[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2001
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED
AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2001
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES
RALPH REGULA, Ohio, Chairman
JIM KOLBE, Arizona NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington
JOE SKEEN, New Mexico JOHN P. MURTHA, Pennsylvania
CHARLES H. TAYLOR, North Carolina JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, Jr., ROBERT E. ``BUD'' CRAMER, Jr.,
Washington Alabama
ZACH WAMP, Tennessee MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York
JACK KINGSTON, Georgia
JOHN E. PETERSON, Pennsylvania
NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Young, as Chairman of the Full
Committee, and Mr. Obey, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.
Deborah Weatherly, Loretta Beaumont, Joel Kaplan, and Christopher
Topik,
Staff Assistants
________
PART 8
Page
U.S. Geological Survey........................................... 1
Minerals Management Service...................................... 81
Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement............. 91
Bureau of Indian Affairs......................................... 131
Office of Special Trustee for American Indians................... 271
Office of Insular Affairs........................................ 273
Office of the Solicitor.......................................... 307
Office of the Inspector General.................................. 313
Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration............... 355
Indian Health Service............................................ 361
________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
64-252 WASHINGTON : 2000
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida, Chairman
RALPH REGULA, Ohio DAVID R. OBEY, Wisconsin
JERRY LEWIS, California JOHN P. MURTHA, Pennsylvania
JOHN EDWARD PORTER, Illinois NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington
HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky MARTIN OLAV SABO, Minnesota
JOE SKEEN, New Mexico JULIAN C. DIXON, California
FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
TOM DeLAY, Texas ALAN B. MOLLOHAN, West Virginia
JIM KOLBE, Arizona MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
RON PACKARD, California NANCY PELOSI, California
SONNY CALLAHAN, Alabama PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
JAMES T. WALSH, New York NITA M. LOWEY, New York
CHARLES H. TAYLOR, North Carolina JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
DAVID L. HOBSON, Ohio ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
ERNEST J. ISTOOK, Jr., Oklahoma JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
HENRY BONILLA, Texas JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts
JOE KNOLLENBERG, Michigan ED PASTOR, Arizona
DAN MILLER, Florida CARRIE P. MEEK, Florida
JAY DICKEY, Arkansas DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
JACK KINGSTON, Georgia MICHAEL P. FORBES, New York
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey CHET EDWARDS, Texas
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi ROBERT E. ``BUD'' CRAMER, Jr.,
GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, Jr., Alabama
Washington MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York
RANDY ``DUKE'' CUNNINGHAM, LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
California SAM FARR, California
TODD TIAHRT, Kansas JESSE L. JACKSON, Jr., Illinois
ZACH WAMP, Tennessee CAROLYN C. KILPATRICK, Michigan
TOM LATHAM, Iowa ALLEN BOYD, Florida
ANNE M. NORTHUP, Kentucky
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
KAY GRANGER, Texas
JOHN E. PETERSON, Pennsylvania
VIRGIL H. GOODE, Jr., Virginia
James W. Dyer, Clerk and Staff Director
(ii)
Offset folio 2 insert here
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2001
----------
Thursday, March 16, 2000.
U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
WITNESSES
CHARLES G. GROAT, DIRECTOR
CARLA M. BURZYK, BUDGET OFFICER
JOHN D. TREZISE, DIRECTOR OF BUDGET, DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR
KATHY CLEMENT, DEPUTY DIRECTOR
PAT LEAHY, CHIEF GEOLOGIST
DENNY FENN, CHIEF BIOLOGIST
DICK WITMER, CHIEF GEOGRAPHER
ROBERT HIRSCH, CHIEF HYDROLOGIST
ROBERT McLEAN, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL WILDLIFE HEALTH CENTER, MADISON,
WISCONSIN
u.s. geological survey's age
Mr. Regula. I think we will get started. Today we have the
United States Geological Survey. How long has this agency been
in existence?
Dr. Groat. 120 years.
Mr. Regula. It is one of the older agencies, isn't it?
Dr. Groat. 1879.
early u.s. mapping
Mr. Regula. That is interesting. I did a lot of land and
title work when I was practicing law, and it amazed me how
those surveyors could do locations back in the 1700s where
there was nothing but forests.
Dr. Groat. Find their way through the trees.
Mr. Regula. Right. Yet they did a pretty darn good job
laying out Ohio, for example, into sections and quarter
sections.
Dr. Groat. On foot and on horseback.
Mr. Regula. I think George Washington at one time was a
surveyor, even in the Ohio country.
Dr. Groat. He was.
Mr. Regula. Well, we are pleased to welcome the USGS team.
Is there anybody watching the store?
Dr. Groat. We left a couple.
Mr. Regula. It is like when the President comes to the
Capitol Hill, always one cabinet officer has to stay away so
there is a succession in case of emergency. Anyway, you are a
very important agency. We welcome your testimony and, Mr.
Director, we will put your full statement in the record and
look forward to whatever you would like to tell us about how
much money you need and why.
introductions
Dr. Groat. Thank you, Mr. Regula. Let me start by
introducing just a few people to you. I think Mr. Kaplan has
introduced you indirectly to Kathy Clement, the Deputy
Director.
Mr. Regula. The bride to be.
