfiesteria, for the first time, will
now be a part of its research agenda that we got introduced
into the legislation.
So, Mr. Chairman, I welcome what Members will be saying,
individuals will be saying to the members of this Committee,
and I want to welcome two of our North Carolinians who are
here, who will make presentation, testimony, later.
Thank you.
Mr. Saxton. Thank you very much.
Mr. Castle, do you have some comments?
STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL N. CASTLE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF DELAWARE
Mr. Castle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for a couple
of things. One, for my return to this room. I was on the
Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee before they abolished
it, and this is a pleasant room to come back to. Maybe we
should have kept it going, everything considered.
And I would like to thank you very much personally for
listening to some of us who wanted this hearing in responding
dramatically quickly, for Congress at least. We are very
appreciative of that. I'd also like to thank Mr. Gilchrest, who
I think has been a strong leader on this subject for some time.
I first came into contact, not directly but hearing about
it, with--thank God, from what I've heard [Laughter]--with
Pfiesteria in 1987, when I was the governor of Delaware. We had
a massive fish kill in the Indian River Bay, just off the
Atlantic Ocean, and it actually turned the waters mahogany
brown. It hit every species of fish in that particular
waterway, and eventually--and it was sort of after the fact--it
was linked to Pfiesteria.
This summer, again, we had tainted fish appearing off of
Cape Henlopen and the Indian River and in the inland bays, and
for people in Washington, that's in the Rehobeth area. That's
what they identify with here in Washington; they all go there.
And these are major fishing and recreational areas for
Delawareans. It's not absolutely certain what that was, but it
was a concern.
This, obviously, is not just a problem in Delaware. It's a
problem in North Carolina; it's a problem in Maryland; it's a
problem as far north as potentially New Jersey/New York and on
down the coast. And I thought from the very beginning, when I
started hearing about this this year, that we needed a national
focus on this. We need a national coordinated effort by a lot
of those various groups and agencies who are before us here
today, by State and Federal agencies with vital input from
researchers to work with the public to determine what the
problems are and how to correct them. This is new to a lot of
people.
And I believe that Congress has really stepped forward and
played a major role in the Pfiesteria discussion, and I am
pleased with this hearing, which I think continues that. I
think that some of the responses have been positive in terms of
action, too. We've appropriated $11 million in funding to
various Federal agencies, many of which we're going to hear
from today, to study the causes, effects, and solutions, and
effects on human beings' health, I might add, to the Pfiesteria
phenomenon. And, indeed, this is the second congressional
hearing which we have had on this subject.
This is a serious problem. We've heard about tourism here
today. We all know that the sale of fish is down in certain
areas, maybe even broader than certain areas in the United
States of America. I have heard firsthand from Dr. Burkholder,
who's going to testify today, just last week when she was kind
enough to spend a good deal of time in Delaware, about the
effects and impact on a research assistant of hers. There
potentially is a human health problem here. We really don't
know what the extent of all of this is, and most of us in
Congress are not scientists--there are a few scientists in
Congress; I'm not one of them, but they're there. And we really
need to learn as much as we possibly can, so that we can
coordinate the regional and national effort to try to resolve
the problems which exist.
So we really do appreciate you being here. We really are
listening to you, and we are trying to move as rapidly as
possible. And I will have a chance to mention him later, but
Christophe Tulou is here, who used to work right here on
Capitol Hill, and he's Delaware's Secretary of Natural
Resources and Environmental Control, and has also taken a
strong interest in this issue. We're pleased to have him here
as well.
And I look forward to the hearing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Saxton. Thank you, Mr. Castle.
Let me ask unanimous consent at this point that Mr. Young's
statement be placed in the record, and, additionally, that all
of the Subcommittee members be permitted to include their
opening statements in the record at this point. Without
objection.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Young follows:]
Statement of Hon. Don Young, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Alaska
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your holding this hearing today
on Pfiesteria and other harmful marine algal blooms. As many
Members are aware, these algal blooms have been detected in our
coastal waters for decades and have been seen from Florida to
my own State of Alaska.
While the outbreaks of Pfiesteria near our Nation's Capital
have highlighted this problem, it is not an isolated one.
Congress has responded by amending appropriation bills to fund
Pfiesteria research. What we need to do is make sure that all
of the increased funding does not get focused only on the
immediate problem of Pfiesteria, but is directed to address the
problem of harmful marine algal blooms in general.
I appreciate the fears of Members with coastal districts
which are experiencing this problem for the first time, but
this is a national problem. It is not effective to throw money
at individual outbreaks. We should look at the bigger picture
and fund research into the broader harmful algal bloom issue.
We need to support coordinated Federal and State peer-reviewed
research on the marine micro-organisms involved in harmful
algal blooms across the nation.
I look forward to learning more about how all of these
algal blooms are related and whether they all react in the same
manner. I hope we will also help show that Federal funding
efforts must be used in a coordinated manner to learn more
about these micro-organisms and what causes them to become
toxic to other marine life.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The information follows:]
Mr. Saxton. Now I would like to introduce our first panel
of witnesses. Let me say at the outset one of our panelists has
been delayed because of air traffic, or whatever. Mr. Daniel
Baden called us an hour or so ago and said that his plane was
just about to take off from a Florida airport. So we'll hear
from him later in the day.
Let me introduce the members of panel one who are with us,
and we thank you all for being here. We have Dr. Terry Garcia,
Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and
Atmosphere in the Department of Commerce. He is accompanied by
Donald Scavia, Director of NOAA Coastal Ocean Program; Dr.
JoAnn Burkholder, associate professor, North Carolina State
University; Dr. Donald Boesch, president, Center for
Environmental Sciences, University of Maryland; and Dr. L.
Donelson Wright, dean and director of Virginia's Institute of
Marine Science, who is accompanied by Dr. Eugene Burreson,
director of research and advisory services, Virginia Institute
of Marine Sciences.
Let me just mention to each of you that we have those nasty
little lights there in front of you. They help us stick to what
we call the five-minute rule, which means that each of you has
allotted to you five minutes for your oral statements, and of
course in each case your entire statement will be included in
the record.
I would now like to recognize Mr. Garcia for his statement
at this time.
STATEMENT OF TERRY D. GARCIA, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
COMMERCE FOR OCEANS AND ATMOSPHERE, DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE,
ACCOMPANIED BY DONALD SCAVIA, DIRECTOR, NOAA COASTAL OCEAN
PROGRAM, AND JOHN STEVEN RAMSDELL, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, MARINE
BIOMEDICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES, MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH CAROLINA
Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you noted, I am
accompanied by Mr. Don Scavia, who's the Director of NOAA's
Coast-
al Ocean Program, as well as Dr. John Ramsdell from the
Charleston Laboratory.
I appreciate this opportunity to discuss NOAA's role in the
multi-agency response to the Pfiesteria crisis in the
Chesapeake Bay. Our efforts are focused on research and
management, both supported by education and outreach. NOAA's
coastal programs and research laboratories have been conducting
important research related to harmful algal blooms and
Pfiesteria, and will continue to do so. NOAA will also continue
working with the States through our Coastal Zone Management
Program and the Chesapeake Bay Office, as well as the Beaufort
and Charleston Labs.
My written testimony describes in full detail the various
activities of NOAA and our Federal partners. What I'd like to
deal with today in my brief oral statement is the larger
national problem that we are confronting today of harmful
species that apparently are increasing in abundance and
intensity in coastal waters, both domestically and
internationally. These harmful algal blooms, including red
tides in the Gulf of Mexico and the Southeast, brown tides in
New York and Texas, and shellfish poisonings in the Gulf of
Maine, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska impact nearly every
coastal state and have been responsible for an estimated $1
billion in economic losses during the past two decades.
Blooms have decimated the scallop fishery in Long Island's
estuaries, killed a billion fish in North Carolina estuaries,
closed down various shell fisheries on Georgia's bank, and from
North Carolina to Louisiana, and killed almost 150 Florida
manatees. These harmful algae have been associated with a
serious die-off of dolphins along the East Coast in 1987, and
without effective means to monitor paralytic shellfish
poisoning, approximately 30,000 miles of Alaskan shellfish
waters cannot be harvested.
As we meet here today, Texas is responding to a new red
tide that stretches along South Padre Island and the Padre
Island National Seashore, and has killed an estimated 14
million fish, including Gulf menhaden, scaled sardine, Atlantic
bumper, and striped mullets, as well as red drum, flounder, and
sea trout.
These harmful algal blooms, which include Pfiesteria, are
composed of naturally-occurring species that, for some reason,
reproduce out of natural ecosystem balance and appear in
various forms, all of which can have human health and economic
effects.
The increasing coastwide and worldwide trends in bloom
occurrence and intensities suggest that we must look for common
underlying causes, including increased nutrient levels in
coastal waters. It is also important to note that excess
nutrient loads, particularly nitrogen and phosphorous, are
responsible for a general overgrowth of algae in many coastal
ecosystems. While these algaes may not all be toxic, their
death and subsequent decay can lead to severe oxygen depletion
in the bottom waters of many estuaries and coastal
environments.
In fact, a recent NOAA survey has revealed that at some
time each year 53 percent of our estuaries experience hypoxic
conditions, oxygen levels that are low enough to cause
significant ecological impairment, and 30 percent experience
anoxia. Those are areas where all of the oxygen is depleted.
The dramatic hypoxic zone that covers 7,000 square miles in the
Gulf of Mexico indicates clearly the impact of overfertilized
marine systems.
The ultimate solutions to many of the problems we are
addressing here today, from Pfiesteria to the other toxic algal
blooms, to severely depleted oxygen, will be based on an
ability to predict the fate, transport, and impacts of nitrogen
and phosphorous in coastal watersheds and water bodies. NOAA
will continue to support the states and other Federal agencies
in responding to this immediate, urgent problem. However,
significant and lasting progress will require a comprehensive
coordinated and integrated strategy to understand the factors
responsible for high incidences of fish lesions and fish kills
and for blooms of Pfiesteria and other harmful blooms.
NOAA and the Environmental Protection Agency are taking the
lead in developing a national research strategy focused in four
areas: methods to identify and detect toxins; determining toxic
pathways and the means to forecast harmful blooms and impacts;
developing management and mitigation options, including a
rapid-response capability, and enhancing education and
outreach. I will submit for the record the eight specific
objectives of that research plan.
At the core of this national strategy is a multi-agency
research program on ecology and oceanography of harmful algal
blooms, or ECOHAB, which represents the first Federal
interagency research program focused exclusively on determining
the factors responsible for blooms of harmful algal in U.S.
coastal waters. ECOHAB is a partnership among NOAA, the
National Science Foundation, EPA, and the Office of Naval
Research.
The draft national research strategy, which will be ready
for review by Federal and state agencies and the academic
community this month, is intended to provide a basis for
developing control and mitigation strategies through our
coastal management programs, which will reduce and prevent the
occurrence of future harmful blooms. As evidence grows that
these other blooms are stimulated by non-point sources of
nutrients, our efforts with EPA and the States in the coastal
zone management non-point pollution control program will be
critical. For the past seven years, NOAA, EPA, and the coastal
states have been working to identify programs available to
address non-point sources of pollution and to ensure that
appropriate management practices are applied to reduce polluted
runoff. The development of state coastal non-point programs has
provided a roadmap of what we need to do, and has identified
existing tools and areas where more effort must be required.
The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management
Act also provides important tools, including the requirement
that NOAA identify essential fish habitat and work with the
fisheries councils to protect essential fish habitat. As we
move forward in dealing with Pfiesteria and other harmful
blooms, NOAA will continue to work with the states and
coordinate Federal research monitoring and assessment; will
lead the development to National International Agency Program
that includes research to understand and predict conditions
favoring Pfiesteria bloom development and toxicity as part of
the national approach to harmful algal blooms; assessment of
human health and economic impacts on coastal communities and
seafood consumers; further development and implementation of
appropriate measures to control and mitigate these impacts, and
expanded outreach efforts to ensure that coastal managers and
the public can make informed decisions dealing with fish kills,
lesions, and safeguard public safety.
That concludes my testimony, Mr. Chairman. I'll be happy to
answer questions at the end of the panel.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Garcia may be found at end
of hearing.]
Mr. Saxton. Thank you very much, Mr. Garcia.
Dr. Burkholder, we're anxious to hear your testimony.
STATEMENT OF JOANN M. BURKHOLDER, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, NORTH
CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY
Ms. Burkholder. Thank you, sir. The toxic dinoflagellate,
Pfiesteria piscicida, and at least two other toxic Pfiesteria-
like species that have not yet been named, are one-celled
animals with complex life cycles and direct attack behavior
toward fish. The toxic Pfiesteria species complex is known,
thus far, from the mid-Atlantic and southeastern United
States--especially from the Albemarle-Pamlico of North Carolina
and the Chesapeake Bay, which are the largest and second
largest estuaries on the U.S. mainland.
The dinoflagellates are usually benign little animals that
consume other microbes and dissolved organic nutrients. They
become toxic when they detect high levels of substances
excreted by fish. Optimal conditions for toxic Pfiesteria
activity are poorly-flushed, quiet brackish waters, warm
temperatures, and high nutrient loading from human and animal
wastes.
In the past seven years in North Carolina, we've lost more
than 1 billion finned fish and shellfish from kills and disease
related to the toxic Pfiesteria complex over large expanses of
our estuaries. This year, these same dinoflagellates also have
affected about 50,000 fish from some areas of Chesapeake Bay.
Pfiesteria piscidia, which is best known, causes open-bleeding
sore diseases, immune system suppression, and other health
problems for fish.
Medical evidence also implicates Pfiesteria piscidia in
serious human health impacts, especially for people who have
worked with toxic cultures in the laboratory before we
discovered that Pfiesteria-like species make airborne toxins
that we inhale. Some of the effects, such as skin lesions,
severe headaches, profound learning disabilities, and short-
term memory loss have lasted for weeks to months. These
symptoms usually lessen or disappear following weeks or months
away from affected areas or toxic cultures.
Nearly all of the peer-reviewed published research on the
toxic Pfiesteria complex have come from collaborations that my
laboratory has developed with other Federal, State, and
university scientists. As the foremost expert on these
organisms in the world, I can state that comparative insights
about the different Pfiesteria-like species are critically
needed, focusing on their respective distributions, nutrient
pollution controls on their toxic outbreaks, their impacts on
estuary and food webs, their toxins, and their chronic as well
as acute impacts on both fish and human health.
Inadequate funding for research on toxic Pfiesteria over
the past seven years has been a restraining factor since my
laboratory first discovered these dinoflagellates at major fish
kills. Congress has also been slowed because a critical
component, chemical analysis of these toxins, has not been
given serious attention.
For the past five years, we have struggled to obtain
assistance from colleagues who, despite having been sent toxins
for analysis, repeatedly were not forthcoming with information
about them. Toxin analysis is essential to determine whether
fish from affected areas are safe to eat and the extent to
which people are being hurt. My research associate and I have
been seriously affected by these toxins. We have languished,
and other people in our estuaries have been hurt because this
information has not been forthcoming. Improved safety
precautions could not be designed and treatment for affected
people could not be developed.
Recently, we were able to send these same toxins to
collaborators at the National Marine Fisheries Service,
Charleston's Marine Biotoxin Center, through the NIEHS
intramural program. Without regard for financial gain or
personal accolades, these colleagues honored the issue and have
worked long hours without funding support. In less than three
months, they have isolated and purified water-soluble and
lipid-soluble toxins from Pfiesteria. Furthermore, in
recognition of the critical nature of this issue, they shared
their information immediately.
My laboratory staff and I have forged collaborations and
provided counsel for many Federal agencies, such as NOAA,
NIEHS, FDA, and the EPA. We also have developed strong
collaborations and provided guidance to State agencies in North
Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and Florida, among
others. We have ongoing collaborations with many researchers
from universities in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the
Southeast, bringing an inter-disciplinary team effort to bear
in resolving important questions about the toxic Pfiesteria
complex, as well as other toxic algae in both fresh and marine
waters, in issues of fisheries protection, water pollution
control, and human health.
We also have established a network of volunteer concerned
citizens. More than 300 such people in North Carolina are
helping to report fish kills to us so that we can more
accurately identify areas affected by Pfiesteria, and provide a
warning system to help safeguard public health.
In my opinion, Congress can enhance efficient progress and
the collective ability to understand Pfiesteria and other
harmful micro-organisms in coastal areas by funding several
major laboratories to serve as centers of coordinated multi-
disciplinary research efforts. We who have the experience on
Pfiesteria, that have been tested by the yardstick of many
peer-reviewed publications, critically need resources that are
essential so that we can make major progress quickly.
We also need the support to provide rigorous training that
is in high demand for other scientists in affected regions, and
to help Federal and State agencies to provide better
information for concerned citizens and environmental education
efforts. Such environmental education outreach represents a
pressing need to help protect public health, our fisheries, and
our fishermen in affected areas so that our citizens are able
to operate from a knowledge base, rather than from panic that
inevitably occurs instead when ignorance of these issues or
unwarranted fear is the basis of action.
The impacts of toxic Pfiesteria and its close allies is an
issue that I care deeply about and have worked to understand
for nearly a decade. I have talked about the biology and
impacts of these organisms, but a more central message needs to
be related here. The toxic Pfiesteria complex commonly thrives
in areas affected by nutrient pollution. They, as well as other
harmful micro-organisms, appear to be increasing in coastal
areas where urbanization, agriculture, and other human
activities are threatening the health of our aquatic
ecosystems. The story of Pfiesteria serves to illustrate that
in coastal areas where so many of us live, fish health and
human health are strongly linked.
It is my hope that through knowledge of Pfiesteria and
other harmful species, we can come to a greater appreciation of
the need to take better care of our coastal waters, toward
protecting both our fisheries and our own health.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Burkholder may be found at
end of hearing.]
Mr. Gilchrest. [presiding] Thank you, Dr. Burkholder.
Our next witness is Dr. Don Boesch from the University of
Maryland Center for Environmental Science. We worked together
on a number of issues before, and occasionally have been on the
same boat at the same time in the Chesapeake Bay. Don, welcome
to Washington. We look forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF DONALD BOESCH, PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL
SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Mr. Boesch. Thank you very much, Congressman Gilchrest.
We've been in the same boat in many respects, I think.
My perspective on today's subject is influenced heavily by
my recent service as the Chair of two scientific committees.
Late last year, I was asked by the Secretary of the Interior
and the Administrator of NOAA to chair a panel of experts that
conducted a national assessment. We've produced this report,
and I think we've given you copies of it. The title of the
report is, ``Harmful Algal Blooms in Coastal Waters: Options
for Prevention, Control and Mitigation.'' And our objective was
to take this beyond the definition of the science needs, to
talk about what we can do now to practically apply our
knowledge to deal with prevention, control, and mitigation of
the ill effects of these harmful algal blooms.
More recently, I have been called on by Maryland Department
of Natural Resources Secretary John Griffin--who I believe will
be speaking with you on the next panel, to chair a technical
advisory committee to advise the State's agencies in their
assessment of fish lesions and kills in the Maryland waters.