Dr. Groat. We also have our Associate Directors here this
morning, starting with Pat Leahy over here, who runs our
geology program, Denny Fenn, biology, Dick Witmer, geography,
and Bob Hirsch, water. You know Carla Burzyk from our budget
office, as well as John Trezise here from the Department.
opening remarks
I'm pleased to have a chance to make a few comments based
on my testimony and I will hit the highlights. One of the
things I wanted to do is respond at least briefly to what this
committee asked us specifically about last year which was our
future, what direction the Survey was going. I want to assure
you that we have not changed our science role of trying to
monitor and understand changes in places that people care about
and that we really want to build on what we have learned over
the past 120 years about the importance of understanding the
way that the Earth works and the fact that if we are successful
in understanding that from a scientific point of view, then
science can really play a significant role in preventing
crises, creating opportunities, and supporting long-term
solutions to some of our most serious problems.
usgs mission
We really see our mission in the USGS is to use our
scientific capabilities to understand natural processes and to
communicate those understandings to the people who really need
those understandings to make the decisions that are so
important to the resources and the environment in this country.
I want to assure you and the committee I have asked our
science leaders to develop future science directions for the
bureau that are consistent with this vision of the kind of
contributions we can make. Also, we are making an extra special
effort this year and in the future to not only come up in our
own minds with what science is needed, but in a very organized
way to ask those people who use our science and who are
partners in conducting our science.
Mr. Regula. Do you include other government agencies?
listening sessions
Dr. Groat. Other Federal agencies, State agencies,
universities, communities. In fact next week, for two days, we
are having what we are calling listening sessions. We have a
large number of organizations that want to come in and just
tell us what they think about us and about our programs. We are
looking forward to that.
We are going to try very hard to make sure that our science
goals do enable us to reach fundamental understandings of
change, that our science is directed towards understanding
Earth and life systems so we can model them and then make
projections into the future, which is of course what we want to
do the most.
We are also trying to develop tools that are needed to
answer critical management questions, to be able to communicate
our science. Finally, because there are many organizations that
do science in some form; we are particularly interested in
finding what our unique contribution can be to gaining science
understandings.
These directions will build on our core scientific
strengths which you and the committee are well aware of and
remind us of--our ability to monitor, interpret, and maintain
long-term databases that are key to understanding the changes
and processes that are important.
outstanding scientists
We also are going to rely, as we always have, on the
outstanding cadre of scientists that we have. I think sometimes
their excellence isn't recognized as broadly as it should be in
the scientific community in general and by the public. They win
many awards, do first class work, and are clearly our strength.
infrastructure investments
We also have to match our investment in people with
investments in infrastructure. Some of our most pressing needs,
if we are going to be true to our goal to monitor and
understand, are equipment and monitoring tools, that we have in
the form of earthquake monitoring and streamgages, for example.
They are so critical in getting those processes measured,
monitored and the information into people's hands. We hope in
this budget and budgets in the future to convey to you the
importance of that as well as some of the more important tools
such as the Landsat program that provide us with new ways to
survey and monitor the Earth that are much more efficient than
some of the ways we have had in the past.
So in that spirit, as I pointed out, we want to carry this
message, our intended goals, our past records, and our
capabilities to our stakeholders and let them help us shape our
future.
budget highlights
I will just make a couple of comments on the budget request
that we put forth this year. Our first priority in the budget
is the safety of people in this country. We feel that our
natural hazards program is one of those that contributes most
directly to the understanding of hazards and the ability to
predict and minimize damages from them. As the cost of natural
disasters has skyrocketed to $50 billion a year, we have
recognized the need to increase our ability to monitor
disasters in real-time. We are requesting this year $2.6
million to upgrade our earthquake monitoring system in critical
cities where most people are in danger by putting at least 150
regional and urban seismic stations in place. Also in the area
of flood prediction and understanding, we are seeking $4
million to improve our existing streamgaging network. In both
cases these are things that the Congress has specifically taken
an interest in and asked us to talk about.
We also want to make it possible for people, wherever they
live, to enjoy not only a healthy environment but the ability
to earn a decent living, so we are asking for funds this year
to communicate our science to them through decision support
systems in the urban areas where urban growth is rapidly
encroaching on resources that are important to not only the
urban areas themselves but to the country. We are also
supporting a program which would provide $30 million for
partnership projects across the country to both create and
increase the use of geospatial information in decision making.
Resources are an important part of our program and
understanding how the land changes and how it responds to
changes imposed on it is an important part of our program. We
want to develop more sophisticated tools for predicting how the
land interacts with the oceans and with the atmosphere and how
it reacts to the many uses that humans are increasingly putting
on it as our population grows.
We singled out this year one of the more critical areas
where both congressional and on the ground attention has been
focused and that is the Pacific Northwest, where there are some
very critical habitat issues related not only to the salmon and
fish but related to forest use and understanding the
ecosystems. The systems that support all of these things are of
both commercial and environmental importance. So we are
requesting a $4 million increase to enable us to provide the
integrated science in the Columbia River Basin that is
necessary for that. We are also seeking an additional $1.3
million to increase our capabilities in areas we have been
working in the past in the Yellowstone area and Mojave Desert
and in the Great Lakes, with a new effort and an integrated
program.
We are also seeking $10 million for decision support to
protect America's heritage and to cooperate with States with
state planning partnerships in making this information
available.
Finally, a really important part of this bureau's
responsibility and the Department's responsibility is towards
the western lands and the parks and refuges across the country.
A $13 million request is included in our budget for 2001 to
provide integrated science support capabilities to the
Department of the Interior bureaus and $2 million to enhance
our assessment of amphibian loss in the United States by adding
the upper and lower Mississippi areas to our amphibian efforts.
And finally, one of the emerging areas where our biological
capabilities are coming to bear is the relation between
wildlife health and human health. We read in the papers about
the West Nile virus last year and the encephalitis cases that
were caused by it in New York City. There is a lot of concern
on the East Coast that as the spring comes and mosquitoes come
back out again, we are going to see a resurgence of the
problem. We are requesting an additional $1 million to enhance
the capability of our Fish and Wildlife Disease Program to deal
not only with West Nile virus but with other wildlife diseases.
Mr. Regula. Do you work with the Fish and Wildlife Service
on all these things?
Dr. Groat. Yes, we do. We work with U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service on that one in particular. We also work with the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention many of the health
agencies in State and Federal Government.
Our Cooperative Research Units Program in the Biological
Research activity is an important part of our cooperation with
universities. This year we will reach an historic level if we
are successful in getting the increase we requested of
$700,000. That will fill out the scientific staffs in all the
Cooperative Research Units across the country. They have never
been at that level before and our request is a testimony to the
value we place on them and the important role they play in our
biological research program.
Mr. Regula, that is in summary form where I think our
emphases are in making our science useful and where we think
the budget enhancements would make us more effective and
efficient.
I welcome questions.
[The statement of Dr. Groat follows:]
Offset Folios 13 to 18 Insert here
EVERGLADES SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
Mr. Regula. I have a few questions, and then I'm sure Mr.
Cramer does. Everglades. How involved are you in this project
of restoring the water and the Everglades and the whole water
resources issues in the Everglades?
Dr. Groat. We are heavily involved. We have about $8.6
million in our budget that is to support studies in the
Everglades in cooperation with the other agencies that are
involved there. In addition to that, through some money that is
appropriated to the National Park Service, we receive grants
and contracts to do work related to their mission. I would say
that we are a significant player in the water and life science
issues there.
Mr. Regula. Would you characterize yourself as the lead
science agency on the Everglades--on the entire package which
includes the Everglades, the South Florida Water Management
District, agriculture, the whole works that is all part of this
program?
Dr. Groat. I would say the lead Federal science agency,
certainly, yes.
Mr. Regula. Does the State have any capability?
Dr. Groat. The State is involved. I couldn't answer how
much they are supporting science but they are certainly a
partner in the planning efforts.
INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION SHARING
Mr. Regula. I understand that. You mentioned in your
opening statement about evaluating the Earth as a total. Are
there other countries that have comparable agencies to yours
that you can share information with and work with?
Dr. Groat. It has been interesting to watch over the past
few years how countries which have increasing pressures on
their resources, both living and non-living, are looking to
geological and biological based organizations to work with. We
are seeing in our own continent the Canadian Geological Survey,
which was at one time a very traditional mapping and minerals
oriented program, expand their program to get into such things
as global change, marine issues. Mexico is putting together a
National Geological Survey for the first time that will deal
not only with minerals but with mapping.
We were recently in Saudi Arabia where the Saudis, who are
very much a traditional energy producing area and mineral
producing area, are creating a Federal Geological Survey to
also deal with seismic hazards, coastal problems, and water
problems. And many are involving biological elements in this.
So there are existing surveys that are strong and there are
emerging surveys that have a similar function to ours in other
countries around the world. We do cooperate closely with them.
International Scientific Cooperation
Mr. Regula. You do share information then. Do you have
countries that send their teams over here to find out how you
do it in this country?
Dr. Groat. We do. We are very open to having capacity
building operations where they come to our centers and to our
laboratories and we work with them, allowing them and helping
them to use the tools that we have available to apply to their
problems in their countries.
Mr. Regula. The three that occur to me as huge land masses
would be China, India, and Russia. How much activity do they
have respectively?
Dr. Groat. Just by coincidence riding up here this morning
I was talking with Denny Fenn about some of the cooperative
work we have with China. We have about a dozen or so people
from Hunan Province coming to the United States in April to
spend 5 weeks learning how our National Biological Assessment
Program works because they are becoming more and more
interested in that. We have groups from Canada. We have groups
at various times from around the world here.
The recent Central American hurricane disaster a year or so
ago, Mitch, brought us there to help them but it also brought
some of their folks here to gain some of those skills.
INTERNATIONAL CONCERN FOR ENDANGERED SPECIES
Mr. Regula. Are other countries showing concern about
endangered species?
Dr. Groat. I think they are. They react in different ways.
Some of them set aside very tight preserves where nothing else
is allowed to happen to protect certain species. Others take a
more broad based approach to it. But the concern is that as
populations grow that those kinds of things are going to be
more prominent issues.
CLEAN WATER PROGRAMS
Mr. Regula. Are you involved in the clean water programs
that are becoming more and more critical in the United States
in terms of preserving the quality of water, both streams,
lakes, for domestic use?
Dr. Groat. I think that is one of the best examples you
could pick to demonstrate how valuable our long-term monitoring
capabilities are because in looking at trends of how water
quantity in surface- and ground-water changes, how water
quality changes with time, so we can measure the human impact.
Our records and capabilities are used very extensively to
characterize that. We also have topical programs that deal with
water quality issues such as hypoxia in the Gulf, nutrient
transport, arsenic in New England, various kinds of pollutants
that are important. So we both monitor and do specific work
related to those things and we work closely with EPA in
providing that information to them in their programs.
STREAMGAGE MONITORING
Mr. Regula. You mentioned stream monitoring. I think maybe
some other agencies do that also. How do you avoid duplication
of effort?
Dr. Groat. Well, in stream monitoring at least from a
streamgaging point of view, there aren't too many organizations
that maintain their own streamgages. They tend to cooperate
with us as partners through the Federal-State Cooperative
Program where we maintain the gages that are of interest to
both us and them. That is not to say there is no other agency
that ever put a streamgage in. They do but not to any great
extent.
GROUND-WATER STUDY
Mr. Regula. Last year our committee requested that the
survey study the ground-water program and provide ideas for the
development of a ground-water research agenda. Is that under
way, and does your budget continue to address this high
priority area?