And this committee includes notable experts outside of
Maryland, as well, including Dr. Burkholder and Dr. Burreson,
who are also here today.
From these vantage points, I'm pleased to offer my opinions
about what is known about the effects of toxic dinoflagellates
such as Pfiesteria, the role of human activities in stimulating
them, and future research needs and approaches.
The national assessment, as I said, focused on what could
be done about the ill effects of these toxic algal blooms, and
these include blooms that cause paralytic and amnesic shellfish
poisoning, red and brown tides, and other blooms that cause
catastrophic losses of aquacultured fish, particularly in the
Northwest.
Our report concluded that although pollution and nutrient
enrichment have been strongly implicated in worsening algal
blooms in various parts of the world, they have not yet been
unequivocally identified as the source of any of these U.S.
blooms that we studied. Unfortunately, we did not include
Pfiesteria in this assessment, so we have to look at the
Pfiesteria question a bit more carefully.
Nonetheless, we concluded that the pursuit of water quality
objectives, improvements of proving water quality that involved
pollutant reduction, and particularly the reduction of nutrient
inputs in the coastal waters, as Mr. Garcia has indicated,
might well pay off major benefits in terms of reduction of the
frequency of harmful algal blooms, as well as achieve the other
living resource objectives that we've set forth in the
restoration of bodies of water such as the Chesapeake.
Our conclusions also included recommendations about how
research can help us deal with prevention, control, and
mitigation, and specifically called for Federal attention to
the issue of, ``How do we then take our knowledge and apply it
to control, prevention, and mitigation strategies''?
Turning now to the Chesapeake, let me summarize where we
are. First, after evaluating the variety of principal causes of
fish lesions in the Pocomoke River that were observed starting
last fall, it now appears likely that many of these lesions and
the fish kills that took place this summer were associated with
toxins of Pfiesteria or the related dinoflagellates, as Dr.
Burkholder had indicated, that have been identified from these
waters. The evidence has grown and increased our confidence
that these are the causes of these problems.
In addition, medical researchers have documented skin
rashes and reduced efficiency in short-term memory in
individuals exposed to this body of water, and, more recently,
some other bodies of water in Congressman Gilchrest's district
on the Maryland Eastern Shore that have had similar problems.
This has obviously raised concern by a quantum and resulted in
a variety of steps to ensure the protection of the public
health, while we learn more about the detection and cause of
these problems.
The scientific team and advisors that are working on this
within Maryland are turning their attention, in particular, to
the environmental conditions that promote the outbreak of toxic
forms of Pfiesteria-like organisms so that we can predict when
they might occur, protect public health, thereby, and also
better control the human activities that might stimulate them.
As you know, nutrient over-enrichment, particularly from
agricultural sources, has been widely suspected. Maryland
Governor Parris Glendening has charged a Blue-ribbon Pfiesteria
commission that he has appointed to recommend steps that can be
taken to reduce the risks. Their report is due on November 1.
More effective controls of nutrient losses from agricultural
activities, including the disposition of poultry manure, are
among the principal issues under review.
I believe that Dr. Burkholder would agree with me that we
are still in the early stages of the Pfiesteria learning curve.
Her contributions have been truly monumental, but there has
been only a small group of scientists as she has indicated that
has worked on this problem for only a short period of time, and
the organism is, indeed, very complex.
With a stronger case now made for the documented health
concerns, and a number of regions now more clearly affected,
greater scientific research is required. I urge in your
oversight role that Congress insist that this research is
strategic, is integrated across the agencies and disciplines,
incorporates high standards of scientific quality and peer
review, and is accountable in leading to clearer understanding
and solutions. From the perspective of our technical advisory
committee, we've identified certain priorities for that
research--and it's in my written testimony, and I will shorten
it by not repeating them here.
In my opinion, though, an effective mechanism already
exists to support the direction and coordinate the needed
environmental research on the environmental aspects of this
problem in the NOAA-led program on Ecology and Oceanography of
Harmful Algal Blooms, or ECOHAB, as Mr. Garcia described. This
is a program that already exists. It's national in scope; it's
broadly focused, and it involves the participation of other
relevant Federal agencies, as well as NOAA. I would urge your
attention to advancing this program.
Finally, I'm very pleased, as Mr. Garcia indicated, that
the Federal agencies have been working together to develop an
integrated approach across government to address the
environmental, health, and agricultural control problems.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Boesch may be found at end
of hearing.]
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Dr. Boesch.
Dr. Wright, of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Welcome, sir.
STATEMENT OF L. DONELSON WRIGHT, DEAN AND DIRECTOR, VIRGINIA
INSTITUTE OF MARINE SCIENCE, ACCOMPANIED BY EUGENE M. BURRESON,
DIRECTOR FOR RESEARCH AND ADVISORY SERVICES, VIRGINIA INSTITUTE
OF MARINE SCIENCE
Mr. Wright. Thank you, Congressman Gilchrest.
I'm not an expert on Pfiesteria myself. I'm here
representing the Virginia Institute of Marine Science of the
College of William and Mary, which includes an
interdisciplinary team of 10 scientists who are studying
various aspects of Pfiesteria and related phenomena, such as
nutrients. The lead member of that team is Dr. Burreson, who is
with me here today.
As you've already heard, there is much that is already
known about Pfiesteria piscicida. However, there are at least
three other species in the Pfiesteria complex. I should correct
an error in my written statement, which refers to two; there
are, in fact, four spe-
cies. The basic biology and toxicology of these other species
has not been well-studied.
The species present in the Chesapeake Bay are not well-
documented, but the fish kill in the Pocomoke River on the
Virginia-Maryland border seems to be have been caused by one of
these other species, not Pfiesteria piscicida. Clearly, we need
much more research on Chesapeake Bay species in the Pfiesteria
complex and their impact on living marine resources. We also
need more research on the broader questions of harmful algal
blooms and the impact of nutrient inputs.
The Virginia Institute of Marine Science has a long history
of research in the Chesapeake Bay, and the Institute is
mandated in the Code of Virginia to conduct research and
provide objective scientific advice to the Commonwealth and its
agencies; hence, has been the leading scientific institution on
the Pfiesteria task force in Virginia.
Our longstanding, monthly, fish stock assessment surveys in
the lower Chesapeake Bay and its major tributaries have
provided an early warning system for potential outbreaks of
Pfiesteria-like organisms in Virginia. Our surveys to date have
not documented an unusually high prevalence of deep lesions on
recreational or commercially-important food fishes in the
Chesapeake Bay, and there have been no reports of Pfiesteria-
related human illness from eating Chesapeake Bay seafood. Thus,
consumer fears about eating Chesapeake Bay seafood are
unfounded, in our opinion. We believe Virginia seafood is safe.
The Virginia Institute of Marine Science has diverted
existing resources to develop research capabilities on
Pfiesteria complex organisms. We're presently culturing non-
toxic stages of heterotrophic--that means animal--
dinoflagellates from areas with high prevalences of lesions on
juvenile menhaden. These cultures have been used to perfect
protocols for identification of Pfiesteria complex organisms
with a scanning electron microscope. We now lack only the
training on specific identification characteristics to be able
to provide an identification capability for the Chesapeake Bay
region, but we must, very soon, obtain that capability.
There is still much we don't know about Pfiesteria. Federal
leadership and funding are urgently needed to support future
research in at least four areas that are pertinent to the
Chesapeake Bay. The first has to do with identification. We
need to develop scanning electron microscope capabilities for
identifying Pfiesteria when it occurs. We also need to develop
rapid molecular or immunologic diagnostic techniques for
Pfiesteria complex organisms.
The second pertains to the general biology and ecology of
the organism. We need to understand the general biology of all
species in the Pfiesteria complex; in particular, the response
that these organisms have to various environmental factors.
Nutrient enrichment has been implicated as an important factor
in increasing the abundance of these organisms, but the exact
nature of the relationship has not been well-established yet in
laboratory studies. More research is needed.
Third is toxicity. We need to determine the toxicity of all
species in the Pfiesteria complex and the effect that these
toxins have on marine life. The fourth has to do with the
ecology of fish lesions. We need to understand the distribution
and the seasonal onset of lesions in juvenile menhaden in the
Chesapeake Bay, in relation to various environmental factors in
water quality. VIMS has elements in place to be able to
accomplish all of this in Virginia. We believe that this
capability must be developed within the Chesapeake Bay.
I also would like to say that I agree with Dr. Boesch that
the ECOHAB program provides an effective mechanism for multi-
state and interdisciplinary coordination.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my remarks.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wright may be found at end
of hearing.]
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you very much, Dr. Wright.
I have to leave in about 5 minutes, for about 10 minutes,
and Walter is going to take over the Chair; I guess, Mike, you
have a little bit more time to be here. You don't have to go at
any time.
But, I'm just going to ask a few questions before I have to
leave to testify at another committee. But, what I'd like to do
is come back and continue asking this panel questions, so you
and Mike and Eva can have at it as long as you want--five
minutes.
One quick question I'd just like to ask the panel in
general, and each of you, if you would like, can respond to
this question. Is there any doubt at this point that Pfiesteria
has a toxic stage, that Pfiesteria was the cause for fish kills
in the Pocomoke--possibly King's Creek and the Chicomacomiko
River, but particularly in the Pocomoke--that that toxic stage
of Pfiesteria killed those fish in the Pocomoke and that a
toxic chemical released by Pfiesteria did, in fact, have some
harmful health effects on people? Is there any doubt about any
of that at this point?
Dr. Burkholder.
Ms. Burkholder. Mr. Chairman, I think I can clarify a
little bit for you. There is, as has been mentioned in the
panel, a toxic Pfiesteria-like species; in fact, we have found
two toxic Pfiesteria-like species in the Pocomoke estuary at
this time. Dr. Steidinger, from the Florida Marine Research
Institute, is a foremost taxonomist on dinoflagellates. She and
I are working together to cross-compare and cross-corroborate
our species analyses, and we feel that it's premature at this
time to say which member of the toxic Pfiesteria complex was
present, but two--actually two toxic species were. So they
haven't been named, particularly, but they're definitely there.
We have also verified that these toxic species could kill
fish and culture fairly rapidly, after we received the samples,
indicating that these species were indeed toxic in the Pocomoke
estuary and were hurting fish.
It is always very difficult to establish certain causality
in a field setting, but from our data I would say that we are
95 percent certain that two toxic Pfiesteria-like species were
there, that they caused fish problems, and that the problems
experienced by humans who were in that estuary at the time of
these fish kills are extremely similar to the problems
confronted by humans working in a laboratory setting with
Pfiesteria. It's much easier to demonstrate causality in a
laboratory environment, and the symptoms that were sustained by
laboratory workers were very, very similar to what was
sustained in the Pocomoke.
Mr. Gilchrest. Mr. Garcia?
Mr. Garcia. I would agree with Dr. Burkholder and would ask
that Don Scavia, who is accompanying me, elaborate. The
chairman had earlier elevated me to the ranks of these
scientists by referring to me as ``Dr.,'' and although I
appreciate it, I'll have to decline the promotion. But I would
ask that Don Scavia----
Mr. Scavia. Mr. Gilchrest, there's actually not a whole lot
to add to what Dr. Burkholder has just said. It is clear that
there is a Pfiesteria complex out there.
Mr. Gilchrest. When you say Pfiesteria complex, you're
talking about a series of these little, tiny creatures that are
cousins.
Mr. Scavia. That's right.
Mr. Gilchrest. But not brothers or sisters.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Scavia. I think we'll stop with saying they're cousins.
Mr. Gilchrest. Okay.
Mr. Scavia. And they are certainly indicted in this whole
episode. But beyond that, I think the work that is being done
with Karen Steidinger in Florida and in JoAnn's lab to try to
nail down which species we're dealing with is critical.
Mr. Gilchrest. But it is your conclusion that a tiny micro-
organism, with whatever name--some aspect of the start of the
food chain--does react with a certain toxic stage for the
purpose, we guess, of stunning fish so they can go in and feed,
and then that toxic chemical remains in the water? And if
people go in the water near the time that that happened, they
could have, or they do have, some health effects?
Mr. Scavia. That's my understanding. I think JoAnn can
actually elaborate on that.
Ms. Burkholder. I can make a couple of other points. One is
that the laboratory exposures that were sustained were
predominately from inhalation of neuro-toxic aerosols--airborne
toxins from these organisms. And in the field setting, it looks
as though the same kinds of effects occur. These toxins are
fairly short-lived when they're in the water or the air, based
on our research to date, but there are both toxins in the water
that can cause trouble for humans, and also toxins in the air
that people can inhale.
When fish stop showing signs of distress, when they stop
developing erratic behavior or lesions or open-bleeding sores--
when they stop dying--the toxins that are in the water rapidly
break down, so these Pfiesteria-like species have to keep
making toxin in response to fish. The toxins don't last very
long in the water.
Mr. Gilchrest. So if the fish aren't present, they're not
likely to release this toxin.
Ms. Burkholder. That's true. These organisms are usually
benign little animals, and they only become toxic--to date,
based on our research--when they are in the presence of a lot
of excreta from fish. I don't think it's any accident that
menhaden have been the species that are affected in both North
Carolina and Maryland waters, predominantly. About 90 percent
of the fish that have died have been menhaden.
Mr. Gilchrest. If a large number of menhaden are in a
certain area where there is this Pfiesteria complex and this
triggers the toxic stage of this Pfiesteria, if the fish then
become stunned and actually die and then probably stay there,
does the Pfiesteria then persist over a long period of time in
its toxic stage?
Ms. Burkholder. Pfiesteria is only interested in live fish
when it's toxic, and once fish die, they transform; they
convert like a caterpillar changing to a butterfly into stages
that don't look anything like the little stages that were in
the water, but those stages attach to fish and begin to feast
on the carcasses or the remains of the fish; they're not toxic
anymore.
Mr. Gilchrest. Then they revert back to a different state.
What's the time frame for all that to happen?
Ms. Burkholder. In the laboratory with extremely toxic
cultures, fish can die within ten minutes. Out in the field, we
have what we call sudden death fish kills sometimes from
Pfiesteria-like species, in which many fish can die within four
hours.
Mr. Gilchrest. So, the Pfiesteria, though, stayed toxic for
about the same amount of time?
Ms. Burkholder. Yes, they do. Menhaden, as I mentioned, do
everything wrong. They are big; they travel in big schools;
there are many, many fish in a school; they're very oily; they
have lots of excretions, and they linger to feed in poorly-
flushed areas where a lot of their excreta will accumulate and
stimulate Pfiesteria.
Mr. Garcia. Mr. Chairman, can I make one point?
Mr. Gilchrest. I'm going to have to run, so I'm going to
turn it over to Mr. Jones. I'll be back, hopefully, in 10
minutes.
Mr. Garcia. I wanted to make one point that this
highlights. This exchange that we just had highlights the need
for the continuing research that all of the individuals here
have been conducting and those on the later panel will talk to
you about. Also, to note that Dr. John Ramsdell, who is with
me, has been conducting research into identifying the toxin,
which is a critical step in dealing with this problem,
identifying and then characterizing that toxin so that we know
what we're dealing with at the time that we have an incident of
fish lesions or fish kill. Dr. Ramsdell will be available to
answer questions, if you would like.
Ms. Clayton. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question?
Mr. Jones. [presiding] Yes, ma'am. The lady from North
Carolina.
Ms. Clayton. I just wanted to inquire, and the whole
assumption of the nutrient-rich environment that enhanced the
possibility of this toxin, Pfiesteria-like organism, has the
agriculture community nationally been involved with you in
terms of research? I know we've just added, if that assumption
is there, I would assume that we should begin having an
integrated approach to this thing. Testimony suggested that the
research need would be made and the assumption is that there is
nutrient enrichment that gives great enhancement. I was just
wondering, to date, is there any research from the agricultural
community that's integrated into the research, Dr. Burkholder?
Ms. Burkholder. No, not yet. I would welcome the
opportunity to work with agriculture, but thus far, I have not
been asked to participate in such research. I think it's
important to note--I do appreciate the spirit of your
question--I think it's important to note that it isn't, of
course, just agriculture, but it's other sources of pollution
too that can encourage Pfiesteria, such as urban runoff, and I
think Congressman Jones will have more questions about
nutrients in general, but I'll just start it off with that
comment.
Ms. Clayton. Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Jones. Yes, ma'am.
Dr. Burkholder, I'm going to address my questions to you,
but obviously, I think maybe Mr. Garcia might respond, on one
of the questions, the first question. When you mention 1
billion fish, I believe that's correct in your statement, as
well as Mr. Garcia's statement, have died in the North Carolina
waters, is that correct? Tell me--excuse me, I'll let you
answer, I'm sorry.
Ms. Burkholder. Yes, it is.
Mr. Jones. Tell me how you determined the accurate number
of 1 billion fish. I mean, I'm a non-scientist obviously, but
that really raised a question in my mind. How can you verify 1
billion fish? How do you go about--what's your process of
verifying?
Ms. Burkholder. In the old days, when we first began this
research, we were relying heavily upon the Division of
Environmental Management, especially the Washington regional
field office. They, it is my understanding, used fish counting
methods that are from the Wildlife Resources Commission of
North Carolina and it was their estimate, sir, that I was
using, not our own. Now that we have been involved with fish
kills a great deal in the past seven years, we are using
American Fishery Society's standardized and certified methods
for counting for fish. They're still pretty rough.
Out in the field when fish die, they often get scooped up
by gulls even as they're dying or they get washed away or blown
away across waves. So often those results are reported on the
average by the thousand; can't get much more accurate than
that. But the 1 billion estimate was--it sounds like a lot, but
let me tell you the circumstances involved.
That kill occurred in 1991 from September to October, over
a six-week period. That fish kill in the Pocomoke, it affected
very small menhaden; they were only three or four inches long
and they had almost--I think 98 percent of them were killed
with open, bleeding sores. So, it was a big expansive area,
about 20 square miles over about eight weeks, with very small
fish that kept coming up and dying.
Mr. Jones. Thank you. Let me--the additional questions,
since you mentioned the seagulls, has research been done on
species which feed upon the affected fish?
Ms. Burkholder. I wish I could tell you yes. We're just
beginning some collaborations with the Food and Drug
Administration, Dr. Sherwood Hall, in particular. We've been
feeding infected oysters, that is, oysters that we've
deliberately been feeding toxic Pfiesteria to, to see whether
they would affect fish that consumed some of the oyster
tissues. So far, the results are good from what I understand;
there is no affect on fish that are consuming those infected
oysters.
To really nail that question down, we must know the
chemical identities of the toxins, so, otherwise, we can't tell
you where exactly the toxins go--if they're taken up by fish,
whether they're broken down, whether they're allowed to
accumulate, and so forth. What I can say that's encouraging, at
least, unfortunately, it's an-
ecdotal, but it does provide encouraging news, such as wildlife
do not seem to be affected by eating Pfiesteria of related fish
kill fish. They can consume a lot of fish with open, bleeding
sores--gulls, blue crab, and other species of animals--without
any apparent problems. That's very unlike some of the other
toxic algal problems that occur worldwide.