Dr. Groat. It is underway. Our concern about the adequacy
of our ground-water program is very high. We had hoped this
year, to see a significant increase in our request for ground-
water programs. We were not successful this year, but we will
certainly try again. We met with a group of water agencies from
the States yesterday and discussed with them the importance of
ground water and the need for more monitoring of ground-water
conditions. They certainly agreed.
We will be adamant in our support for ground-water
programs.
STREAMGAGE REPLACEMENT
Mr. Regula. The survey has lost over 500 streamgages, I
assume for various reasons. Is anything being done to replace
these units?
Dr. Groat. Yes, in response to the request that Congress
made for the USGS to provide information on what it would take
to bring the Nation's streamgaging system up to par, we
provided a report. The $4 million we requested this year would
reactivate, upgrade, or install approximately 100 gages across
the country. Some of those are ones that are inactive. Some are
being lost because cooperators are unable to match the funding
that we can provide. In some cases we can't match the funding
they provide. A more stable funding base is a central part of a
truly national streamgaging program.
Mr. Regula. Do you need more money for this program?
Dr. Groat. We need more money, we need to have less
reliance on local cooperators to maintain a very stable system
for the country. We think it is a Federal and national
responsibility.
Mr. Regula. Looking at your programs it seems like you
slanted them to some extent to partnerships, money going out to
States and local communities, but I think our first priority is
the Federal responsibility.
Dr. Groat. I would agree particularly in streamgaging that
to the greatest degree we can support that Federally, then we
will have a much more stable system. We would certainly want
local input as to where those stations ought to be, but if we
depend on local funds to support them, then the kinds of losses
you pointed out will occur for various reasons.
NATION'S WATER SUPPLY
Mr. Regula. Water is not a State or local commodity. It
travels over great areas, and I think you have to look at the
Nation's water supply and the totality in terms of trying to
protect it for the future needs.
Dr. Groat. I would agree. There are very few places whose
water supply depends only on their own back yard. It comes from
streams across county and State boundaries. It comes from
basins across boundaries. There is truly a Federal role in
integrating that information.
U.S. WATER QUALITY
Mr. Regula. Do you think water quality in the United States
is deteriorating?
Dr. Groat. I think there is no question that water quality
is deteriorating. We hear a lot of talk about quantity and
certainty quantity is going to be a challenge but the quality
issue, whether it is the result of new land uses like confined
feeding operations, whether it is MTBEs, whether it is
pesticides, herbicides, and pharmaceuticals that weren't in the
water years ago but that are now there because of our modern
society, the threat to water quality is certainly going to
grow.
EVERGLADES SCIENCE BEFORE INVESTMENT
Mr. Regula. I mentioned the Everglades. In your opinion, is
the science that is available in reconfiguring the water system
in the Everglades good science? That is really what this is all
about--we are going to spend a lot of money to do this. Is the
project based on good science? Is science out front, or is
science catching up?
It seems to me historically things have been done in South
Florida and the Everglades that weren't predicated on science.
The Corps of Engineers dug 1,800 miles of canals. I am not sure
that was a scientific decision. Now we are talking about a huge
investment down there, and that is the thrust of my question.
Are we basing it on good science? Is science out front instead
of lagging back here?
Dr. Groat. I would express due concern. I think good
science is being done there. I think you would have a hard time
convincing everyone that the science is well coordinated and
that the science is necessarily in all cases being applied to
the priority issues. In some cases the planning does get out in
front of science. I have long experience in Louisiana where
coastal land loss is a big issue. Much of what was done that
caused the coastal land loss and even to try to fix it was done
before people were concerned about using science as a tool for
doing it right. For science to get out in front is a big
challenge.
We are seeing an experience in the California Bay Delta
area, for example, where they are looking for a coordination of
all the science being done there so they can have a timely and
significant input into the process. We haven't seen the same
thing really happen in the Everglades. I frankly think it is a
missing element there.
Mr. Regula. I am really concerned that in the rush to deal
with water supply for southeast Florida population growth, to
ensure the Everglades is adequately watered, and to meet
agricultural interests that maybe we are getting ahead of the
science and we will invest a lot of money without knowing
exactly what the end result will be.
Dr. Groat. I think that is possible. I think it is only a
harbinger of things to come. It is certainly an area that there
is a lot of attention and resources focused on, but we can find
many places in the country where water issues are becoming
increasingly sensitive and we are in danger of getting ahead of
ourselves in responding to them. Then we risk doing something
that we will pay the penalty for, for generations to come.
Mr. Regula. The 1800 miles of canals is a classic example,
a huge investment of resources there, and now we discover that
maybe God had a better idea than we did.
Dr. Groat. There is great value in looking at nature to see
how systems ought to work as you retool systems that man has
affected, no question.
Mr. Regula. Mr. Cramer.
PROPOSED BUDGET'S FUNDING LEVEL
Mr. Cramer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to the
committee and thank you for your participation with my office
in making sure that we understand an agency that I think too
few of our colleagues understand and thank you for your
positive comments about the chairman. This is the best
subcommittee of the Appropriations subcommittees and we deal
with one another in a very open, almost informal way and we are
doing this to make sure we understand the boundaries that we
can work within.
This institution is full of mine fields that are beyond our
control from time to time, but this chairman really helps us
steer through those as best we can.
You probably know that Mr. Dicks is in another hearing or
he would be here and should be here shortly. I am sure he will
want to ask you a number of questions as well. But I came in a
little after you started with your opening statement, and so I
myself am playing a little bit of catchup here.
If you maintain the budget that you have or that has been
put on the table, this is going to be a good budget year for
you, a 10 percent increase, and that is not a luxury that you
have had in a long time, and I was trying to understand how
what you do is within your territorial bounds and yet you have
got the National Science Foundation and even the Weather
Service in some cases.