So what I think may be going on is that these toxins are so
lethal to fish so quickly, that they cause fish to look bad, to
become diseased, and the skin peeling, and so forth, so quickly
that folks would tend to leave those fish alone and probably
those fish die so fast that I'm hoping they don't accumulate
much toxin to begin with.
Mr. Jones. Let me ask----
Mr. Garcia. Excuse me.
Mr. Jones. Mr. Garcia?
Mr. Garcia. Just to elaborate on one point, as Dr.
Burkholder said, the research on Pfiesteria is still ongoing
and incomplete regarding bioaccumulation of the toxin in the
food chain. There is evidence, however, that with red tide and
other harmful algal blooms--and we have a map showing the
incidents of these blooms around the country, there is
bioaccumulation. For example, in shellfish, we also detect the
dieoffs of manatees and dolphins as a result of red tide, and
we feel that there is a relationship of all of these incidents
connected around the country to nutrient loading into the
system. Obviously, additional research is going to have to be
done on the specific question, as does Pfiesteria
bioaccumulate, but we do know that in other incidents that red
tide and these other problems, that it is clearly a link in the
food chain.
Mr. Jones. Thank you. Just one or two other quick
questions. Dr. Burkholder, I believe that Dr. Wright said, as
it related to the fish in the Chesapeake or in the Virginia
waters, that they were safe to eat. Would you say the same
thing about the fish in North Carolina?
Ms. Burkholder. I'm really glad you asked that. It's part
of what I was alluding to in my testimony about a very pressing
and critical need for environmental education of our citizens.
Hindsight always has twenty-twenty vision, but if we could just
educate our citizenry enough, they would not be responding from
more of panic constraint, but instead on the basis of
knowledge. The fish in almost the entirety of the Chesapeake
Bay were very safe, from Pfiesteria-related problems anyway,
even during the time that the Pocomoke actually was shut down.
The State of Maryland acted, in my opinion, very proactively by
just making sure that none of the fish from the affected area,
even if they would have been safe for human consumption, were
allowed to go to market. Unfortunately, because the public
doesn't understand these issues very well, a panic ensued
anyway and it's so unfair for the State of Maryland fishermen
for that to have happened.
In North Carolina, I can say, that when there are no fish
disease events or fish kill events related to Pfiesteria-like
species, of course those fish would be safe from Pfiesteria,
yes.
Mr. Jones. I thank you. My time is up. The gentleman from
Delaware, Mr. Castle?
Mr. Castle. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just ask
Mr. Garcia one question. Maybe he can be brief, because I want
to get to the others on some other questions. Perhaps you could
outline for us--this is sort of a broad question--but I think
it's important for all of us to understand what the Federal
Government is presently doing to coordinate with the States on
Pfiesteria and other harmful algal bloom research and
monitoring and what Federal funds may be available. Perhaps the
people here know, but I think it's very important that we hear
that so we know that coordination is taking place.
Mr. Garcia. Well, very briefly, it's a three-prong strategy
dealing with near-term, mid-term, and long-term needs. In the
near-term we have been providing assistance to the coastal
states to deal with the monitoring and assessment needs of
identifying the Pfiesteria toxin and dealing with fish lesions
and outbreaks of fish kill. We have provided assistance with
the Environmental Protection Agency to the State of Maryland to
assist them in a rapid response in the event of a fish kill or
the detection of fish lesions.
Near-term, the work is focusing on identifying the toxin,
its characteristics, its causes. Long-term is identifying or
dealing with the larger issue of harmful algal blooms, their
causes, and mitigation and control strategies, so that we can
assist states in dealing with this problem--or these problems,
rather--as we confront them around the country.
Mr. Castle. A very fast followup is that (a), are we
responding to crises into problems or is this now an ongoing
kind of funding and research effort by the Federal Government,
which I believe it should be?
Mr. Garcia. Yes, it's probably a little bit of both, but
the research has been ongoing for a number of years. This
Pfiesteria problem is not new. Dr. Burkholder has been working
on this for many years. The Federal agencies, NOAA in
particular, have been following and researching this as well.
And the larger problem of harmful algal blooms has been an
issue which we have been very concerned about at NOAA and in
the administration for the last several years, and as was
noted, commenced this interagency effort to understand the
problem of harmful algal blooms.
Mr. Castle. Thank you. Let me turn to all those who have
doctors preceding their names here, the real scientists in
this. I guess I'm a little more uncertain after hearing you
than I was before. After listening to Dr. Burkholder last week
in Delaware and reading about this as much as I could, I
thought I sort of understood it better than I realized I do
now. My concern is as somebody representing a district and
somebody's worried about all the issues that you know people
are going to worry about. What are the causes and what do we
have to do to prevent it? I thought that the causes were fairly
certain. Obviously, there's a fish coming into the area causing
these organisms to become toxic; that's pretty clear, but I
thought that warm water was a factor, enriched nutrient levels
were a factor. The factors in that were probably point and non-
point sources. But, I'm not as sure about that after hearing
all of you, and apparently there's a little more scientific
uncertainty about all of this, and obviously, what we have to
do to prevent it is to correct some of those problems, I
suppose.
I'm interested in your as precise opinions as possible as
to potential causes to why this is happening at different times
in different States and most of what I hear about are East
Coast States. I don't know if some of the--I've seen these
maps; I saw them with national magazine first and some show
problems perhaps of algae-related problems in other parts, but
the Pfiesteria problem, to me, seems to be mostly in East Coast
areas and generally in a fairly limited vicinity, I guess North
Carolina being the--North Carolina and Virginia and Maryland,
Delaware, and those areas.
I'd be interested in your views on the causes, and be
fairly bold in your answers. I mean, I want you know you need
scientific backing, but we need to know what's going on here.
Ms. Burkholder. Congressman Castle, we have done a great
deal of research in the laboratory and some field research
which strongly indicates that, under the right conditions,
Pfiesteria-like species can be stimulated by nutrient
overloading and they are the factors that you're alluding to.
They are poorly flushed, poor flushing, or poorly flushed
areas; fairly warm temperatures; the right salinity, and then a
nice rich nutrient background encourages their growth. What is
uncertain is the amount of nutrient loading, number one, that
can begin to promote the problem, because Pfiesteria tends to
occur and cause the most trouble in known nutrient-degraded
waters.
What level does it begin to have a problem at we are not
certain yet. What are the interactions of organic and inorganic
nutrient loading and all the different complexities of the
forms of the nutrients that can stimulate Pfiesteria-like
species, we're not certain of yet. We know that both organic
and inorganic enrichments can encourage it, but they're just
all kinds of quantitative information to nail down exactly
where the problem will begin, under certain swell conditions,
that we need still to----
Mr. Castle. But, that is part of your ongoing research? Is
that correct?
Ms. Burkholder. Yes, it is.
Mr. Castle. A substantial part of your research?
Ms. Burkholder. That's the area of emphasis that I care
about the most, although in the past three years I have had to
devote almost all of our attention, with extremely limited
funding, to toxin analysis, just growing enough of the organism
to make toxin.
Mr. Castle. Perhaps the others have a comment.
Mr. Boesch. Yes, if I may address that--as I mentioned, I
chair the technical advisory committee which Dr. Burkholder is
on, and we met for the first time in early August. To answer
Congressman Gilchrest's question and yours, too, when we first
met, based upon the evidence we had about the Pocomoke River at
the time, there was a lot of doubt about whether Pfiesteria, or
Pfiesteria-like organisms, were cause of the lesions. And all
of us concluded, Dr. Burkholder as well, that we weren't
certain about this, but it seemed to be something we should
look into more carefully. Since that time there's much more
evidence been gained, so I wouldn't say there's absolutely no
doubt, but I would say there's very little doubt that what
we've seen in the Pocomoke River and the other rivers of the
Maryland eastern shore this summer is related to toxins
produced by Pfiesteria-like organisms.
Secondly, with respect to your question about the role of
nutrients and non-point sources. Obviously, as you know, the
whole Delmarva Peninsula has extensive agriculture and heavy
loadings from agricultural non-point sources. So obvious
attention is brought there, particularly based upon the results
that Dr. Burkholder briefly reviewed that she's produced in
North Carolina. Now, obviously, if we're going to take major
steps to control those, there's a burden of proof that we need
to apply. So what we're doing right now in our technical
advisory group and through Governor Glendening's citizens
commission, is providing technical advice, pulling together the
results that we have, not only from Dr. Burkholder's
laboratory, but from other----
Mr. Jones. Excuse me, I apologize for interrupting. We've
got about seven minutes to get to the floor for a vote. Then we
have a second vote, which is called a 15-minute vote. Then we
have a five-minute vote. Certainly, we will recess for the time
being. We'll let this panel come back and then Congressman
Castle can finish this line of question and answering. So, we
will recess for about 20-25 minutes. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. Gilchrest. [presiding] The hearing will come to order.
We have a series of three votes. Members will be in and out
during the course of the rest of the hearing, but we thought we
would proceed, so those of you who have to travel, your travel
plans will not be disrupted.
So, what I will do is begin the questioning, I guess until
I run out of questions, and if they're not back, then this
panel would be dismissed.
I do have another question for--one of the questions I
asked before I had to leave was dealing with the fundamental
question: Is there a Pfiesteria complex that emits a toxin that
kills fish and is harmful to humans? Is there anybody else that
wants to make a comment on that?
Mr. Boesch. Congressman Gilchrest, just to reiterate what I
said a little bit after you left in response to your question.
To keep this in perspective on how quickly we're having to
learn about what's going on and improve our scientific
understanding and advice, I commented that in early August, as
you know, we held a meeting to bring all this information
together. At the time, the technical advisory committee said
it's certainly possible, but it was highly uncertain that the
fish problems, the lesions and the like, were caused by
Pfiesteria-like organisms. Since then, in a period of just
about a month, we had the fish kills, we had more direct
observations and measurements, and we had more positive
identification of Pfiesteria-like organisms from the Pocomoke
River.
Our committee--and again, as I mentioned earlier, Dr.
Burkholder's been a very valuable participant on it came to the
conclusion that--it's in answer to your question. You said,
``is there any doubt,'' and I said, ``well, it's hard to say
there's no doubt, but it's certainly little doubt that what
we've seen, at least in some of the kills we've had this
summer, was related to Pfiesteria-like organisms and their
toxic effects.''
With respect to the health effects, I'm certainly not
qualified to evaluate that evidence, but I've heard a lot of
results presented, I think as have you, that concern the
cognitive tests of individuals who've been exposed and the
interpretation that they've had, reduction of the efficiency of
their short-term memory. The evidence is certainly building
from individuals who have been exposed, not only in the
Pocomoke River, but in the two other eastern shore rivers. Now,
that has to be viewed in the context of the other observations,
not only of the laboratory researchers in North Carolina, but
of many people who have been exposed potentially to these toxic
organisms in North Carolina and the concerns raised by the
primary care physicians who treat them.
Mr. Gilchrest. Dr. Wright?
Mr. Wright. Congressman Gilchrest, I'd just like to also
follow up with a clarification of a news report that apparently
was heard this morning on public broadcasting, that said that
Virginia had concluded that there was no human health effects,
negative human health effects. That was a serious
misrepresentation. That is not a Virginia finding. I think if I
may, I'd like to let my colleague, Dr. Burreson, comment
further on that.
Mr. Gilchrest. Dr. Wright, there was a story in The
Washington Post this morning. Is that the same story that
you're referring to?
Mr. Wright. That's probably the same one, yes.
Mr. Gilchrest. For those who may not have seen that, the
Post article basically says that a Virginia health official
said yesterday that tests on four people who believe they were
suffering from exposure to Pfiesteria--basically, the Virginia
health official came to a conclusion that those health effects
felt by those four people was not due to Pfiesteria. That's
what the paper said.
Mr. Wright. Well, that's the case. Those four people were
not affected, but that does not mean that one can conclude that
there is no health affect.
Mr. Gilchrest. I see.
Mr. Wright. It's a more general question than that, and it
certainly--Virginia has no evidence that says that Pfiesteria
is not harmful.
Mr. Gilchrest. Did you want Dr. Burreson to respond?
Mr. Wright. I don't need it.
Mr. Gilchrest. I guess, from----
Mr. Garcia. Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Gilchrest. Yes, sir?
Mr. Garcia. Could I ask that Dr. John Ramsdell, from our
Charleston lab, just address one point on the status of the
work to identify and isolate the toxin, because I think that
it's an important issue and would be helpful to understanding
where we are.
Mr. Gilchrest. Certainly, we'd like to hear that.
Mr. Ramsdell. Well, sir, at this point in time I can tell
you with certainty we do not have the final answer, but I am
very pleased to be able to give you an assessment in terms of
where we are at the present time, in terms of our efforts to be
able to define the toxic material that's produced by this
organism, as well as our efforts to be able to provide a means
to effectively assay or detect the material from various
sources.
This work really has come about in a very productive
collaboration between several institutions and has been a very
productive one at that.
Mr. Gilchrest. How long has this collaboration gone on for,
as far as this issue is concerned, and who are those
institutions?
Mr. Ramsdell. This collaboration actually involves the NOAA
Marine Biotoxins Program, Charleston; Dr. Burkholder's
laboratory, North Carolina State University, and the Intermural
Program of NIEHS.
Mr. Gilchrest. How long have you been doing this?
Mr. Ramsdell. This collaboration?
Mr. Gilchrest. With this intermural program and your lab
and Dr. Burkholder?
Mr. Ramsdell. Yes, this basically has been conducted as
three, two working groups in which we have gotten together for
two three-day periods, working together, collaboratively, side-
by-side, at the bench. During----
Mr. Gilchrest. Was this recently? Was this in 1997, 1992?
How long is?
Mr. Ramsdell. The first collaborative trial took place in
July of this year; the second collaborative trial took place in
August.
Mr. Gilchrest. And the conclusion was that there's certain
uncertainty?
[Laughter.]
Mr. Ramsdell. I wouldn't want to be on the record for
saying that. Basically, what we have been able to determine is
that there is a water-soluble substance produced by this
organism and this water-soluble substance has properties that
would suggest that it may interact with the nervous system. Key
to being able to identify a toxin is a means to be able to
detect it, a method to detect it, because these things are not
visible. You need to have some biochemical means to define it.
Basically, the approach that we took, what was based upon
some earlier studies that we had done, where we treated an
animal with a toxin; we injected a toxin in a mouse, and then
we extracted from it's brain the genes that would be induced by
that toxin. We identified one gene that looked very promising,
and so we took the human analog of that gene and isolated the
part of the gene that would be induced by the toxin. We then
ligated that part of the gene to a gene from the firefly that
is responsible for catalyzing formation of light. We then took
this hybrid gene and expressed it back into mallanian cells.
Then we found a cell type that, when they were exposed to the
toxic organism or the water-soluble material from that
organism, that these cells gained the capacity to generate
light through enzyme pathways. This was used as a very
sensitive means to be able to track the toxin and this is the
key to being able to lead to undergo our purification steps--to
be able to follow it through these long columns and all these
different means which lead to a purified molecule. We are not
at the stage right now where we have a purified molecule. We
are close.
Nonetheless, we have been able to find that this activity
does, indeed, correspond to the ability to kill fish in a tank,
and so it is promising in that regard, but until we actually
can indeed say that there is one molecule that behaves in this
assay the same way it affects fish, we cannot be certain.
Mr. Gilchrest. I have one more quick followup question, if
my colleagues will be patient with me for just one more minute,
and I'll yield to Mr. Jones.
Can you give us some timeframe when you will be, when you
have isolated that molecule, when you will have some clear
understanding of the toxicity of that molecule and what it
does? Is that a month from now, a year from now?
Mr. Ramsdell. Well, it must be recognized that's very
difficult to do. During this process when you're dealing with
an unknown substance, there is no good way to predict how it's
going to perform in your next step. One thing we can say in
terms of detection methodology is that we feel we are at the
point now where we're quite satisfied with the development
phase and we want to be able to take the next step, which is
validation. That is to be able to really determine how reliable
that this method might be as a predictor in terms of whether or
not a bloom is occurring or a predictor in terms of whether or
not an individual truly has been exposed.
Mr. Gilchrest. So, you started this in July?
Mr. Ramsdell. Yes, sir.
Mr. Gilchrest. Is there some reason why it wasn't started
in July of 1992, or 1993, or 1994? You don't have to answer
that now. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.
Ms. Burkholder. Actually, I could comment on that. We had
basically been working with other researchers and had given
them a lot of toxin in 1992, again in 1993, 1995, and the way
that we had conducted this research, the individuals who were
involved, had asked if they could be, basically, the people who
were working on the toxin. So, at the time, we had forged that
collaboration, but we could not seem to get much progress made.
So, finally, we couldn't get any kind of information from those
folks when we gave them toxin and finally decided that we
really had to go on to other people, so we forged this
collaboration.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Dr. Burkholder. I guess we can
get into that issue a little bit later.
Mr. Jones?
Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had a chance to ask
the majority of my questions prior to the recess, but there
were two. Dr. Burkholder, I hate to keep coming back to you,
but this is new for me, meaning being so involved with the
North Carolina problem. How many assistants do you have in the
research your doing in North Carolina?
Ms. Burkholder. Right now, we have one full-time research
associate in my laboratory, who is paid for as a full-time,
full-benefits, permanent person, with North Carolina State
funding. Unfortunately, it happens to be my research associate
who was hurt by these organisms and is not allowed in the
facility to work with them. So that research has to be
conducted remotely; whatever he does has to be conducted in our
laboratory and he cannot participate in growing toxic cultures
and taking care of them. All of the rest of the folks in my lab
are paid for by soft monies, that is, whatever research we can
pull in from grants, and right now we have, on a temporary
basis, from grant to grant, I think three folks who are in my
laboratory as full-time technicians.
Adding fish, seven days a week, round the clock, changing
live fish with dead fish, having to dissolve the fish in bleach
before we dispose of them in special biohazard facilities. The
disposable gloves, boot, hair covers and other materials just
to work with these organisms safely, costs about $40,000 a
year, and this research is being conducted in a small trailer
with a backup power generator.
Mr. Jones. Thank you, and my second question, and the last
will be: If you were in the Congress, or if you could recommend
to the Congress--and this is for the entire panel--how would
you suggest that the Federal Government could help facilitate
and coordinate the research that is being done in the different
States by the different universities? I mean, obviously I
realize what NOAA's doing, Mr. Garcia, and appreciate that very
much, but I guess, do you feel that the coordination and
cooperation, I'm sure it's very good, but it could be done
better? What would be your suggestion to this panel?
Ms. Burkholder. My suggestion, as I had said earlier, would
be to try to especially fund some centers--I think the
Chesapeake certainly needs a center; the Albemarle certainly
needs one at least--in which the research centers can function
as integrative, coordinative effort bringing in
multidisciplinary teams of people especially and including at
least folks with a lot of expertise on these organisms, so that
the questions can be quickly answered or at least more quickly
answered than if we start from scratch in terms of our basic
understanding of these organisms.