We had Carol Browner upstairs before my other subcommittee,
VA-HUD, on the EPA issues that are occasionally troublesome for
a lot of us, to say the least. The Secretary was here before
and said that even with this fiscal 2001 budget you were still
underfunded given the importance of your mission and the
quality of your science. Where would you like to go in the next
few years and what does this budget represent for you as an
improvement on what you have had to deal with in the past, and
try to give us some brief overview.
Dr. Groat. I think this budget in a couple of cases opens
the door to areas where we need to open the door wider, and I
point there to two areas in particular: the natural hazards
area in the sense of earthquakes and floods and in the water
area in the sense of ground water. We see water resources in
total is probably the most challenging issue that is going to
face this country and the world in the future. We believe we
have something unique to offer in understanding, as Mr. Regula
questioned, both the quality and quantity of surface and ground
waters. I would see our program in water science, broadly
interpreted, as expanding.
We think that the ability to bring the talent that we have
in our four different disciplines together to provide
integrated understandings of some of these critical resource
issues, whether they be watersheds, river basins, coastal
areas, and human and wildlife health areas. This is something
we can offer that no other Federal agency, or State agency for
that matter, can bring to the table.
CREDIBLE SCIENCE
We also think that, again along the lines of Mr. Regula's
question, that science, to be valuable in providing guidance
for decisions at the State, local, and Federal level, needs to
be objective, needs to be credible, needs to be free of the
regulatory process. One important thing that the USGS does
offer is that we are not tied to any management or regulatory
function. Without discrediting in any degree the science that
is done at EPA or DOE or places like that, they always have at
least the appearance of concerns about how their science
relates to their regulatory functions. It doesn't diminish the
quality of their science but sometimes it does affect the
credibility. We don't have that problem.
I would hope the country as a whole and our partners in the
States and universities would see that as an asset as we try to
bring science to bear on some of these critical issues. I think
we are working very strenuously and successfully with NOAA,
NASA, and EPA to provide that scientific credibility to things
that they care about, whether it be difficult water quality
issues or whether it be difficult land use kinds of issues.
There again we have the capabilities that they can use.
So your opening comment was a telling one to us. We feel
that sometimes what we are capable of doing isn't as widely
known or understood as it should be and that we have nobody to
blame for that but ourselves. We are trying very hard to become
more visible and more open and in doing so increase
appreciation for our science and make our science as responsive
as it can be to what the true needs are. I think
responsiveness, integrated science, and dealing with critical
resource issues such as water are the key to our future.
COORDINATION WITH FEDERAL PARTNERS
Mr. Cramer. How do you coordinate your program activities
with other agencies with related missions like the National
Science Foundation?
Dr. Groat. Sometimes that becomes as much a matter of
personalities as it does a matter of intent. Federal agencies
will always say yes, we are cooperating and working together
and can point to numerous examples where individuals from
different agencies are in fact cooperating. We can do the same
thing. We can find wonderful working relationships with EPA and
the National Science Foundation, for example.
What we haven't had in the past, and I and others are
trying to build, is cooperation at the policy level where we
agree how our missions can mesh and where we agree how, without
getting terribly prescriptive about it, when initiatives are
put forward, whether it be a study of drought or storms with
NOAA or whether it be trying to understand biocomplexity with
the National Science Foundation, that we truly need to plan
together from the beginning of the program to determine how we
are going to cooperate and then we will have a much more
complete and thorough interaction between the agencies. We are
making some steps in that direction.
I always pick NASA as the best example of how that could
work. NASA has a wonderful technology. They provide tools for
understanding the Earth that we have never seen before and they
are going to provide more in the future. NASA to some degree is
getting into the applications business and we feel that that is
really our business. We have the capability to use those tools.
What a wonderful cooperative relationship it would be for the
U.S. Geological Survey, with all of its capabilities, to
provide the science on the ground, working in close cooperation
with NASA as they provide us the tools and the technology that
we use. It serves a dual purpose--one in seeing their
technology applied and also gives us the wonderful tools to
make those applications.
I have had a couple of conversations with Administrator
Goldin lately and he seems willing to open those kind of
discussions. So I think it comes to personalities willing to
cooperate and more cooperation at the agency level in addition
to the good cooperation that does occur at the working level.
Mr. Cramer. I think it is important and obviously a lot of
our abilities to be successful have to do with establishing
those kind of relationships, giving and taking with what
boundaries exist, but when there is overlapping of course we in
this arena expect there to be efficiencies and not duplication
and coordination there. It is troubling this year that there is
a $2.2 billion increase for science initiatives but nothing for
USGS on the science side.
Dr. Groat. We have some difficulties there, Mr. Cramer. I
think part of it is our routes to funding. Those folks that
work through the Science Committee seem to be identified as the
science crowd. Since we are not in that parcel we tend to get
classified otherwise. Those that know us, as you pointed out,
realize that is not the case but for us to kind of elbow our
way to the table in some of those things has been a challenge.
We are working hard to do better, and I hope we can.
LIVABLE COMMUNITIES INITIATIVE
Mr. Cramer. And I hope you can too and I hope we can help
with that.
You have identified four themes represented in budget
increases and among those are the safer communities with a
plus-up of $7.1 million and the livable communities program
with $47 million plus-up. It is hard to understand how much of
an increase that really is from what I have seen here. Could
you give me either now or later some information about what
kind of increase that represents and in the case of the livable
communities, I have scanned your statement here, give us some
idea of what you expect to accomplish with that kind of plus-
up.
Dr. Groat. The livable communities is a large increase and
it is a large increase in our partnership arrangements. For
example, within that is $30 million, of which $5 million would
remain with the U.S. Geological Survey and $25 million would go
in grants and contracts to cooperators. We have tried to
relate----
LANDS LEGACY INITIATIVE
Mr. Cramer. Is that lands legacy?