I hate to leave this just with Pfiesteria, though. There
are a lot of harmful algal species, and so there needs to be
some very concerted research efforts in other regions and even
in these regions for some of the other harmful organisms that
we have. I do applaud what Mr. Garcia has suggested in terms of
ECOHAB, the multi-agency bringing together of research funding
for peer-reviewed research on these organisms, not just
Pfiesteria, but others.
I would also, however, hope that the collaborations that
have been forged with State and Federal agencies would continue
to receive some--well, actually would begin to receive some--
strong funding. We have not seen that yet.
Mr. Jones. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Mr. Castle?
Mr. Castle. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had a chance
to ask questions before, but I thought Mr. Jones' questions
were excellent and exactly what I sort of wanted to talk about,
too.
I think, while we probably have in this room right now,
just about the leading experts on Pfiesteria in this country,
and to find out a whole lot after, you don't have to belittle
anybody else, but this is not a field that has hundreds of
thousands of researchers out there. This is not the latest
nylon or whatever it may be. As a result, I think it's really,
really important that if we do nothing else today, that we
afford you the opportunity to talk to each other and to tell us
what you need, as you just did in answering Mr. Jones's
question, what we need to do to help you with respect to the
research.
I mean, I worry that we're going to--and we started to do
some funding; we've had some amendments approved. We have $11
mil-
lion in different programs and we passed them in the House,
because we're concerned about this, but I'm worried that, you
know, we're going to put $40 there and $30 there, or whatever
may be and it's going to be out at the University of Delaware
and Maryland and North Carolina State, and whatever may be, and
you get no coordinated effort out of it. There's some excellent
publications here; I think you all, on very limited resources,
have really done some exceptional research work and some
exceptional reporting work, but I have learned from this
hearing, and knew before, there are also a lot of open
questions that we have to get answered out there.
It seems to me the best thing we can do is probably put all
of you in a research lab someplace and throw away the key--
maybe let you out on the weekends, whatever, maybe, and have
you all talk to each other and coordinate. I worry that we lose
that, even in the day of computers, we lose that when you all
go back to your various locations.
So, I would hope, Mr. Garcia, and to the various academics
and researchers here, that we would have a real devoted effort.
In my understanding, the timing of the Pfiesteria outbreaks is
it's usually a late spring, summer, early fall-type
circumstance. So we probably have a little bit of time now in
which we can get some collaboration on some of the details of
the research and hopefully elevate all this a little bit there
so we can have it.
I'm not being critical, because I think this is--in fact, I
think the response has been tremendous to this particular
problem. It's been outstanding, but there's still enough open
questions I really think we need to make sure we have that
coordinated effort and that we as Members of Congress don't go
off on tangents either. You straighten us out if we start to
pass unnecessary or duplicative amendments or cause you to go
down some path that isn't helpful to what you are doing.
I mean, you're welcome to comment on that if you wish, but
that's my judgment and what I would like to see come out of
this. Dr. Boesch?
Mr. Boesch. I'd like to comment on it. I think it's an
excellent point. As I said in my testimony, I think, whatever
resources you provide, you should hold the agencies and the
scientific community accountable. This is a challenge for us
because of the sense of public urgency and the difficulty of
the problem. As I said, I would hope that we, however, not lose
sight of the things that provide excellence in American
scientific tradition, that is peer review and holding to high
standards of quality.
With respect to the coordination, I think we're seeing
several things which are promising. First of all, on a Federal
level. I think in part inspired by a conversation that our
Governor Parris Glendening had with the President at a school
event, the next day the alarms rang and there was a meeting of
top-level Federal agency people to begin to coordinate their
efforts. I think that's a very positive sign.
Secondly, with respect to the scientific community outside
of government, you're right. We've tended to be somewhat
parochial at times, and particularly with respect to research
in estuaries. We have worked with our colleagues in Virginia
because we share the same Chesapeake Bay, but we've often
approached our science as, you know, Chesapeake Bay science and
Albemarle Pamlico Sound science, and Delaware Bay science. We
need to do better than that. So this is going to be a challenge
for us to do that.
We've made one advance on this problem, when problems were
identified in Maryland waters Secretary Griffin, who will be
talking to you later, actually appointed a committee that
includes not just Maryland scientists, but scientists from
Virginia--Eugene Burreson is a member of that--and from North
Carolina and South Carolina. So, we already have at least the
beginning of a mechanism to begin to share our experiences and
to talk about how we can work together across those State and
watershed boundaries, if you will.
Mr. Garcia. If I could just make one point, I thought your
point was excellent. We have to maintain a sustained research
effort in this field. We have, I think on relatively limited
resources, accomplished quite a bit through ECOHAB and now
through the combined Federal-State effort to deal with the
Pfiesteria problem.
I would also point out that it's difficult to overstate the
need to focus on non-point source pollution and dealing with
that problem. Whether or not Pfiesteria is linked to nutrient
loading, whether or not some of these other problems are, it is
a no regrets policy or approach. You will see an improvement if
we can control and mitigate the impact of non-point pollution,
and so I would suggest that, in addition to the research, we
also need to devote resources to assisting the States, and this
is a key point, assisting the States in developing their
programs, because it has to be done on a State and regional
level, developing their programs that will control non-point
pollution.
Mr. Castle. Thank you.
Ms. Burkholder. If I could add one comment to that, I do
very strongly agree with Mr. Garcia. Although the verdict is
out on a lot of these algal species, we have highly-correlated
Pfiesteria increases with both human sewage and swine waste in
some of our field work. So, there's a case to be made for the
role of non-point pollution to at least be further investigated
and stressed in some of research efforts to resolve these
questions.
Mr. Castle. And of course, there's always side benefits,
other benefits, just as in the Pfiesteria, with respect to
that.
I appreciate all of your answers and I do think you're
doing a good job. I feel like a coach who's team is fighting to
come back--you've done well; we've got to do a little bit
better type thing like that. I'm not critical at all, but you
know, we do need to talk to one another. So I do appreciate all
the interest.
I yield back.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Mr. Castle. I just have two quick
followup questions.
Mr. Wright, in your testimony you stated that the number of
fish with lesions in the Chesapeake Bay was not unusually high
for this season. I've heard a number of other people make that
same statement, and I would guess that it's probably fairly
accurate. Yet, we see a great deal of information across not
only the East Coast, but the West Coast, about algal blooms,
about the Post a little while ago had an article dealing with
162 dolphins washed up on the beach off of Mexico and they felt
that it was some toxic one-cell plant; pelicans in 1991 in
southern California, 22 in 1984. Well, in 1984 we began to hear
about the problems in North Carolina; and then apparently in
Canada, Prince Edward Island, three people actually died and
100 people were sickened by five kinds of seaborne toxic algae.
Are we just better at finding these things? Have they
always existed to this degree where they've been harmful? Are
we increasing the number of these incidents since, let's say, a
certain timeframe in the United States, because of nutrient
overload? I don't know if that's too vague a question, but----
Mr. Wright. No, it's a very good question. I think there
are at least four aspects to the lesion question that I
probably should address. The first is that there are many
causes of lesions on fish. The second is that our trawl
surveys, which go back many years, so we have a historical
record and we have people on the trawl surveys who are
accustomed to recognizing fish with lesions and to reporting
these causes, and they see lesions on fish every year during
the summer months.
The third point is that most of the lesions have appeared
on menhaden this year. Out of a trawl survey that was conducted
about two or three weeks ago to look more closely at the
possibility of Pfiesteria in the Rappahanock River and other
estuaries, something just under 12,000 fish were recovered in
those trawl surveys, and of those 12,000 fish, .4 of 1 percent
had lesions. So that's a reason to say that it's not unusually
high, but----
Mr. Gilchrest. I wouldn't argue with that. I think Maryland
DNR showed pretty much the same statistics as you're describing
here. I guess my question is, have these things always--is
there an increase in the number of harmful algal blooms? An
increase in this type of dinoflagellate, Pfiesteria complex in
the last 20, 30, 50 years? Can we document that there's a surge
in this or has it always happened and we're just better at
identifying it?
Ms. Burkholder. I'd like to make a couple comments. One is
that we have only known that toxic Pfiesteria piscicida and
it's close relatives were in the water killing fish since 1991.
So we have a very, very poor historic record. We've been
working in my lab for seven years on this in the field, but the
only way that it came to our attention was because these little
culture contaminants began to affect fish in the vet school at
North Carolina State University. In other words, we found
little organisms with attack behavior toward fish, a very
bizarre kind of phenomenon. If we hadn't seen it because of an
accident in culture, we wouldn't have even known enough to look
for it out in the field. So, we have a very short historic
record on Pfiesteria.
At least in the Albemarle-Pamlico, I can tell you that old-
time fishermen have said that there have been kills such as the
ones we've related to Pfiesteria--one in maybe the late 1970's,
but mostly since 1984. They've told me that there are many
times that fish have died, like menhaden, and small schools in
canals in our State. They go into these canals, run out of
oxygen, and they're not considered very bright fish, so they
don't leave, and they die.
But the kinds of kills that I'm talking about are kills in
which most of the menhaden are filled with bleeding sores that
can span 15 million fish sometimes and can stretch for weeks
and sometimes even months in North Carolina's estuary. The old-
timer fishermen have told us that those kills in our waters
have only been with us since about the mid-1980's.
All we can do from there is speculate. The Albemarle-
Pamlico is very poorly flushed and for the past 50 to 70 years
we've been pouring many, many, many tons and tons of nutrients
into this poorly-flushed system. There's some research on other
harmful species, which indicates that if you shift the balance
of ratios of nitrogen and phosphorous nutrients that are found
in sewage and animal waste, if you just shift that balance in
the environment, you can encourage some harmful species to
become more toxic, and so perhaps what's happened is an
inadvertent experiment here. We didn't realize we were adding a
lot of nutrient loading that might have shifted Pfiesteria--
which was always there--to act more toxic. We can't say that
for sure, but that's one scenario that we'd like to examine
further.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you. Dr. Boesch?
Mr. Boesch. Could I just comment on a broader scale? You
mentioned all these other harmful algal species as well. The
report that I distributed earlier to the Subcommittee has a
brief review of what we know about the ones that we have
confronting us in the United States, as well as globally. To
answer your question, I think the answer I would give is that,
first of all, there are some types of harmful algal blooms we
know have increased because of the long period of observation.
We have a long period of study and observation in marine
science in European waters and we know that these have
increased over the years.
Examples from the U.S. situation: In Long Island estuaries,
as well as in Texas, we have brown tides that we know did not
have before. One area is located right next to the University
of Texas Marine Laboratory where their observations for 50
years show that brown tide didn't occur before, so we know that
that's a new phenomenon. We have others, for example the red
tides in Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, which we've known
existed and have wreaked havoc for a very long time. But,
there's some concern that in the in-shore regions where we're
polluting, over-enriching, changing the environment, we may be
making those worse.
For Pfiesteria, the reason I think it's difficult to
answer, as Dr. Burkholder indicated, is that we just discovered
it. We don't have a clear understanding of what happened before
in the Chesapeake or the Albemarle-Pamlico. Indeed, it has been
long understood that there are more lesions in fish in the
summer. In fact, in 1984, there was what seemed to be unusually
high incidence of fish with lesions throughout many parts of
the Chesapeake. This could indeed have been caused by
Pfiesteria-like organisms. It's very difficult to unravel;
there's some potential that we could look at cysts in the
fossil record, and so on, but it may be a question we'll never
fully answer.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Dr. Boesch. Mr. Garcia?
Mr. Garcia. Dr. Boesch basically covered the point I was
going to make, but in the ECOHAB work that we have done, the
research indicates--the weight of the research and opinion is--
that, yes, these broader incidents of broader algal blooms are
occurring with more frequency, with greater intensity and
severity and they're lasting longer. So, that would be my
answer to your question. And the question of whether or not we
were just looking in the right places now, that's part of it.
We have acquired more knowledge, but, again, the weight of the
opinion is more frequent, more severe, and longer-lasting.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you. Mike, Walter, do you have any
follow-up questions? I think what we'll do--we just had another
vote, so we'll recess, also dismiss the panel, and then come
back for the next panel.
If I could just--real quickly though, while we're running
over there--is there any way, right now, to predict an estuary
might have these troubles?
Ms. Burkholder. That has eluded us on almost all of the
harmful algal bloom species for a long time. We can tell you
where they're likely to occur, but whether you get one that
year depends on a lot of other factors that we still don't
understand very well, like how weather interacts with some of
the flow events and run-off; just those two factors can throw
us off.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you.
Mr. Wright. This is clearly an area of need for future
research, as I identified earlier, and it's one for which we
will most certainly need Federal resources and coordination.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you. Is the ECOHAB programs one of the
central programs that Mr. Castle was referring to that we might
want to fund? Does it represent a program that can draw from a
variety of disciplines?
Mr. Garcia. Yes, sir.
Mr. Gilchrest. How did Pfiesteria get its name?
Ms. Burkholder. It was named in honor the late Lois
Pfiester. She had a very interesting and unusual life. She was
formerly a nun. She left the convent after several years, it's
my understanding, and formed a family--was a professor at the
University of Oklahoma. I came from a fresh-water background,
and so I was familiar with her work. These organisms don't
realize there's a boundary between fresh water and oceans; they
call that an estuary and they go down it.
So, I had read the fresh-water literature, as well as
marine literature, which is sometimes not done by marine folks.
We in fresh water sometimes don't read marine research and vice
versa, but I knew of her research, and she had found
dinoflagellates in little bogs in Oklahoma with 38 different
life cycle stages that transformed rapidly among all these
different things. And so when I first found Pfiesteria doing
these strange and bizarre things, it was through Dr. Pfiester's
insights that I was able to make the leaps in understanding it
that I was able to make. So these were named in honor of Dr.
Pfiester.
Mr. Gilchrest. So, Dr. Burkholder, you are responsible for
the name?
Ms. Burkholder. Well, actually, Dr. Steidinger and I worked
together on that name.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you very much Dr. Burkholder.
Gentlemen, thank you. We'll recess for about 15 minutes.
[Recess.]
Mr. Jones. [presiding] The Subcommittee will be in order.
We now have our next panel of witnesses: Wayne McDevitt,
Secretary at the North Carolina Department of Environmental and
Natural Resources; the Honorable John Griffin, Secretary of the
Maryland Department of Natural Resources; the Honorable
Christophe Tulou, Secretary, Delaware Department of Natural
Resources and Environmental Control; and Mr. Rick Dove, the
Neuse River Keeper, Neuse River Foundation; and also Mr. Dan
Baden, Marine and Freshwater Biomedical Science Center.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for being with us today. I
think most of us who have the privilege to be on this Committee
appreciated the first panel, it was extremely informative and
very helpful, and we're delighted to have you with us today.
So, with that, we'll start with Dr. Dan Baden. Dr. Baden?
STATEMENT OF DANIEL BADEN, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SCIENCES, MARINE AND FRESHWATER BIOMEDICAL
SCIENCE CENTER
Mr. Baden. Good day. My name is Daniel Baden and I am the
director of the National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences Marine and Freshwater Center at the University of
Miami. I have 24 years experience in marine toxin research.
Toxic marine phytoplankton are responsible for red tides or
harmful algal blooms known as HABs--you've already heard this.
HABs occur in virtually all coastal areas of temperate and
tropical seas and are responsible for five known types of
seafood poisoning in man.
Specific HAB incidents are often geographically localized
but there occurrence is sporadic. As I speak, in addition to
the Pfiesteria and other fish-killer HABs in the mid-Atlantic
region, Texas, Louisiana, and other States on the Gulf of
Mexico are experiencing Florida red tide outbreaks. These red
tides are notorious for tons of dead fish per day per mile of
coast-line. All HABs are natural events induced or permitted by
specific environmental conditions.
HABs are also implicated in mass-marine mortalities known
as epizootic. In the past 20 years, red tide toxins have been
implicated in the deaths of bottlenose dolphins in Hawaii;
manatees in Florida; pilot whales in the North East U.S.;
pelicans in California; cormorants and gannets on the east
coast of the U.S.; fish along the entire Gulf of Mexico coast-
line, also stretching up to the Carolinas and Maryland coastal
zones.
As sentinel or indicator species in the oceans, marine
animals are akin to the canaries taken into mine shafts. Their
death or sickness is an indication of degradation of local
environmental conditions. Questions concerning environmental
parameters conducive to HAB development, maintenance, and
termination, test our oceanographic knowledge base. Questions
concerning our ability to detect and/or predict blooms as they
develop address components of marine biotechnology, coastal
zone nutrient loading, and life cycle biology. Questions
concerning effects on marine animals touch on aspects of
biomedical research, detection technologies, and whole animal
physiology.
Federal and State programs that address each of these
research questions individually are currently in place, but
holistic research that addresses the interface between research
areas is lacking. Thus, Departments of Commerce, Defense,
Health and Human Services, and Agriculture need to coordinate
with one another and develop partnership funding strategies.
Likewise, basic scientists, clinicians, oceanographers,
ecologists, and taxonomists, all must develop better ways of
interaction and communication essentially by developing
interdisciplinary approaches to their science. In other words,
these activities that are land-oriented and those that are
ocean-or aquatic-oriented need to be coordinated in the coastal
zone.
Over half of the U.S. population resides within 50 miles of
a coast line. It is in this coastal zone that HABs occur, that
marine animal deaths have been documented, and that coastal
nutrients are changing. Coordinated, multi-agency funding
packages have not kept pace with the interdisciplinary nature
of the science.
Harmful algal blooms produce some of the most potent toxins
known to man. Potencies only exceeded by the more familiar
protein toxins like botulism toxin. HAB organisms are often
toxic throughout their life cycle--there are, of course,
exceptions like Pfiesteria, that appear to exhibit toxic
phases. Because of their high intrinsic toxicity, exceedingly
small amounts are required to induce lethality. Even smaller
amounts may be accumulated and cause sublethal metabolic and/or
neurotoxic abnormalities.
We need more research to completely define the consequences
of exposure, to understand the toxic mechanisms at the
molecular level, to design antidotes or therapies, and
ultimately, to develop preventative strategies for man and
animal alike. This is an interdisciplinary area that should be
addressed by NIH, NSF, and DOC.
We need more research directed at HAB initiation,
progression, and termination. Concurrently, it is essential
that we develop testing methods and other tools that can
accurately measure the number of HAB organisms at the beginning
of a bloom. We currently know so little about triggering or
sustaining factors that this is an area of active interest in
all regions of the U.S. As many as 20 marine organisms produce
HABs, and each has individual ecological requirements. Factors
beneficial to one species may be detrimental or inconsequential
to yet another species.
There is a need here for Federal-State partnerships for
research and information sharing. There is a decided need for
specialized programs for development of test kits, perhaps by
partnership with the biotechnology industry. We need to develop
testing protocols that can measure toxins through food-chains
and within organs and tissues. Especially with the
implementation of the HACCP program or seafood testing in
December of 1997, there is a desperate need for bringing all
testing to use in certification.
Finally, stable funding for the science in academic
laboratories and at the State and Federal level is necessary so
that we can produce rapid response teams to address HAB
problems. It often seems that funding runs about nine months
behind toxic events and universities are increasingly reluctant
to provide the fiscal support to carry out rapid-response
projects.
I would like to thank the Subcommittee for the invitation
to address these issues.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Baden may be found at end of
hearing.]
Mr. Jones. Thank you, Dr. Baden.
Now we will hear from the Honorable John Griffin.
STATEMENT OF JOHN GRIFFIN, SECRETARY, MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF
NATURAL RESOURCES
Mr. Griffin. Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee: on
behalf of my boss, Parris Glendening, the Governor of Maryland,
and everyone in his administration, I'm honored and pleased to
be here with you this morning to share with you some of our
experiences at the State level in dealing with this complex
issue. I might say by way of introduction, sorry to see that
our own Congressman Wayne Gilchrest is not here, but he has
been a great friend and leader on this and many other issues
working with us at the State level in Congress.
Mr. Jones. Mr. Griffin, I assure you he will be by.
Mr. Griffin. I also, of course, being here on Capitol Hill,
want to recognize the efforts of others in our delegation,
particularly Congressman Steny Hoyer and, over on the Senate-
side, both of our U.S. Senators, Paul Sarbanes and Barbara
Mikulski have been great to work with. In fact, we're all very
grateful at our level for the very rapid and effective
response, Mr. Chairman, coming from Congress and the President
and the Federal agencies. I've been in State government now
about 20 years and I can tell you without hesitation this has
been probably the preeminent example of effective Federal-State
partnership in responding to this crisis. And, all of you are
to be commended for your support and your rapid response.
Actually, we have, in State government, in Maryland, I
guess for better or worse the last several months, been a bit
on the cutting edge of this issue. And, it has represented an
unprecedented challenge for us and, at times, frankly, it
seemed like something out of an H.G. Wells novel.
But, I thought what I would do briefly is trace looking
back at the last several months some of the lessons that we've
learned in trying to deal with this. And, the first one is the
whole question of the learning curve. I think everybody that
has approached this--from myself, the folks in our department,
our sister agencies--everyone started off with a fair degree of
skepticism, either because the problems that were being
reported didn't seem to fit our mental maps, or because they
seemed to stretch the public health science, or we were
starting to question a little bit the motives of some of the
folks that were bringing these problems to our attention. For
example, did the watermen have other axes to grind?
So, each and every one of us as we became more immersed in
this issue, I think, while at varying degrees, went from being
somewhat skeptical to coming around and saying, ``Hey, there's
something serious going on here.'' So, to the extent that you
think about this issue in the broader context nationally and
around the country, suffice it to say from our experience there
is always a learning curve with this kind of an issue.
The second lesson, I guess if you will, that comes to my
mind in thinking about this issue over the last several months
in Maryland, is the whole issue of addressing the fear of the
unknown. This, obviously, because of particularly its public
health implications has created a great degree of concern in
our State, and among folks who come here to vacation. And, at
first we were sort of faced with a paradox: if you voiced
publicly legitimate scientific concern, whether it's in the
environmental field or the medical science field, there you
were fairly rapidly confronted with issues over wanting to
cover up data or being in a state of denial even when those
questions were raised in a fairly professional way. Where it
led us in Maryland rather rapidly was to a posture of full and
timely disclosure of information.
We, looking back on it, realized that in the face of the
fear of the unknown the best way to handle that is to start to
develop a level of confidence in the public that you are doing
all that you can, that you're sharing information and data as
openly as possible with public directly through their elected
representatives and through the media.
And that, of course, leads to the other half of the
paradox, and that is that when you do what you tend to be
accused of over-hyping the situation, but I think these kind of
issues, as you all know, become--and they have in this case,
certainly--a topic of great public consternation. And, even
when you're on the cutting edge of this, and even when you're
learning as you go along, I think, one of the lessons we've
learned is: engage in full and timely disclosure of what you
know. And, through that, I think, one can build a sense of
relative confidence in the citizens and, therefore, tend to
dissipate the sense of anxiety that they have. I'm not saying
that that's a posture that isn't at times kind of sloppy, if
you will, but for us, seems to have worked fairly well, I
think.
An example of that that I would share with you--and I
notice Congressman Gilchrest came into the hearing room and he,
of course, was present for that, as he's been on this issue and
many others leading from his role as a Member of Congress--we
had a conference at Salisbury State University on the Eastern
Shore of Maryland in early August. And we tried to bring
together our colleagues from the Federal agencies, sister
States; Wayne and Chris both sent folks from their Departments
to our three-day summit. We had a number of folks from the
scientific community there, elected officials like Congressman
Gilchrest; and we had a number of constituents from the lower
Eastern Shore, the affected watermen, farmers, people whose
businesses rely on the tourism trade, and we engaged, I think,
in a very open, honest, thorough discussion of the state of our
knowledge, concerns, and areas of distrust that folks had about
what we had done or not done.
And, I think looking back on that again, is an illustration
of this notion of being as open as you can with the public,
even if, for the short-term, that creates some problems. This
is a long-term issue, and, therefore, you have to look at it in
terms of building confidence and trust and understanding for
the long-term.
The next issue, in terms of a lesson for us, I think, is
the complexity of this issue and how it demands a high level of
interagency collaboration. As you know, because this problem
cuts across var-
ious functions of government--environmental, public health,
economic, to name a few--it requires the agencies to sort of
sacrifice a bit of their singular missions to the over-riding
cause of understanding and solving the problem. And, I think in
general, we have been able to do that in Maryland, not only
among the Governor's agencies, but, as I mentioned earlier,
with active participation from our Federal counterparts.
Two other points I want to emphasize in terms of this
collaboration: one is the importance of science and the
importance of having management agencies linked up with their
scientific counterparts. Don Boesch--Dr. Boesch--mentioned in
his testimony, I noticed, a reference to the fact that I had
asked him to set up a scientific brain trust, if you will, to
guide us in our deliberations as management agencies. Looking
back on that, again, as a lesson that, I think, was a
fortuitous action that we took and Don's committee has
important scientists from up and down the eastern seaboard,
including Dr. Burkholder and her colleague, Dr. Stidenget, and
we will continue to use them as a forum to which to deliberate
some of the many imponderables that confront us in terms of
taking management actions when the science is either in debate
or not clear.
And, of course, another example of the intergovernmental
effort here was another summit that was held here last month
called by Governor Glendening, my boss, with active
participation from governors in surrounding States, and the EPA
Administrator, Carol Browner, and a number of folks from
Federal agencies, some of whom are here today testifying. That
was another, I think, stellar example of the degree to which
governments are kind of putting aside, more so than we
typically do, prerogatives and turf and everything else, and
just looking at the problem and trying to work together to
solve it.
Another lesson, of course, as I reflect back on the last
several months has been the importance of leadership: people
stepping forward. Three come to mind: first, I assume you'll
understand that I want to mention my boss, Governor Glendening;
secondly JoAnn Burkholder who you heard from earlier; and
lastly, Jack Howard--I don't know if Jack's going to make it
today--and all the watermen down in the shell town area in the
southern Eastern Shore. Each in their own way broke with
convention, took risks, and did so many times in the face of a
lot of peer pressure to the contrary. So, in Maryland, as Dr.
Burkholder has said, we've been fortunate that our governor has
been willing to become personally involved in understanding
these issues, taking political risks to try to ensure the well-
being of our citizens and our environment, stay the course, and
make hard decisions in the face of many imponderables.
And I would like to emphasize that point and recall, as
many of you know, my own personal experience in State
government going back to 1985, we had declining rockfish or
striped bass populations up and down the Atlantic seaboard, and
we made a decision at that time in the face of uncertain
scientific predictions and banned the harvesting of rockfish.
And I guess that taught us a lesson that I would apply to this
particular issue and that is: if you wait until all the science
is in and confirmed, you may have waited too long. And, so,
that isn't to say that continuing to push the envelope in terms
of advances in scientific understanding is not very important;
it is, but there are going to be at times a long the way when,
at the government level, decisions are going to have to be made
which are not irrevocable, but are going to have to be made,
and in retrospect, of course, that's what leadership is all
about.
The final couple of lessons I would share with you: one is,
what this issue has really, I think, brought forward for us in
Maryland, is the important link between economic well-being and
environmental well-being. And, if nothing else has done it
heretofore, this issue has focused everyone's understanding in
Maryland, I think, on the very important fact that you have to
have in order to have a healthy economy, you have to have a
healthy environment and they are so linked with one another.
And, the impacts of this issue in Maryland, not only on the
immediate economies of the fishing industry, both recreational
and commercial and farmers, and the seafood industry, and
tourism interest is obvious, but there are many secondary
impacts that we're experiencing right now.
Finally, the last lesson, I guess, is that I think this has
shown us that we clearly--you know in Maryland we've been at
the effort with our sister States and the Federal Government of
restoring the Chesapeake Bay. We've been at it now for about 15
years, most people feel that it's one of the several handful
model efforts around the country, indeed around the world. And,
so, on the one hand, you sit here when things like Pfiesteria
outbreaks happen in your own State and wonder, well, gee after
all this effort and we're still having these problems. But, I
guess, what it has led us to think more and more about is the
need to look more broadly--more holistically, if you will--at
environmental complexes as were mentioned earlier. And, in
terms of sources of nutrient input, start to do for nonpoint
sources what we have done collaboratively for point sources
during the first 25 years of the Clean Water Act.
So, I'll conclude, Mr. Chairman, and Members. Thank you for
your time, and I'll be happy to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Griffin may be found at end
of hearing.]
Mr. Gilchrest. [presiding] Gentlemen, thank you very much.
I know it has been a bumpy road here for the past six months,
but I think you have stayed the course and done the right
thing.
We will recognize the gentleman from North Carolina to
recognize his witness. Walter?
Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to welcome
the Honorable Wayne McDevitt, Secretary of North Carolina
Department of Environmental and Natural Resources. And what
makes this very special is Wayne and I have been friends a
long, long time; and even more so than that is that he has been
in this position for 70 days. And, during that 70 days, he had
to deal with the North Carolina legislature as they were
closing down shop in late August; and then, the people that I
know that know Wayne have great respect for him, as I do, and
we know that he is going to do an excellent job for the
citizens of our State, not only with this issue, but other
issues. Also, I would like to extend to his staff my respect
and welcome to Washington, DC.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gilchrest. Mr. McDevitt?
STATEMENT OF WAYNE McDEVITT, SECRETARY, NORTH CAROLINA
DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND NATURAL RESOURCES
Mr. McDevitt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and also thank you
to North Carolina's good friend, Congressman Jones, who not
only does a tremendous job for his district there in eastern
North Carolina, but for all of North Carolina. And, it's quite
frankly an honor for me to be in a room that I see a former
Congressman Jones portrait on the wall back here, and again,
thank you for allowing us to be here.
On behalf of the Governor, I do want to thank the Committee
for giving us this opportunity to testify. We have submitted a
statement earlier, along with other comments, and I have
technical staff with me today to assist as we continue the
dialogue.
Pfiesteria was first identified in North Carolina, and
North Carolina intends to be a major player in solving this
problem. Much of the early work on Pfiesteria was funded
through a cooperative Federal-State partnership, including
several of Dr. Burkholder's early research efforts.
Pfiesteria is a serious problem and we all agree on that.
There seems to be more that we don't know than that we do know
about Pfiesteria. We must learn more about this organism and
we'll continue to work with our Federal and regional partners
to do so. But, we must look at the bigger issue: protecting and
restoring our water quality. Pfiesteria is the symptom of a
greater problem. We all know, and Dr. Burkholder has told us
and others have told us, that significant nutrient reduction is
critical if we're going to restore our rivers.
We're pleased to join in this regional approach to a common
problem. Many of our States--many of the States represented
here today--have large estuaries with slow-moving water, strong
agricultural economies, and growth in populations, and changes
in land use. The potential impacts of that growth are obvious
and the need to address them is just as obvious.
Your Committee has played a major role in setting policy
with respect to fisheries management, research, and the
protection of coastal and marine environments. Your role in the
reauthorization of the Magnuson Act, particularly as it relates
to habitat protection, is vital. North Carolina has the largest
estuarine system of any single State on the Atlantic coast: 2.3
million acres. Species need estuaries to complete their life
cycle: spawning, nursery areas, feeding areas, and migration
routes. This is why water quality protection and restoration
efforts are so critically important. Fish from North Carolina
estuaries and coastal rivers migrate throughout the Atlantic
coast and support significant commercial and recreational
fisheries along the Atlantic seaboard.
Recreational and commercial fishing in North Carolina
contributes $1 billion annually to our State's economy.
Providing viable fisheries and protecting habitats are high
priorities. We recently passed, in North Carolina, the North
Carolina Fisheries Reform Act that will tie together our water
quality, coastal management, and fisheries protection efforts
through habitat protection plans in a way that has never been
done before.
Dr. Burkholder has said on a number of occasions that
Pfiesteria is a cause for concern and not alarm. We need to
work together to inform and educate the people in our
respective States about the precautions they need to take to
protect health while making sure our fishing and crabbing
industries remain viable.
In North Carolina we've witnessed fish kills, algal blooms,
and degradation of some of our waterways and estuaries due to
excess nutrients. We've acted to combat our nutrient problems
and we've made some meaningful progress. We need to do more. We
need to do much more. But I would like to highlight for a
moment some of the steps we have taken.
The Governor and the State lawmakers just concluded the
most important legislative session for the environment in our
history. We passed fisheries reform legislation. We're
strengthening our strategy to reduce nutrients in our troubled
Neuse River. We established the Clean Water Management Trust
Fund which provides $50 million annually to water quality
protection initiatives. We established a wetlands restoration
program. We're toughening our enforcement policies and
strengthening our sedimentation and control programs. We
established a rapid response team to investigate fish kills,
and expanded our coastal recreational water quality testing
program to protect public health. We toughened siting,
permitting, and operating requirements for livestock operations
and strengthened our agricultural cost-share program. We've
created a scientific advisory committee, established a medical
team, a hot-line for citizens to call. We stepped up
environmental education.
Most important, Governor Hunt signed the Clean Water
Responsibility Act which puts a two-year moratorium on hog
farms in the State, reduces nutrient limits for waste-water
dischargers and nonpoint sources, and incudes provisions for
improved land use managements. North Carolina has major
financial investment in funding important research programs and
initiatives. Over the past two years, we've approved over $147
million to support these efforts.
We've taken some very important steps, but we must do more.
We must do much more. We've met with our North Carolina
Congressional delegation and with the governors from five
States, and we all stand ready to join as full partners on this
issue. We've talked with them about our needs. In particular,
we've emphasized the Governor's commitment to establishing a
Center for Applied Aquatic Ecology at North Carolina State
University where Dr. Burkholder does her research. Congressman
Jones has introduced legislation to authorize funding for that
center, and I would like to point out that the entire North
Carolina delegation supports that, and we urge favorable action
as quickly as possible.
In North Carolina we must reduce nutrients, including
pollution from atmospheric deposition. We must fund additional
research; we must identify additional funds for more than $12
billion in waste water treatment needs in our State; and we
must collect data and conduct research to develop fishery
management plans. In order to do all of these things and
others, we must have strong legislation, clear regulations,
tough enforcement, good information, funding for research, and
public support. We welcome the assistance of this Committee,
and our Federal partners. We look forward to working with all
the stake-holders, including farmers and local governments;
citizens; environmental groups, such as the Neuse River
Foundation--Rick Dove, the Neuse River Keeper--and all others
in cleaning up our waters.
Once again, we're pleased to participate in this regional
approach. We're ready to join whatever efforts are necessary to
coordinate, and communicate, and understand this better. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Wayne McDevitt may be found at
end of hearing.]
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Mr. McDevitt.
I now will yield to the gentleman from Delaware, Mr.
Castle, to introduce the next witness.
Mr. Castle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and it is a pleasure--
an honor really--to introduce Delaware's Secretary of Natural
Resources and Environmental Control--I think he has the longest
name of anybody up there--Christophe Tulou, who is no stranger
to these rooms, I might add. He worked with now Congressman, or
Governor Carper--I get confused myself--Governor Carper as his
legislative director, and helped develop legislation on sound
coastal management involving the National Flood Insurance
Program, and the National Marine Mammal Health and Stranded
Response Program. He receives very high marks for continuing
the outstanding policies of environment in Delaware by the
previous administration and really responding well to the
Pfiesteria issue. And we in Delaware, are very appreciative of
all those things and we're delighted he was able to be here
today. Christophe Tulou.
STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHE A. G. TULOU, SECRETARY, DELAWARE
DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL
Mr. Tulou. Thank you, Congressman Castle. I appreciate very
much the Committee's invitation to be with you today, and
Governor Carper does send his best wishes to his friends and
former colleagues. He certainly has fond memories of spending
many hours in this room as a member of the now-defunct
Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries.
At any rate, Delaware has a very, very strong interest in
this issue. We've had our experience with Pfiesteria in the
past, as Congressman Castle mentioned earlier in the hearing,
going back as far as 1987--and for all we know, maybe even
before that. And, we have also found Pfiesteria-like organisms
in our waters this summer. So we have an active interest and
great concern for what's happening there.
You will see in my written statement a lot of what's going
on in Delaware and reference to a number of things that we are
doing to try to address not only the Pfiesteria problem, but
what we think are the root causes of that problem; and I will
refer that to the members of the Subcommittee for their
perusal.
What I would like to do is just focus on what we perceive
as the most fundamental needs, and they aren't terribly
complex, and there aren't too many of them. But, certainly,
first and foremost, in picking up on some comments that have
already been made at the hearing so far today, is the need for
our research efforts to be coordinated. We can't stress that
enough. The State of Delaware, and certainly the Department of
Natural Resources and Environmental Control, is not going to
assume the primary research responsibilities for determining
what's going on with Pfiesteria. I don't think that's an
appropriate role. But what we do need is some good information,
some good facts, and good science to rely on as we go to those
portions of our community that are going to be responsible to
help us address those problems. And certainly, the more
particular research needs are defining even better what factors
are responsible for the proliferation, the toxicity, and also
the human health effects associated with Pfiesteria.
Dr. Burkholder and her researchers and colleagues have
certainly strongly indicated that nutrients are implicated. But
they have also mentioned that the nutrient requirements of the
organism are extremely complex, and I think we certainly need
to pin that down better so that we can better direct the effort
that we're going to need to exert to make sure that the basic
problem is taken care of. And, I think that's the important
point here, really. Pfiesteria is just one of many symptoms of
a much larger problem that we're experiencing in our coastal
waters. It's not a mystery to us that we need to be addressing
aggressively nonpoint source pollution as well as remaining
point sources, for that matter, recognizing that the efforts
that we have made to date are obviously not getting the job
done.
We have a potential Pfiesteria problem in Delaware. We've
wrestled with it in the past. We've got over-nitrification
which is leading to a tremendous explosion of algae growth in
our inland bays in Delaware creating large expanses of anoxic
water--no oxygen--and that's just as poisonous as any toxin
that Pfiesteria can create in terms of eliminating large
amounts--and the large diversity--of living resources that we
have in those waters.