Dr. Groat. That is part of, what the administration has
identified as its lands legacy program, yes. Our attempt there
is to use those partnerships to enhance those that already
exist. You see geologic mapping listed for $7.5 million there.
We already cooperate and have a grants program with State
Geological Surveys for geological mapping. This would further
enhance that. Some of the money in that program would go
towards our biological assessment programs, the GAP program and
NBII. We already partner with people and this would enhance our
ability to partner there.
In the geography program, money would go to communities and
others who we participate with in both using and gathering
geospatial data. So it is a large increase geared to the impact
of science on decision making but oriented towards partnering
and increasing our partnerships with those who both use and
provide data that is important to us.
Mr. Cramer. Just in case Mr. Dicks is not able to get
here--I am sure I will leave that question on the Columbia
River to Mr. Dicks. I want to because my time is obviously more
limited. I want to thank you for the cooperation that you and
Olivia Ferriter, who I finally found back there from your
office, have given to my office on an issue involving Key Cave.
Mr. Chairman, this has been a nightmare for a certain community
in my district that has had to deal with Fish and Wildlife and
you have come to the table. In fact there is a meeting going on
in my district today down there where you have come to the
table and they are coming to the table and I think we are going
to use your program as the main umbrella to achieve something
down there that the entire community is looking forward to. So
I wanted to thank you for that.
Dr. Groat. Thank you.
Mr. Cramer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
USGS VISIT WORTHWHILE
Mr. Regula. Let me suggest to all the members if you can
find a couple of hours, go out and visit USGS. You will find it
is a remarkable facility and a great resource for the Nation. I
think you will find it a very worthwhile expenditure of time.
Mr. Dicks, do you want to wait while I do a couple more?
Mr. Dicks. I would like to wait for one.
Mr. Regula. Mr. Peterson.
GROUND-WATER RESEARCH FUNDING
Mr. Peterson. Thank you and good morning. We are interested
in your work on water quality. How does the current budget
request for ground-water resource studies compare to the levels
a decade ago and do the needs for this science compare to those
of a decade ago?
Dr. Groat. I would have to provide that for the record,
Mr. Peterson, as far as the actual budget expenditures compare
to a decade ago. We have recognized in our own bureau planning
that our efforts in ground water are not up to the need dealing
with both quantity and quality. The need to monitor water
levels and water quantity are becoming ever more apparent. We
would hope in the future that would be a major both
programmatic and budget initiative for us.
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Offset Folios 37 Insert here
STREAM RESTORATION PARTNERSHIPS
Mr. Peterson. But you can be helpful--in Pennsylvania we
are dealing with a lot of mine reclamation and restoration of
streams that have been actually killed by acid mine drainage.
We have had some good success stories. We have a lot of
organizations locally, when they get a little bit of Federal
help, they are very successful. Can you be helpful to those
organizations? Should you be a partner?
Dr. Groat. We can. Both in our water program and in our
minerals programs we are putting an increasing amount of
emphasis on the restoration of lands that have been affected by
the extraction of resources, whether it be minerals in the West
or coal in the East, whether it is acid mine drainage or trace
metals associated with metal deposits. I think our ability to
measure and understand what were baseline conditions premining
and what mining has contributed and how that affects the water
and landscape quality is strong. Our ability to recommend
methods for watershed restoration is a very high. We are
working with the Office of Surface Mining, BLM, the Federal
agencies, and State and local agencies to bring that expertise
to bear.
Mr. Peterson. Which of your regional offices should I--I
have working groups that I think could use your expertise.
Which office should we utilize for Pennsylvania?
Dr. Groat. For Pennsylvania I think our district office in
Harrisburg would be a good place to start.
SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY
Mr. Peterson. I will make sure that our people that are in
those projects contact you and make sure that your people are
there for them. I am not sure they are. They may be but I just
never heard them mentioned. They have had some very good
projects.
You have sort of recently become the research arm of a
number of agencies and some of those agencies would like to
have that ability back in house and I guess when that first
happened, I wasn't sure whether I thought it was good or bad
but I guess the independence today, I guess I am sort of buying
that maybe the independence is good. We have too many agencies
that they are using the scientific side to--by not feeding us
all the facts kind of use their own research arm to
substantiate what they are doing rather than putting the facts
out there and letting decision makers then decide from the
facts. The scientific integrity, would you mind commenting on
what your thoughts are?
Dr. Groat. I do think the independence is important and I
do think that makes the science credible and most useful. I
think the specific thing you are referring to is when the
National Biological Service, which drew its membership from
various bureaus within the Department of the Interior, was put
together and then ultimately placed in the USGS as a fourth
division for the USGS. I think the intent there mirrors exactly
what you are saying, that the need for that group to still
serve the science needs of the management agencies is no less
than it has ever been and the mission of it to serve those
bureaus has not changed. We are very sincere in making that a
reality, but the independence of the group doing the science,
not under the cap of a particular management agency, does give
it that credibility. Being housed in a science agency gives you
the aura of being a science group and as well as the working
conditions that are more suitable for conducting science.
So we think it is the right way to go. We think it has been
very productive. We think we are providing a good home for them
and we think we are providing good service to those agencies
who need not only biological but the geological, hydrological,
and mapping capabilities that we have.
Mr. Peterson. With the way the fragmented Federal
Government is, I sometimes wonder how we get anything done.
Even the committee structure down here----
Mr. Regula. If you will yield.
Mr. Peterson. Sure.