This is a critical problem, and I would say for a
subcommittee that's looking for some advice on where we need
assistance the most, it's not with the short-term issue alone:
the long-term need to address those nonpoint sources of
pollution is critical. Support for State nonpoint source
pollution programs, watershed programs, and particularly, the
total maximum daily load obligations that the variety of States
are wrestling with right now, which is a mandate under the
Clean Water Act but has for many years been woefully under-
supported, is probably one of the best areas of resource
allocation that Congress and the States can work together on.
So, with that statement, I'll be happy to answer any
questions that you may have when the panel is finished.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tulou may be found at end of
hearing.]
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you very much, Mr. Tulou. I'll
recognize Mr. Jones once more for his next witness.
Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I'll be very brief.
I do want to recognize and welcome Mr. Rick Dove. For so
long, Mr. Dove has been the voice in the wilderness as it's
related to the pollution of the Neuse River down in my
district. And finally, I know that he is delighted to see this
day come about, and the many efforts that you've made--and
through the past years he has had many people in eastern North
Carolina, as well as the governor of the State, and people
throughout the State of North Carolina to join his concern to
help us try to find a solution to the problem.
So, with that, I welcome you, Rick Dove, to the Committee.
STATEMENT OF RICK DOVE, NEUSE RIVER KEEPER, NEUSE RIVER
FOUNDATION
Mr. Dove. Thank you, Congressman Jones, Mr. Chairman.
For the past 20 years, I have lived on the shores of the
Neuse River, certainly one of North Carolina's most beautiful
and important resources. It's important to the health of the
citizens, it's important to the economy of the State.
In those more than 20 years, I have watched as this
resource has been slowly wasted away. Between 1975 and 1990,
the degradation of the Neuse River was slow but steady. But
then beginning in 1990, there was an acceleration of pollution
into the river, and as a result of that, the affects that we
saw, including the massive growth of Pfiesteria in our waters,
got to a point that we had never seen before.
As a river keeper for the Neuse River, I am one of more
than 20 licensed river keepers in the country. I am a full-time
paid citizen representative on the Neuse River. My sponsor is
the Neuse River Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Nupper,
North Carolina. So, when I talk to you today about the river,
what I want you all to know is that I'm giving you the
citizen's perspective of what's happening--what's happened--on
the Neuse and what is happening.
As I said earlier, the Neuse is a beautiful river. We've
had fish kills for a long time on the Neuse River. I've talked
to the old-timers extensively. I spend a lot of time on the
water, flying over the top of it, talking to fishermen, talking
to people who've lived there--some of their families have been
there for hundreds of years. And, you get a pretty clear
picture of what's been going on in that river through those
people--through their eyes. And we know that we've lost fish
for a long period of time on the Neuse, mostly as a result of
low oxygen levels which also has a pollution connection. But,
we really never began to see Pfiesteria on the river until the
mid-1980s and by the 1990s--and at that time I was a commercial
fisherman, I actually gave up fishing because I could no longer
stand to see the fish coming out of the river and the crabs
with their sores.
So we began to see fish with lesions in large numbers. By
1991, we lost a billion fish on the Neuse River. It's hard to
imagine a billion fish dead on one river. But I promise you,
they were there. There were so many dead fish that they were
using a bulldozer to put them into the beach in some areas. The
stench from the fish was so bad that people didn't even want to
go outside their houses.
Very few of us, and I don't think any of us, knew back in
1991 what was causing the fish kills. We knew it wasn't low
oxygen because we were testing for oxygen and the oxygen levels
were fine.
Again in 1995, we lost 10 million fish. Now, the Neuse
River Foundation is the one--it's members were the ones--that
conducted that survey, and we did it as scientifically as we
could. We only counted dead and dying fish on the Neuse for 10
of the 100 days they were dying in 1995. But clearly, that fish
kill was not as bad as the one in 1991.
We've also had fish kills and fish with lesions on all the
other years. Some years are better than others. In 1997, this
year, we have documented the loss of over 390,000 menhaden fish
with sores, very similar to the picture that I have given to
each of you.
We also noted, beginning back in 1995, that we've had a
number of our citizens--our fishermen, our bridge workers, and
others who were working on the water--reporting illnesses
related to Pfiesteria. As a matter of fact, in 1995, the State
health director called me personally and asked me to send in
the names of all the people that went out on the boat, from the
media and others who would go out on the river, to give them
their names so that they could ask them whether or not they
were suffering any problems. Not surprisingly to me, 47 percent
of the people that were interviewed said they had problems that
were related to Pfiesteria--or at least their problems could be
related to Pfiesteria. Yet in all that time, including to
today, the State health director in North Carolina has refused
to acknowledge one existing case of Pfiesteria in humans in
North Carolina. We know it affects the fish, but does it affect
people? There's no doubt in the minds of the people who live on
the lower Neuse, but we still are searching for the truth in
North Carolina when Maryland has been able to find it in a
matter of months.
Now there's been a number of things that have happened--
good things. We feel very fortunate that we have a new
secretary for the environment in North Carolina, Secretary
McDevitt. He has done a lot of good work already in the few
days that he has been doing this job. He has come to grips with
the truth of what's been happening down on the lower Neuse and
I'm so encouraged by the fact that he is our man in North
Carolina and we're going to be able to work together. But,
we've got a long way to go. He has no control over health in
North Carolina; that's under a different secretary. We must
come to grips with the health problems we have in North
Carolina as a result of Pfiesteria and other pollution sources
in the river.
The other thing that we need to do is we need to get busy
about fixing the real problem, which is not Pfiesteria.
Pfiesteria, as you've heard from so many of the other panel
members, is only a symptom of pollution. Pollution is the real
problem. It is important that you allocate money for research.
Please don't not do that. You must do that. But spend that
money wisely.
We've got Dr. Burkholder in North Carolina. This bill that
Congressman Jones has introduced to fund a research center in
North Carolina--certainly we need a research center in North
Carolina. North Carolina--Maryland today, is seven years behind
where North Carolina is. We've had these problems in North
Carolina for seven years now. So we need that research. But we
really need--and we need it on North Carolina waters. But we
really need, more than anything else, we need to get pollution
reduced in our bodies of water. That's the real answer. We may
even be able to solve the Pfiesteria problem without ever
understanding it if we simply reduce the pollution levels.
I know my time is up and I want to end just with a couple
of solutions that have already been mentioned by the other
panel members. We have one great law in this great country of
ours, it's called the Clean Water Act. It has really helped
save our rivers from very serious degradation over the 20
years. But it has been very poorly enforced in certain key
areas. The total maximum daily load provision of that law,
section 303(d), mandates that States, when they have waters not
meeting their designated use, find out what is the pollution--
what is the pollutant--that's causing the problem, and then to
establish a total maximum daily load for that pollutant so that
the river is restored, mandatorily restored, to its designated
uses. States across this country, including North Carolina,
have not followed the law. They simply have not followed it and
the EPA has not enforced it.
We are currently--the Neuse River Foundation has currently
got a suit pending against the EPA on that very issue. We must
enforce it. That law empowers citizens like me to do things to
protect the water. The citizens of this country own the water.
The other thing is that the law needs to be broadened and
strengthened to include nonpoint sources. It's hard to believe,
but it's true, in North Carolina we have 10 million hogs. We
are the number two producer of hogs, the number one producers
of turkeys, and the number two producer of chickens. Those 10
million hogs are producing the equivalent feces and urine of
all the people in the States of New York and California
combined. It's stored in open pits. It's not disinfected before
it's thrown on fields. Those fields are all ditched to carry
runoff to streams, creeks, and rivers. What's really
frightening is that 80 to 90 percent of all the nitrogen
produced by animals: chickens, turkeys, and hogs--I don't know
about chickens and turkeys, it may be a little less
percentage--but on hogs, according to USDA, 80 percent of all
the nitrogen produced by those animals is discharged to the
environment as ammonia gas--that's another form of nitrogen. It
travels about 62 miles and 100 percent of it is redeposited on
their church yards, their school yards, our rivers, and our
forests.
Rivers do not have an assimilative capacity. They do not.
One of the mistakes we have made in this great country of ours
is that we have assumed that they do. That we can put
pollutants into water, into rivers and streams, without
degradation. We've done that with pipes to the river called
point sources, and agricultural runoff that we've allowed to
get into the river. If we want to save ourselves from
Pfiesteria and other micro-organisms like it, we must realize
that rivers do not have an assimilative capacity. Nature sets
up a balance for them and everything we do to them upsets that
balance.
Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dove may be found at end of
hearing.]
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Mr. Dove. Your testimony has been
very compelling. I'm going to yield first to Mr. Jones, because
he has to leave for another appointment. So Walter, you're
recognized.
Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a couple of
questions of the secretary of North Carolina as well as Mr.
Dove.
Mr. Secretary, would you please tell the panel how much
money the State of North Carolina has invested in the areas of
trying to deal with the water problems, whether it be
Pfiesteria or other problems that we might have had in the
seven years since the State has become aware of it?
Mr. McDevitt. I'm not sure I have those numbers for seven
years. I can tell you that during the last two years, that
number is in the range of $147 million of State money. That
includes a Clean Water Management Trust Fund. We put about 6\1/
2\ percent of remaining funds after the budget is complete into
a fund and that's anywhere from $40 to $50, $55 million a year.
And, in addition to that, we just, of course, passed the Clean
Water Responsibility Act. We've significantly increased our ag
share program, working with the farmers on BMPs and so forth;
so, $147 million if you total that.
Mr. Jones. Let me--in a statement that Mr. Dove made and I
want the panel to understand--the Committee, excuse me--that
farming is important in North Carolina. It is a way of life, it
is a way of people earning a living. And I think that the State
of North Carolina, Mr. Secretary, I'd like you to speak to
this, has tried to find that balance between the hog industry,
as far as responsibilities shared, in an effort to try to
ensure that we are protecting our waters.
Mr. McDevitt. Yes, the thing that we certainly know is that
we have a nutrient problem in the lower Neuse. I mean, all of
us know that, and we have a serious problem there, and there's
enough--the causes are both point source and non-point source.
They--it's everything, Congressman, from the agricultural
industry to municipalities, industry, homeowners, developers,
golf courses, sedimentation control problems, urban runoff, and
all of us share in that problem, and all of us share in the
responsibility of fixing that problem. In the--over the past
few years, we--I don't know how deep the debt is, but in terms
of a natural trust, in terms of the natural trust that we hold,
and we must pass on, we've borrowed a little too deep into that
trust, and we've got to pay back, and we've got to pay that
back now, and we must understand that, and that goes across the
board, Congressman. I think all of us share in that.
We in North Carolina, in this past legislative session, we
established a moratorium on expansion or new hog farms, and we
believe that during that moratorium, we can establish,
hopefully, more clearly--we're doing research relative to odor;
relative to nutrient load, and during that moratorium--and
that's not enough; we've got to do more--but during that
moratorium, we hope to use that time to do the research
necessary to clearly establish where some of the
responsibilities lie. We know that it's all of us.
Mr. Jones. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, if I could ask Mr. Dove
just a couple of questions? I'd like to start with this leg
with the sore on it. If you could tell the panel--the Committee
a little bit about this individual, and if you would--as you
talked to me a little bit earlier--about the concern that you
have that there are many people in the State that possibly are
sick because of this problem, and, obviously, you made in your
statement a concern that maybe the State--and I think that's
very helpful with the Sec-
retary being here--your comments about maybe the State not
doing as much as you would like to see them do, and maybe other
people feel the same way. Could you speak to this just briefly?
Mr. Dove. Yes, sir, I will, Congressman. Those sores are on
the leg of a man by the name of Roy Rice. He is a clammer. He
spends physical time in the water, not in a boat, over the top
of it, but actually walking in the water; he gets wet a lot.
He's fished in the Neuse River; he also fishes the inside water
of the outerbanks. If he wears protective clothing, like a
glove on one hand, he doesn't get the sores where he stays
covered, but in all areas of exposure he get the sores. He's
had memory loss to the point where he's not been able to find
his way home in his own neighborhood. He can't--like so many
fishermen and so many others, he cannot afford a doctor, so
he's never been to a doctor that I know of, but he did ask the
State to have somebody take a look at him, and we actually
asked the State, epidemiologist, Dr. Stanley Music, and
introduced this man to him personally. He's also been on
national television, this individual, to have somebody take a
look at him. To my knowledge, he's never been examined.
I'm not a doctor or scientist; I can't know and do not know
whether these people are getting sick from Pfiesteria in the
water, but I can tell you that my judgment is that the sores
look the same; the symptoms are the same, and as I look at the
experience in Maryland and what has been discovered there,
what's been happening in North Carolina is echoing what has
been reported out in Maryland where they have documented these
illnesses. But we've never had a team of doctors; we've asked
for it--there are no--to go down on the Neuse and the Tar-
Pamlico and actually examine these people as they did in
Maryland. We've been asking for that since 1995. There are no
protocols for local doctors in Newborn, Elizabeth City;
anywhere along the coast to report to the health director, to
my knowledge, these illnesses that these people are reporting,
so we've got a lot of work to do. I would like to point out,
Congressman, that the health department in North Carolina is
not under Secretary McDevitt; it's under a different secretary.
Mr. Jones. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Walter. I yield to Mr. Castle.
Mr. Castle. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just listening
to this whole conversation, this morning and this afternoon, it
seems to me that--as I think Mr. Dove said or one of you said,
at least--that Pfiesteria is only a symptom of pollution, and I
think that's correct, and I worry about the--I guess we're
dealing with the point source better than we used to, but I'd
be curious as to the views of any of you, with respect to the
different groups, the larger groups which may be involved in
non-point source problems: the poultry industry, the
agricultural industry, the golf course makers, the towns and
the non-point part of what they do, the runoff from roads,
whatever it may be. Are we getting cooperation? Are we moving
up on that? I mean, ultimately, we may solve this problem
without ever really being able to identify, truly, what the
problem is if we can do better in those areas, and I know when
I was governor, we kept trying to push this, and I'm sure all
of your governors are as well, and I just wonder if you could
give me a State update of how you feel we're doing in those
areas?
Mr. Tulou. I'll take a first shot at it. There are a lot of
initiatives going on in, I presume, all of the States to deal
with that whole suite of problems: working with municipalities;
with sediment and storm water control programs; dealing with
the agricultural community through best management practices
and in investments through cost share programs; a variety of
manure management and dead poultry techniques, for example.
I think the biggest problems we have right now are: one,
land use and the associated increase in population that's going
along with it; more and more pressure being applied on the
system, and I'm not sure our measures are keeping up, and I
think the other thing that we need to continue to work on is
our ability to measure what the effectiveness of these variety
of programs is, because I can foresee a day when we are going
to have to consider a course of action far beyond what we have
already engaged those parties with, and we're going to need
some good, solid foundation to justify those actions.
I would imagine, as John Griffin mentioned, and certainly
some frustration in North Carolina too, with all this activity
that has taken place through the years under the Clean Water
Act to deal with point sources, and we're starting to deal in
some ways with non-point sources, a great deal of frustration
that we're beginning to see some problems instead of seeing the
old ones go away, so there's a tremendous amount of effort
that's left to be undertaken.
Mr. Castle. Anybody want to add to that quickly, and we
can----
Mr. Griffin. Yes, I would say, Congressman, our experience
in Maryland--they're still pretty much in the nascent stages on
addressing urban runoff. I mean, it's true, we've had more
sediment and storm water control programs implemented primarily
through our government since the mid-eighties, but that's
really addressing redevelopment or new development. In the
unchartered waters, we've really not done quite a lot, or much
at all yet, as retrofitting: coming into areas that are already
developed and figuring out how to deal with runoff of urban
areas.
On the agricultural side, we certainly made a major effort,
through our Department of Agriculture, to reach out to the
farming community and enlist their support, and we spent a lot
of money both in terms of staff and cost sharing. I think what
this issue raises is not necessarily the good will or
intentions of us to the farming community members as much as it
raises issues with how effective our thinking has been about
how best to control some of the runoff, some of the animal
waste. And the science is changing on us. You may have heard
earlier the phenomenon in scientific thinking that phosphorous
was bound up in the soil particles and now that's not the
thought, and that changes dramatically how you approach runoff.
But in general, I think that we've come farther in terms of a
foundation with the farming community interest than we have
with urban Maryland, if you will, and that's an area that we
need to spend a lot more time on as well.
Mr. Castle. But I worry a little bit that we're sort of
burying our heads in the sand, and so are some of the different
groups, they're all saying, ``Well, don't look at us,'' and I
doubt if any one of them is the sole factor that we have these
problems be they low oxygen problems or Pfiesteria problems or
whatever, but the bottom line is that in the aggregate those
problems still exist, and we have to have the courage to stand
up and say we need to talk about this in a good communication
sense, and this business of saying, ``Well, leave them alone''
is probably not healthy in the long term for their industry or
for solving these problems.
Let me jump to another question, I only have a moment here.
And that is, do you have any comments concerning what the
Federal Government is doing or should be doing? My view is--I'm
not, as I said earlier, you've probably heard from my other
questions--but I'm not interested in funding a series of
different research centers in different States or whatever. I'm
interested in solving the problem. I'd just as soon have all of
you together, talking with everybody who is knowledgeable about
this, and my question is are we doing the right things at the
Federal Government level? Are there other things that we should
be doing, either with existing funds and programs or different
funds and programs? Any thoughts along those lines? I mean,
that's the one thing we can really control here.
Mr. McDevitt. Congressman, I think, first of all, just
these kinds of hearings, the kind of attention, often, in order
to make the tough decisions, it requires a number of things,
and sometimes--I don't know what all it requires--but
sometimes, through magic, we're able to have the kind of
legislative session we just had in North Carolina, but most
importantly, it takes public will, and this--and these kinds of
hearings, media attention, those kinds of things; having people
like Rick Dove always calling on you and saying, ``Do you need
to do more?'' That's--I must tell you, that's helpful. In my
seventy-some days, he's become a friend and a colleague.
But to answer your question, certainly, we need a lot of
money and research, and we must know--we've got to know what we
don't know about Pfiesteria, but beyond that, some assistance
with innovative ways to treat animal waste; assistance with new
technologies and new ways to look at the treatment of animal
waste, I think, is important. Looking at the Clean Water Act,
not only in terms of reauthorizing but also looking at what we
can do in terms of non-point source, I think is something in
the bigger picture that we can look at.
Last--I had a role in the coordination of North Carolina's
response to following the Fran, Hurricane Fran, in North
Carolina. There was a tremendous loss to North Carolina, and as
I think about that response and how we very quickly went into a
mode in North Carolina and very quickly knew who our Federal
partners were and how we could enter a system that's sometimes
confusing and complex, and get things done in a very short
period of time, perhaps, we ought to look at that model, and
that model of partnership and, perhaps--I don't want to say
that level of emergency, but, certainly, a level of urgency.
And, so I think just--and I feel that now. We know more now
than we've known--you know, we know more today than knew
yesterday, but I do believe that those are just some thoughts I
would have relative to that.