BIOLOGY IN USGS
Mr. Regula. We went through this. Six years ago there was
an attempt to create a new agency, the National Biological
Service, and at our insistence in this committee, it was put in
USGS for the very reasons that you are outlining. You have
fragmentation, and we needed to talk in totality because
science, as the Director has said, touches a whole lot of
things. It is endangered species; it is water quality, air
quality; it is stream impact, land use, et cetera. It needs to
be, I think, in one place. That is why we put NBS in USGS and
called it the Biological Resources Division.
Mr. Peterson. Both in State and Federal Government we have
had too many agencies that have kind of utilized their research
arm to substantiate what they were doing, whether it was
scientifically right or wrong. I think we all fight that
because we only make--we make decisions on information received
and if we don't have good data, we are not going to make good
decisions. We can make political decisions but those are not in
our long-term best interest in my view. We have to make all our
environmental issues on sound science and what is really
happening.
Dr. Groat. I agree. Mr. Regula's foresight and the
subcommittee's foresight in doing what it did with the
biological group and putting them in that environment, set the
stage to make what they contribute as objective as we hope the
rest of our organization is. It also created the capability to
put the life and earth sciences together to deal with some of
these complex issues. You mentioned mine restoration, stream
restoration. You have to understand the water, the biology, the
landscape.
We have all those capabilities in one organization able to
work together to deal with it. Then you have not only objective
and credible science, you have the right mix of science. So
that action allowed us to do that. We have been very
appreciative of that.
WELLSBORO RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT LABORATORY
Mr. Peterson. You know we have a special interest in
Wellsboro Laboratory, which is a high-tech laboratory that has
been highly underutilized. We want to continue to work with you
to make sure that laboratory is adequately utilized. I guess we
are interested if--genetic research is something that maybe
ought to be a part of that.
Dr. Groat. Well, given our current relationships with the
State of Maine over genetic research, I don't know how much of
that we want to do. Genetic research with different species,
largely threatened and endangered, is the key part of the
science of understanding those species and fisheries certainly.
Fisheries was Wellsboro's strength in the past and can be again
in the future. Genetics is one important part of that, as is
the whole question of fisheries habitat, the ability to
recondition streams, particularly in mine areas, where
fisheries can survive and can benefit. That kind of work done
at Wellsboro and places like that would have benefits across
the country. I think that is the right track for a place like
Wellsboro. I think we are pretty far along in providing the
plan to put that lab into full use.
Mr. Peterson. We appreciate that. Thank you.
Mr. Regula. If you will, I think the Everglades is a
classic example where you need one lead agency, namely, USGS,
because there is such a diversity of groups involved in it. We
want to be sure the science is out front in whatever is done
there so that the huge expenditure of money achieves desirable
results.
Mr. Dicks.
ADVANCED NATIONAL SEISMIC SYSTEM
Mr. Dicks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry that I
wasn't here for your statement, Dr. Groat, but I did appreciate
the chance. You came by to talk to me the other day. I just
wanted to go through a couple of things. Earthquakes are faced
by many areas of the Nation, including the Pacific Northwest.
Recently an advanced national seismic system has been
authorized by the House. How will such a system benefit those
areas facing earthquake hazards? And I hope you would discuss
the real-time hazards initiative in your response.
Dr. Groat. Certainly. Let me start with the real-time
hazards initiative. One of the most exciting technological
advances of the past decade is the ability to get information
about impending hazards to people who need it in real time.
Streamgaging can be essentially real time. Seismometers with
the right types of instruments--strong motion detectors--can
get the ground motion to places that are going to feel it ahead
of the actual impacts so therefore it at least gives them a
tiny bit of warning ahead of time. An important part of our
upgrading of our national seismic network is putting the
technology in place to do that.
You are correct the report that we provided in response to
Congress' request lays out a pretty aggressive national program
and we have embarked on that in this year's budget with funding
to provide those kinds of seismometers, up to 150 of them, to
some of the more critical areas impacted by earthquakes.
Mr. Dicks. How much money is requested?
Dr. Groat. $2.6 million, I believe.
Mr. Dicks. $2.6 million?
Dr. Groat. But I would have to also say that the number in
our Advanced National Seismic System report to the Congress
said it would take $170 million to equip the Nation in a way
that is consistent with the need. So it is a very small step
but it is important that we take the first step.
EARTHQUAKE PROGRAM
Mr. Dicks. It says here it is expected that legislation to
reauthorize the earthquake program will be enacted into law
this year. This legislation proposes over $30 million per year
to replace the Nation's outdated seismic network. Have you
taken a position on enactment of this bill?
Dr. Groat. Yes, we have. That is the National Earthquake
Hazards Reduction program which the Science Committee did
approve. It was passed by the House, I believe, and is still
pending in the Senate. That bill did authorize the $150 million
or so for the seismic network, and we were very supportive
because we feel that is the kind of science that needs to be
done to provide the advance warnings that the Nation needs.
REAL-TIME HAZARDS FUNDING
Mr. Dicks. It says here for the first--for the past few
years the Survey supported the concept of a real-time hazards
initiative. However, the 2001 budget request included an
increase of only $7.1 million for this initiative. At this rate
how long will it take to put a comprehensive program in place
as envisioned by the committee and the Survey?
Dr. Groat. Far too long, Mr. Dicks. When you look at $170
million and the $30 million a year for 5 years that the House
Science Committee authorized, that is a realistic timeframe to
get the technology in place. At $2.5 million a year, doing the
math quickly, we are going to be many, many decades before we
can put that in place and that is not quick enough.
We already have too many people in harm's way. We have more
people moving in every day because these areas that are exposed
to natural hazards are also very attractive places to live. If
we don't bring this capability, we are in serious danger of
many losses of lives and property. We would like to see that
move much quicker than our budget initiative proposes this
year.