Mr. Tulou. Just very quickly, if I could, add to that. I
think that through all the testimony that I've heard during the
course of this hearing, we already have ample evidence that
people believe that a coordinated approach is important, and we
also have a lot of evidence that a coordinated approach has
already been taken, and I think that, for example, the Centers
for Disease Control, EPA, the National Marine Fishery Service,
The Fish and Wildlife Service, and congressional action; some
of the initiatives that you and Congressman Gilchrest have been
engaged in terms of finding resources have always been geared
towards a regional approach and some coordination in terms of
coming to a resolution of the problem, and I think that's to be
commended. I don't see a real problem there, but I think that
the coordination is more important than the money, and I don't
know how best to make sure that's happening, but certainly the
oversight of this Subcommittee would be very helpful to make
sure that EPA's talking to the Department of Commerce and NOAA
and the Centers for Disease Control, and if we can continue to
do that, I suspect at the State level, we'll doing our share of
insisting on that as well. We're already coordinating and
talking, and I think that that will continue.
Mr. Castle. Well, let me just close, if I may, Mr.
Chairman, by just saying that I agree with what you've stated.
I think you probably have more depth of knowledge than I do
about the programs. In fact, Wayne and I were talking a little
bit, walking over to the votes, that it's fine to pass
amendments and do this and do that and get money here and
there, but it's not a coordinated approach. We aren't solving
the problem the way we should, and I think it's very important
that we continue that communication, and I would like to thank
Rick Dove for his involvement and for being here. We have some
Rick Doves in Delaware too, and sometimes I'm happy to hear
from them, and sometimes I say, ``Boy, they're pushing me a
little further than I'm ready for.''
[Laughter.]
Mr. Castle. But it's people like you who make a difference.
Mr. Dove. Can I add just one quick comment in response to
your question?
Mr. Castle. Certainly.
Mr. Dove. One of the problems the State's have is that down
in the trenches--now, you're talking about this coordinated
effort and all; that's great--but down in the trenches is where
it happens and doesn't happen, and when you talk about cleaning
up pollution, what's tough for the States is that the guy's
with the biggest bucks--well, they all point to the other guy.
When you go to them and say, ``You're doing this, and you need
to fix it''--everybody wants a clean river, but they want the
other guy to fix it, and then they begin to employ the
lobbyists and everything else so they don't have to do their
fair share.
On the Federal level, if you strengthen the Federal Clean
Water Act, you will make it easy for the Wayne McDevitts of
this world, the governors across the United States, to actually
get this job done. I think that's why it's so important that
you do that. We need to stop this finger pointing. Congressman
Jones was right, farmers are important to North Carolina;
nobody wants to see them go away, but we want to see hog
lagoons go away; we want to see open storage of chicken and
turkey waste go away, and we want to see waste water treatment
plants reduce--take their pipes out of the river wherever
possible, and then certainly reduce their nitrogen discharge to
the technology available.
Mr. Castle. Thank you very much.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Mike. I'm going to ask a few
questions, and if you have a few more in the next five minute
cycle, the panel doesn't look like they want to leave anytime
soon, so we'll enjoy the Nation's Capitol.
Mr. Dove, I'd like to follow up on that one point, your
comments earlier and your comments now about strengthening the
Food and Water Act and giving the governors the Federal
regulations that they need to push some of these non-point
source pollution concerns a little harder. If we could put that
aside, just for a second, using the experience that we've had
here, whether it's Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, or
wherever, could you sort of summarize to us the collective
responsibility of those in a position to deal with non-point
source pollution, but chose not to deal with non-point source
pollution, whether it's out or not--I'm talking about the
planning commissioner of every county, the county executive,
the county administrator, the local delegates to the general
assembly, the governor of the State, their department of the
environment, their department of fish and game, or whatever? Do
you have some sense of the collective responsibility of those
people regardless of the Clean Water Act and the Federal role,
who, out of a misunderstanding or out of direct misuse of their
power, chose not to deal with this non-point source pollution?
Mr. Dove. Mr. Chairman, I can. I think it all comes down to
dollars. The real client involved is the water; fixing the
water. Everybody should be taking care of that client which is
the water, but, instead, others creep in as the client: the
farmers, the industrial guys, the developers. They all become
the clients, and all of sudden we begin to take care of them
and take care of their needs to the detriment of the real
client which is the water, and Secretary McDevitt and I had
conversations about that.
When a crisis comes up on the lower Neuse, there's great
economic suffrage going on on the Neuse River; beautiful river;
it's a treasure. We ought to be doing so well along the Neuse
River because of the beauty of this river, and, instead, we're
losing business; fisherman are going out of business, can't
make a living; same experience as in Maryland, but what happens
when that takes place is that local county governments begin to
respond taking pipes out of the river as they have at Newborn;
developing plans to begin to take care of the river, but while
that happens on the local level, it's almost impossible to move
it up stream to take it to the small towns that go further and
further upstream. So, it's, again, we're serving the wrong
client. A lot of times we're taking care of waste water
treatment plants, allowing cities to grow--you know that old
statement, ``We got to keep growing and growing and growing.''
Well,----
Mr. Gilchrest. It's almost like an oxymoron.
Mr. Dove. It is.
Mr. Gilchrest. I guess what you're saying then is what
we're talking about, the collaboration between Federal, State,
and local agencies and universities, in order to understand the
nature of Pfiesteria, that same kind of collaboration needs to
be done if we're looking at Federal laws as far as the
environmental solutions are concerned and environmental
regulations.
I'd like to just take this thought one step further, and
ask the three secretaries, basically--I'm going to ask this
question, because, on the one hand, I don't know how big the
Neuse River is. I don't know how to compare it to the Pocomoke
Sound or the Pocomoke River or James Creek or the Chesapeake
Bay, but one thing is very striking and that's a billion fish
in one year, I guess.
Mr. Dove. In a matter of a couple of months.
Mr. Gilchrest. In a matter of couple months. I'm looking at
a billion fish in one area and maybe--you made a comment about
300,000 at another time, and I'm looking at 50,000, maybe, in
Maryland, and, maybe, 50,000 in Delaware a few years ago. What
role should secretary of the Department of Natural Resources--
what is their responsibility to responding to a crisis like
this? Do they--are they subject to--are you subject to
political pressure? Everybody's subject to political pressure,
but how far should a secretary of the Department of Natural
Resources go to respond to a crisis? Is there a limit to the
number of people they should talk to? Should they take in the
political considerations, economic considerations, hysterical
considerations? What's the specific role of the secretary in
responding in a timely fashion, comprehensive fashion, to an
incident in the State, whether it's 50,000 fish or a billion
fish?
You've got 15 seconds.
Mr. McDevitt. Fifteen seconds. First of all, I would say
that I believe that the public should have confidence in their
public officials. They should be confident that their public
officials, whether that's the secretary of the department--it
should not be about me, the secretary, or about the governor,
it ought to be about doing the right thing. It ought to be
about having a systemic approach and partnership in place that
allows us to do the right thing and has the protocol so that we
do the right thing at the right moment. But it's also about
leadership; stepping forward and doing the right thing and
providing that leadership. I believe that that's the case. I
know that we must depend on good science to make good
decisions. I'm not a scientist, but I believe, as my friend
from Maryland believes, that good public policy sometimes just
must be ahead of absolute science. We've got to step out there,
and whatever risk that is--we must also consider, though,
making sure that we're not creating--we've got to be
responsible that we're not creating hysteria; that we're not
creating undue pressures on certain economies. I know we've
read--and I know it's anecdotal--but we've read about the
numbers of and the impact of this on some of our markets, and
we must be responsible as we go through these urgent matters.
The other thing I would say is that gaining consensus on
these kinds of things, particularly, nutrient controls, whether
it's point source or non-point source, as Rick said, gaining
consensus on that is very difficult, and--very quickly--there
are lots of parties at the table, and there are a lot of
decision makers in that process, but gaining that consensus is
very difficult. It's also incumbent upon us, as leaders, to get
out there and provide the leadership to gain that consensus. We
feel like that in North Carolina, we're beginning to get the
kind of tools necessary to do the job. We've got to do a lot
more, but we're beginning to get the kind of tools to begin to
do the job and do it well and----
Mr. Gilchrest. Can I ask, Mr. McDevitt--and I don't want to
pick on North Carolina; I spent two wonderful years in North
Carolina at Camp LeJune, one of the finest places----
[Laughter.]
Mr. Gilchrest. [continuing] one of the most beautiful
places on the face of the earth.
Mr. McDevitt. They have a great environmental program
there, too, I might add.
Mr. Gilchrest. Got to keep those copperheads alive.
If I could just ask--my time has expired, and--Mike, do you
have any more questions? All right, I'm going to go to Mike
after this quick question. Any of the other secretaries can
answer this.
One of--we're talking about sewage treatment plants, runoff
from streets, runoff from lawns, air deposition, ag runoff, a
whole range of things, and some dramatic changes, probably,
have to occur in a relatively short period of time, so have to
know how to transition ourselves into those fairly dramatic
changes. One of the dramatic changes, it seems to me--and Ken
Staver's here from the University of Maryland and the Wye
Institute who has done some very fine research on agriculture
and nutrients, and for about 10 years--Ken can correct me for
any mistakes I make while I'm up here--for about 10 years, it's
been fairly evident that phosphorous becomes dissolved; moves
along the surface with rain water, and so that there's a number
of areas, for example, on the Eastern shore where soil has
exceeded its capacity to process any more of that phosphorous,
so it moves into the water.
Mr. McDevitt, you mentioned that there are going to have to
be some changes in agricultural practices to reduce this
nutrient runoff. Nitrogen is one of those things that we, in
Maryland, have been pretty aggressive with, but now we're going
to have to transition into understanding how we can control
phosphorous which is a little bit more complex. Is North
Carolina, in your ag program, going to consider phosphorous? I
think it also--one last little comment--I think this is going
to be a national issue, so it's not the fact that Maryland has
to deal with it or North Carolina has to deal with it or
Delaware has to deal with it, it's on a fast track to becoming
a national standard. Do you have any comment on phosphorous as
far as the hog farms are concerned?
Mr. McDevitt. Let me ask Dr. Thorpe to--if he would--to
respond to that particular question of phosphorous.
Mr. Thorpe. Well, we would certainly agree that we
shouldn't just focus all of our attention on nitrogen--excuse
me while I try to get a little comfortable here.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Thorpe. We recognized in North Carolina in the mid-
eighties that phosphorous was a problem in the Neuse River. We
put restrictions on waste water treatment plants at that time,
and in 1987 there was a ban put in place by the general
assembly on phosphate detergents that, overall, reduced the
discharge of phosphorous from waste water treatment plants by
about 50 percent. As far as agricultural operations are
concerned, we have focused primarily on nitrogen, because
nitrogen is very soluble, and it's very mobile in the
environment, and that's been our focus so far in the rules that
we've been trying to get put into place in the Neuse River
basin.
Mr. Gilchrest. It's a difficult question, because we don't
have the complete answer to it yet, either, and we've focused
on nitrogen. Phosphorous, however, it seems to me, that this is
a dramatic change that we have to transition into, and I'm not
going to say the farmers are going to control phosphorous by
January or even next year, because we have large piles of
manure that nobody wants. And where does it go? And it adds a
great deal of confusion to the farming community, and talk
about wanting to develop trust between ourselves and the
public, we don't want to throw a 98-mile an hour curve ball at
anybody at this point, but it just seems to me that the
phosphorous issue is an issue that every single State in the
country, especially those areas that have large concentrated
feed operations, are going to have to deal aggressively with
it, because if we're going to enforce all the provisions which
have been here earlier of the Clean Water Act, then the total
allowable daily load, if that's enforced, then we have to have
an answer and a solution to the phosphorous problem.
But I sort of just raise that as an issue that, certainly,
is up--the level of that issue is here, now, in Washington, and
that's being discussed aggressively, but if the States don't
begin the process of coming up with solutions to what you're
going to deal with the animal--how you're going to deal with
the animal waste; how you're going to redistribute it; whether
you incinerate it; whether you feed something to the hogs and
chickens that doesn't produce as much phosphorous; all of these
issues are--you know, the public is looking to us for answers.
Mr. Thorpe. If I could, I would like to mention that part
of what we have proposed to do in the Neuse River basin is to
put into place some mandatory controls on agricultural
operations that would require them to go through nutrient
management training, and to put into place nutrient management
plans and waste management plans that do require the farmers
and the operators of agricultural intensive livestock
operations to control both nitrogen and phosphorous through
those mechanisms.
Mr. Gilchrest. I'm going to thank you very much. We'll try
to make sure there's a chair there next time you answer a
question.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Gilchrest. I'm going to yield, now, to the gentleman
from Delaware.
Mr. Castle. Well, just briefly, and this is--maybe I should
have asked this before--I think Dr. Burkholder's still here--
but I was--low oxygen bubbles were mentioned, and I was
wondering about the relationship--and I guess there's a
relationship in that there's water, and there's, maybe, too
many nutrients and that kind of thing--but is there any
possible relationship between this low oxygen bubble issue and
the issue of Pfiesteria outbreaks?
Mr. Baden. Yes, let me address that, just briefly. First of
all, I think we're talking about coastal pollution; somehow we
got away from Pfiesteria and into more nutrient enriched areas
and making the assumption that all the science is in that
nutrient enrichment is, indeed, responsible for Pfiesteria, and
if you look along with the Pfiesterial blooms in these areas
and in North Carolina, we're talking about other types of
organisms that are also toxic: peridiniopsyoid organisms,
gyrodiniums, that also cause fish kills, the Pfiesteria, of
course in Maryland fish farms, and scripsiella-type organisms.
Now, all of those individual organisms have different types
of nutrient requirements, and, as I made in my testimony, some
are adversely affected; some are promoted by increased
nutrients, and we have to be very careful, because if we--I
think that reducing the nutrients is a wonderful and the Clean
Water Act and all of that, but I'm not so sure that once we do
that, you may just have cleaner water to see your Pfiesteria.
So, you know, we have to be a little bit careful, and at
the same time, study that organism in detail to know about the
nutrient requirements, and that goes directly to the Chairman's
comments about phosphorous with phosphorous being limiting in
most of these environments; There is enough phosphorous in all
stages of the bloom, but each individual organism is different
in its requirements.
Mr. Dove. Excuse me, but, Congressman, can I answer that
question that you had based upon what I've seen on the Neuse
River?
Mr. Castle. I'd be also interested in knowing what causes
the low oxygen bubbles. I mean is it--as scientifically as you
can say it, too. Maybe I don't understand that.
Mr. Dove. Yes, sir. I can give you the non-scientific
explanation, but maybe it will be the easiest one to
understand, because it's been explained to me so many times, is
that when you have nutrients that get into the water on the low
oxygen side--when you have nutrients that get into the water,
they cause things to grow in the water in larger numbers than
they would on ground, because water's more sensitive to
nutrients. When those things grow, especially algae from the
plants, they photosynthesize during the day, and produce a lot
of oxygen in the water, but at night they respire, because
there's no sunlight, and they suck the oxygen out of the water
like a vacuum cleaner, and on the Neuse River we can see
millions of fish of all sizes up in one inch of water just
trying to work their gills to get through the night; get enough
oxygen to make it through the night; a lot of times they don't.
When the sun comes back up, the oxygen returns, because the
plants begin to photosynthesize again. When you have too many
nutrients, and you have too many things growing, then you upset
that balance, and that causes the oxygen to be depleted.
But the answer to your question earlier, sir, from my
observations on the river, there is no relationship between low
oxygen levels and Pfiesteria. The reason I say that is that I
have been watching this river very closely, and the Neuse River
is a good area to observe Pfiesteria; it's where the largest
kills have occurred. In the summertime, in the months of June
and July, when the oxygen levels begin to drop, July, even into
August, fish do die from oxygen losses, but they don't show
sores, and you don't normally find Pfiesteria in the water
samples, but then the oxygen levels return to normal in
September, October, November, even into December, and that is
always when we've had our largest fish kills on the Neuse
River. Now, I've heard some scientists say that, ``Well, gee,
when the oxygen levels get down, the fish get wounded, they get
hurt, and then they're more susceptible to Pfiesteria,'' but
that is not my observation of watching it out in the river,
sir.
Mr. Castle. Well, it would sound to me--maybe Dr.
Burkholder wants to comment--it would sound to me as if the--
while they may be different problems, a lot of the causes are
the same, if not identical, based on what I'm hearing from
here.
Ms. Burkholder. I think that's true. Some of the organisms
that Dr. Baden referred, in fact, most of them are autotrophs,
that is, they're algae, and they tend to be stimulated, in
general, by nutrients to some degree. In terms of Pfiesteria
and Pfiesteria-like cousins, so far the experiments we've done
have indicated that they can be strongly stimulated by high
nutrient enrichments especially in poorly flushed areas, but
the dissolved oxygen connection, as Mr. Dove points out, is
only indirectly present. Pfiesteria-like species, including
piscacida, feed upon algae many times when fish are not
available, and when there are lot of nutrients that stimulate a
lot of algae, then there will be a lot of Pfiesteria waiting
for schools of fish to come up estuary. When dissolved oxygen
has been low because of all those algal blooms taking the
oxygen and robbing the oxygen from the water at night so that
fish can't breathe, you often find Pfiesteria in those areas. I
think that fish that are stressed are easier targets for
Pfiesteria, but they don't have to be stressed for Pfiesteria
to kill them. We've lost 1.2 million fish this year on the
Pamlico, on the Neuse estuaries in combination in North
Carolina, during June and July, before low dissolved oxygen
even came into our bottom waters.
Mr. Castle. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate the opportunity of participating today.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Mike. Dr. Baden, you're from
Florida.
Mr. Baden. Correct, University of Miami.
Mr. Gilchrest. Have you had similar--is there any--have you
seen any of these similar type fish kills in the estuary along
Florida? When was your first association with the incident of
Pfiesteria in North Carolina, and how was that evaluated in
your lab? Could you give us some idea as to--I asked this to, I
think, Mr. Garcia, earlier on the panel--there has apparently
been a regime of research over the last six months that is
recognizing the existence of Pfiesteria or Pfiesteria complex
without understanding, I would guess, the nature of the
chemical makeup of the toxin and what exactly that does and
what causes the Pfiesteria to go into that particular stage.
So, the third question I have--if you can remember the first
two, because I don't----
[Laughter.]
Mr. Gilchrest. [continuing] the third question I have, is
do you have some idea as to when this research can come up,
after peer reviewed, to some conclusion?
Mr. Baden. Okay, the answer to your first question as
referred to when was it first seen in Florida? The organism is
present in Florida. We do not, as of yet, to my knowledge, have
major fish kills that we have characteristically identified
with a Pfiesteria or-
ganism, but we do have a very similar organism in Florida;
that's the first question.
The second question referring to the Pfiesteria outbreaks
in North Carolina, I've been associated with Dr. Burkholder and
with Dr. Noga since 1991 in working on Pfiesteria toxins, and
I--along this line, I guess I can say that in the case of toxic
purifications and characterizations, one of the critical
elements--well, actually there are three critical elements:
they're are material, material, and material. And in that
regard with a Pfiesteria organism we have massive cultures of
this organism in order to be able to characterize the toxin,
and let me explain. In the case of paralytic shellfish
poisoning, back in the forties, fifties, and sixties, there was
a tremendous amount of saxitoxin, the principal organism--or
the principal toxin that was isolated----
Mr. Gilchrest. When was that year again?
Mr. Baden. 1945, fifties.
Mr. Gilchrest. Where was that?
Mr. Baden. This was--actually, it was off the coast of
British Columbia. It was done by Dr. Ed Shantz and Carl Medcof,
and in the case of paralytic shellfish poison, it took
something on the order of 45 milligrams of toxin to get a true
structure characterization. In the case of the brevetoxins,
which are the Florida redexidetoxins, done by Nakanichis' group
at Columbia, it took 91 milligrams of brevitoxin to get enough
material to get structure. In the case of Pfiesteria toxins,
even in purified state, we're still dealing with microgram
amounts, thousands of times less than we need to do a chemical
characterization. Now, that may be a little bit puzzling, but
if you consider that the pharmacology--the reason that we call
these things toxins is because they kill at such low
concentrations, then one can say that we're going to have the
pharmacology and all of the toxicology done long before we have
the chemical structure.
So, a long answer to the question, and, finally, when will
that be done? There are actually more than one toxin that are
probably named Pfiesteria. There is the water soluble, highly
polar material that Dr. Ramsdell from National Marine Fishery
talked about that they're working on with the intramural
program at NIEHS and Dr. Burkholder.
Mr. Gilchrest. Do you think having, let's say, 50,000 fish
killed in the Pocomoke River, I guess, doesn't give us enough
of the toxin to be able to analyze it, but wouldn't you get
enough of the toxin from a billion fish? There's no
relationship there?
Mr. Baden. Mr. Chairman, it's not necessarily associated
with the fish. It's the concentration of the organism in toxic
form at the time of the fish kill.
Mr. Gilchrest. Well, that's what I mean, but then it's--I
mean, if you have a billion fish killed, it seems to me that
there's more than little tiny Pfiesteria out there than if you
have 50,000 fish killed.
Mr. Baden. Not necessarily true, and in fact----
Mr. Gilchrest. Not necessarily true?
Mr. Baden. Not necessarily true, and, in fact, it's the
cultures of the organism in laboratory culture where you can
control clonal isolates so you know what you're working with
takes a lot of material, and we're not at that stage, but we do
have materials that cause lesions very similar to what are seen
in the fish in purified form. There are also compounds of these
more highly polar materials that are, we believe, responsible
for neurological----
Mr. Gilchrest. So, since 1991, you've been collecting this
material?
Mr. Baden. Since 1991, we have been receiving extracts from
Dr. Burkholder's laboratory and from Dr. Noga's laboratory on
an intermittent basis in order to do that work.
Mr. Gilchrest. But, then, are you still collecting it or
have you done something with it?
Mr. Baden. Mr. Chairman, in the matter of collecting if,
each extract that is placed in our hands, we go through a
series of purification steps, basically, throwing away non-
toxic material and amassing toxic material, and each time you
do this, you get one step or two steps further into
purification. Most of these purifications take 8 to 10 steps to
yield homogeneous materials that can then be studied by
spectroscopy which is the chemists' tools. We are nearly at
that stage with the lipid soluble materials that come from
Pfiesteria; the ones that cause the sores on fish.
Mr. Gilchrest. Dr. Burkholder, do you want to comment on
any of that? Do you have an idea when you'll have enough of
this stuff in a jar?
Ms. Burkholder. Well, Dr. Baden's points are well taken.
We, however, have made a lot of progress with folks in the last
three months in getting these toxins characterized, so it is
beginning to proceed much faster than in the past five years.
Mr. Gilchrest. Why is it proceeding faster in the last
three months than it did in the last five years?
Ms. Burkholder. I'm not really certain, because I'm not a
toxin analyst. I think that the people at Nims Charleston's
Marine Biotoxins Center, and, perhaps, Dr. Baden, can comment
further on that at this time, but I know that a lot of effort
has been poured into it by our colleagues at the biotoxins
center, for example.
Mr. Gilchrest. Where was that again? In Norfolk?
Ms. Burkholder. That was in Charleston.
Mr. Gilchrest. Charleston.
Mr. Baden. Well, let me address that. We're now presently
working with Dr. Ed Noga who was Dr. Burkholder's co-principle
investigator on National Marine Fisheries Service, Saltonstall-
Kennedy grants in the past; Saltonstall-Kennedy grants that
were aimed at studying the organism as well as looking at toxin
structure, and it was our subcontract responsibility from those
two agreements to work on the toxins, and so we are totally at
the disposal of the people that supply us with extracts in
order to do the work, and we have not simply had sufficient
extract from Dr. Burkholder's laboratory in order to pursue
that. We have had some better success with Dr. Noga's lab over
the past year and are now making rapid progress in the lipid
soluble, the other toxin that's produced by this organism.
We're working on different materials at this point.
Mr. Gilchrest. Dr. Burkholder?
Ms. Burkholder. Yes, I will comment further that some of
this seems to be a problem just in getting these toxins
inventories properly, at least according to Dr. Baden's
research associate, whom I spoke with in August. Some of the
batches of toxins that we sent apparently were lost and then
re-recovered, so they were on the bottom of a freezer or
something like that.
Mr. Gilchrest. Are they still good?
Ms. Burkholder. I'm sure they are. It's just that we have
been sending toxin through NIHS' intramural program to Dr.
Baden, and we haven't received word back yet about what those
toxins yield, so probably because there was some confusion
there----
Mr. Gilchrest. They weren't lost in the mail, were they?
Ms. Burkholder. No, they were apparently either inventoried
and then forgotten about or somehow put to the bottom of a
freezer according to the research associate.
Mr. Gilchrest. Is there sufficient communication, now, to
avoid any----
Ms. Burkholder. I think there is.
Mr. Baden. Well, Mr. Chairman, we're having excellent
communication this afternoon. Let's hope it gets better. I must
also say that the last material that Dr. Burkholder's group has
sent to us is currently in progress in parallel with control
material--control, meaning non-toxic material--sent from Dr.
Noga as well as Dr. Noga's extract. We're at the stage where we
have non-toxic, toxic from Noga, toxic from Burkholder. Are
they the same or are they different? In very short order, we
will know that.
Mr. Gilchrest. That's great. We have a vote. Did you have
any other comment, Mike? The rest of the day's going to be a
little bit more hectic for us, and I would really like to hold
all of you here for a few more hours, but that may not be
possible. I hope to remain in communication with all of you so
we can continue to move forward and ensure that the cooperation
and the collaboration is at the highest level that is possible
among people trying to figure out these complex problems.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all very much for coming.
This meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:23 p.m., the Subcommittee adjourned
subject to the call of the Chair.]
[Additional material submitted for the record follows.]
Statement of Donald F. Boesch, President, University of Maryland Center
for Environmental Science, Cambridge, Maryland
I am Donald Boesch, President of the University of Maryland
Center for Environmental Science. My perspective on today's
subject is influenced heavily by my recent or continuing
service as chair of two scientific committees. Earlier this
year, I led a panel of experts in the completion of a report
entitled ``Harmful Algal Blooms in Coastal Waters: Options for
Prevention, Control and Mitigation'' which was requested by the
Secretaries of Interior and Commerce. More recently, I have
been called on by Maryland Department of Natural Resources
Secretary John Griffin, who will be speaking to you later, to
chair a Technical Advisory Committee to advise the State's
agencies in their assessment of our fish lesion/fish kill
problem about which you have heard so much about.
Although I am an ecological generalist rather than an
expert on toxic dinoflagellates, I have learned a lot about
these organisms over the last year from bona fide experts such
as Dr. Burkholder, who have worked with me on these committees.
Moreover, I work extensively in the Chesapeake Bay and in other
parts of our country in the application of science in the
solution of environmental problems and in guiding effective
research. From these vantage points, I am pleased to offer my
opinions on what is known about the effects of these toxic
organisms, the role of human activities in stimulating them,
and future research needs and approaches.
The Prevention, Control and Mitigation assessment which I
mentioned earlier focused not on the basic science needs--that
had been done in earlier planning reports--but on what could be
done to alleviate the ill effects of harmful algal blooms, such
as those that cause paralytic and amnesic shellfish poisoning,
red and brown tides, and catastrophic losses of aquacultured
fish. Unfortunately, we did not also include Pfiesteria. I am
providing copies of our report for the Subcommittee. Our report
concluded that although pollution and nutrient enrichment have
been strongly implicated in worsening harmful algal blooms in
various parts of the world, they have not yet been
unequivocally identified as the cause of any of the U.S. blooms
considered in our assessment. Nontheless, we concluded that
conscientious pursuit of goals for reduction of pollution,
especially excess nutrients, could well yield positive results
in terms of reductions in harmful algal blooms.
In terms of research needs, suffice it here to say that our
conclusions also included recommendations for issues related to
prevention and control that should be addressed by fundamental
research and a specific call for expanded Federal research
directly addressing prevention, control and mitigation. Should
include: evaluation of the effectiveness and side-effects of
chemical, physical and biological controls; development of
better measurements of toxins and harmful algal species for
application in monitoring; ballast water treatment; and effects
of chronic exposure on human health.
Turning now to the Chesapeake, let me summarize briefly
where we are. First, after evaluating a variety of potential
causes of the fish lesions that were first observed in the
Pocomoke River last fall, it now appears highly likely that
many of these lesions, as well as the fish kills that were
witnessed this summer, were caused by toxins released by
Pfiesteria piscicida or one of two other dinoflagellates that
have been identified. In addition, medical researchers have
documented skin rashes and reduced efficiency in short term
memory function in now over two dozen individuals exposed to
the river water. This has raised concern by a quantum and
resulted in a variety of steps to ensure the protection of
public health. I am sure that Secretary Griffin will be happy
to tell you more about this.
The scientific team and advisors are turning their
attention in particular to the environmental conditions that
promote the outbreaks of toxic forms of Pfiesteria-like
organisms, not only so that we can predict where they may occur
and appropriately protect the public, but that we can better
control human activities that may stimulate them. As you know,
nutrient over enrichment, particularly from agricultural
sources, has been suspected. Maryland Governor Parris
Glendening has charged a Blue Ribbon Citizens Pfiesteria
Commission to recommend steps that can be taken to reduce the
risks of Pfiesteria. More effective controls of nutrient losses
from agricultural activities, including the disposition of
poultry manure, are among the principal issues under review.
Environmental and agricultural scientists from University of
Maryland institutions are presently working with the Commission
to develop scientific consensus regarding the relationships
between nutrients and Pfiesteria-like organisms, review the
effectiveness of present nutrient and waste management
strategies, and lay out for the Commission potential improved
strategies.
I believe that Dr. Burkholder would agree that we are still
on the early part of the Pfiesteria learning curve. Her
contributions have been truly monumental, but we have only had
a small group of scientists working for about six years on
these extremely complex organisms. With a stronger case now
made because of documented health concerns and the greater
number of regions potentially affected--not to mention the
heightened national concern represented by media attention--
clearly more research is required. And, there is certainly a
major Federal responsibility for this research. I urge that
Congress insist that it: is strategic in that research programs
emphasize the most critical question; is integrated across
agencies and disciplines; incorporates high standards of
scientific quality and peer review; and is accountable in what
will be expected to lead to clearer understanding and, to the
extent possible, solutions.
From the perspective of Maryland's Technical Advisory
Committee (which, by the way, includes experts from the
Carolinas and Virginia) the environmental research priorities
are: (1) resolving the relationship between land-based
pollution, particularly by excess nutrients, and Pfiesteria-
like organisms on scales from the cell to the watershed; (2)
developing modern molecular methods for detection and
quantification of toxins and organisms; (3) determining the
effects of these toxic dinoflagellates on fish and shellfish
populations (i.e. going beyond the effects on the health of an
individual fish); and (4) determining the degree to which
toxins may be retained in fish and shellfish tissues. In
addition, of course, there are additional priorities for health
and agricultural research.
In my opinion, an effective mechanism already exists for
the support, direction and coordination of the needed
environmental research in the form of the NOAA-led program on
the Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (ECOHAB).
ECOHAB has already developed research strategies dealing with
other harmful algal species based on planning by the scientific
community. It is broadly focused and integrated, incorporating
approaches from molecules to water circulation to ecosystems. A
number of agencies already participate in ECOHAB, including
EPA, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science
Foundation, in addition to NOAA. And, ECOHAB has an in-place
management and review structure that accommodates the
participation of both university and Federal-laboratory based
scientists.
Finally, I am pleased that the Federal agencies are
preparing a coordinated response plan related to Pfiesteria. It
is important that the appropriate health, environmental, and
agricultural agencies be involved and that their contributions
are in balance and in collaboration. Similarly, the university
research community in the affected Mid-Atlantic and
southeastern states includes incalculable talent; physical
capabilities; experience with coastal environments,
communities, and fishing and agricultural enterprises; and
working relationships with the states. My colleagues and I not
only stand ready to contribute these intellectual and physical
resources, but also have been leading in the development of
creative scientific strategies to address the problems. We look
forward to working closely and cooperatively with the Federal
agencies toward these ends.
------
Statement of Daniel G. Baden, Ph.D.
I would like to express my gratitude to the Subcommittee
for giving me this opportunity to address issues relating to
the status of Federal and State research into Harmful Algal
Blooms and in this context, to outbreaks of Pfeisteria.
Toxic marine phytoplankton are responsible for ``red
tides'' or ``harmful algal blooms'' (HAB). HABs occur in
virtually all coastal areas of temperate and tropical seas, and
are responsible for five known types of seafood poisoning in
man. Specific HAB incidents are often geographically localized
but their occurrence is sporadic. As I speak, in addition to
the Pfeisteria and other fish killer HABs in the mid-Atlantic
region, Texas and other states on the Gulf of Mexico are
experiencing Florida red tide outbreaks. These red tides are
notorious for tons of dead fish per day per mile of coastline.
All HABs are natural events induced or permitted by specific
environmental conditions.
HABs are also implicated in mass marine mortalities known
as epizootics. In the past 20 years red tide toxins have been
implicated in the deaths of bottlenose dolphins in Hawaii,
manatees in Florida, pilot whales in the Northeast U.S.,
pelicans on the U.S. West coast, cormorants and gannets
(seabirds) on the East coast of the U.S., fish along the entire
Gulf of Mexico coastline and also stretching from the Carolinas
up to and including Maryland coastal zones. More tenuous links
to HABs have been suggested for bottlenose dolphin mortalities
on the Atlantic seaboard, sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico and
Hawaii, and monk seals in the Mediterranean Sea. As
``sentinel'' or indicator species in the oceans, marine animals
are akin to the canaries taken into mine shafts--their death or
sickness is an indication of the degradation of local
environmental conditions.
Questions concerning environmental parameters conducive to
HAB development, maintenance, and termination test our
oceanographic knowledge base. Questions concerning our ability
to detect and/or predict blooms as they develop address
components of marine biotechnology, coastal zone nutrient
loads, and life cycle biology. Questions concerning effects on
marine animals touch on aspects of biomedical research (that is
using diagnostics and therapeutics developed for treating human
HAB exposures), detection technologies, and whole animal
physiology.
Federal and State programs that address each of these
research questions individually are currently in place, but
holistic research that addresses the interface between research
areas is lacking. Thus, Departments of Commerce, Defense,
Health and Human Services, and Agriculture need to coordinate
with one another and develop partnership funding strategies.
All appropriate agencies should be involved.
Likewise, basic scientists, clinicians, oceanographers,
ecologists and taxonomists all must develop better ways of
interaction and communication, essentially by developing
interdisciplinary approaches to their science. In other words,
those activities that are land-oriented and those that are
ocean or aquatic-oriented need to be coordinated in the coastal
zone. Over half of the U.S. population resides within 50 miles
of a coastline. It is in the coastal zone that HABs occur, that
marine animal deaths have been documented, and that coastal
nutrients are changing. Over the past decade, several dynamic
interdisciplinary approaches to harmful algal bloom science
have developed. But the coordinated multiagency funding
packages have not kept pace with the interdisciplinary nature
of the science.
Harmful algal blooms produce some of the most potent toxins
known to man, potencies only exceeded by the more familiar
protein toxins, like botulism toxins. HAB organisms are often
toxic throughout their life cycle. There are of course
exceptions like Pfeisteria that exhibit toxic phases. Because
of their high intrinsic toxicity, exceedingly small amounts are
required to induce lethality. Even smaller quantities may be
accumulated and cause sub-lethal metabolic and/or neurotoxic
abnormalities. In the area of sub-acute toxicological effects,
we need more research to completely define the consequences of
exposure, to understand the toxic mechanisms at the molecular
level, to design antidotes or therapies, and ultimately to
develop preventative strategies for man and animal alike. This
is an interdisciplinary area that should be addressed by NIH,
NSF and DOC.
We need more research directed at HAB initiation,
progression, and termination. Concurrently, it is essential we
develop testing methods and other tools that can accurately
measure the numbers of HAB organisms at the beginning of a
bloom. We currently know so little about triggering or
sustaining factors that this is an area of active interest in
all regions of the U.S. As many as 20 different marine
microorganisms produce HABs, and each has individual ecological
requirements. Factors beneficial to one species may be
detrimental or inconsequential to yet another species. Much of
this work is done at the State levels, traditionally related to
seafood safety issues. There is a need here for Federal/State
partnerships for research and information sharing. There is a
decided need for specialized programs for development of test
kits, perhaps by partnership with the biotechnology industry.
We need to develop testing protocols that can measure toxin
movement through food chains, and within the organs and tissues
of exposed animals. Without this information, it is impossible
to precisely measure the total ecological consequences of HAB
events. In addition, with the implementation of the Hazard
Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) program for seafood in
December of 1997, there is a desperate need for bringing all
tests into use and certification.
We already know a great deal about how much and what types
of toxin in seafood produce illness in man. We surmise,
therefore, that any animal that consumes the same seafood is
also subject to attack by the neurotoxins. Tests, therapeutics,
and diagnostics developed by DOD and DHHS for humans have great
potential for marine animals as well. One classic example of
this cross-fertilization is the work done in Florida on the
1996 manatee epizootic. Diagnostic and analytical methods for
brevetoxin detection in human biological fluids, developed
using NIEHS funds awarded to the University of Miami Center,
were used to precisely measure the amounts of brevetoxin
present in tissue samples. This work was done in conjunction
with marine mammal pathologists from the State of Florida. As a
result of the study, a new analytical immunocytochemical test
was developed; a test that may prove of value in precisely
quantifying human illness or for seafood testing programs.
Informatics is extremely important in all of these research
areas, and a detailed set of databases should be established,
beginning with a survey of the databases already available.
This can be done electronically, much in the same way as the
current human genome project. This area is important for
funding. Federal programs that address informatics should
certainly play a great role in this endeavor.
Finally, stable funding for the science, in academic
laboratories and at the State and Federal level, is necessary
so that we can produce rapid response teams to address pressing
HAB problems. It often seems that funding runs about 9 months
behind toxic events, and universities are increasingly
reluctant to provide the fiscal support to carry out rapid
response projects.
I again would like to thank the Subcommittee for the
invitation to address these issues. I hope my testimony has
provided information that will assist you in your
deliberations.
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