Mr. Dicks. So if the committee could help you in this area,
this is something that would be welcomed by you, right?
Dr. Groat. It would be welcomed very warmly, yes, sir.
INVASIVE SPECIES IN WASHINGTON STATE
Mr. Dicks. Let me ask you another one here. Examples of
this--tell us what we are doing with gap analysis and invasive
species programs? This has become a huge problem, invasive
species as you know in the Great Lakes area and even out in my
area, Puget Sound and Willapa Bay, a lot of it is coming from
these foreign containerships that come in and these species are
a huge problem. What can USGS do in this area?
Dr. Groat. It is very frightening when you look at the
numbers of introduced species that have come into this country
over the past few decades as global transportation has
increased. Our ability to understand how they fit into the
habitat, what kinds of habitats are susceptible to them and the
impacts they have on native species is not growing as fast as
the invasion is taking place. We frankly think we could do a
lot more than we are being asked to do in invasive species
because our job is to understand the landscape and the
habitats. We do understand the distribution of native species
and what conditions make that distribution take place. We would
like to see more of our science brought to bear on that.
INVASIVE SPECIES LEAD FEDERAL AGENCY
Mr. Dicks. Who has the lead? Fish and Wildlife Service, do
they have the lead in the executive branch?
Dr. Groat. I think the Department of Agriculture would
probably be the strongest lead in that area. Fish and Wildlife
Service certainly has a significant interest in that program.
Bureau of Land Management has a significant interest because of
the range lands in the West. We have a very small internal
effort as part of our program to deal with invasive species. We
have a small increase in our budget this year.
GAP PROGRAM
You also would need to know that the GAP program is a very
successful program that is underway in every State to some
degree and that does identify some of the critical habitat
issues that relate not only to endangered species but relates
to our understanding of those systems that are important. It is
a very strong partnership program with the States, with fish
and game agencies and with environmental agencies to catalogue
inventory, put on maps and make available in a spatially
referenced way that information.
SALMON RESEARCH
Mr. Dicks. Tell me, your budget includes an additional $4
million for work on the Columbia River related to salmon.
Please describe the work and more broadly the role of the
Survey in large river systems like the Columbia and the Snake
River. I assume you are involved there, too.
Dr. Groat. It was interesting to watch the salmon issue
evolve and it evolved very quickly. Obviously it is the focal
point, the lightning rod for interest in the Northwest. When
you look at salmon, trout, and all the organisms that live in
that ecosystem, we felt that we had available expertise to
contribute to a very important regional issue in the Columbia
and the Snake Rivers. That issue is how the system works
biologically and hydrologically in terms of the water and the
landscape. We are proposing an integrated study of the Columbia
Basin which contributes to understanding not only the salmon
but the whole ecosystem. We requested $4 million for a broad
based comprehensive study rather than focus only on salmon or
water quality or dam removal. We don't feel that is our role.
We want to provide a much more comprehensive science background
for that kind of decision making.
Mr. Dicks. The National Marine Fisheries Service is talking
about possibly getting even the National Academy of Sciences
involved in this. Maybe there is some way you could be
coordinated with them or brought into it with them, because I
would like to see you all involved.
REAL-TIME HAZARDS INITIATIVE
Just going back for one moment, as I understand it on your
real-time hazards initiative, you are going to start on the
West Coast and I think that makes sense because that is where
you have got the earthquakes and volcanic potential. And I
understand that the new--in the program for the State of
Washington or Seattle, 20 seismometers are requested.
Dr. Groat. That is correct.
Mr. Dicks. When would that happen?
Dr. Groat. That would start next fiscal year. We would
start in the fall with obtaining and deploying those
instruments. And Seattle and San Francisco and Los Angeles and
Salt Lake City would be the focus of the program because those
are the areas where the threat is the greatest.
Mr. Dicks. Are we going to go another round, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Regula. Yes.
Mr. Wamp.
Mr. Wamp. I will kind of pick up where you left off on this
GAP analysis before you got to salmon. He wore us out on salmon
when we were up there last year, didn't he, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Dicks. I want you to know, Mr. Wamp, that there are
some hatchery fish that you can catch and have for dinner. It
is the wild salmon that we have to protect. You might have
thought that there was some inconsistency.
Mr. Wamp. After 5 days up there, I say if you all would
quit eating so much of this fish, we wouldn't have this
problem.
Mr. Dicks. Last night we got you a steak.
Mr. Wamp. It is this supply and demand thing, it is like
this gas crisis. Just quit eating so much of that fish.
Mr. Regula. You see why it is important that we travel.
Mr. Dicks. We learn a lot.
SOUTHEASTERN WATER SUPPLIES
Mr. Wamp. More than we care to learn.
The livable communities initiative though, actually you do
have an $8 million increase I think, which helps this GAP
analysis for this national biological information
infrastructure, which I support and I hope in a bipartisan way
we support that because that is a step forward, but I am with
you on invasive species. We have David Simmerlof in our part of
the world in east Tennessee and we are struggling to try to
find a way in east Tennessee and the Southeast to tie USGS in
with private initiatives to address--and institutions like the
Tennessee Valley Authority, University of Tennessee, and the
Tennessee River Gorge Trust and the Tennessee Aquarium out of
Chattanooga to try to tie this invasive species issue in with
kind of a public-private partnership approach to the Southeast.
We have a dozen real problems with our ecosystem in the
Southeast, and I raise all that in support of what you are
doing and let you know I am trying to help year to year find a
way through this committee to address those problems.
But the biggest problem is water. I was really blown away.
Last month I went into a plant in one of my counties that
touches the North Carolina line and Chairman Taylor, his
district that joins mine there in the mountains of western
North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, there is some pretty good
water and we actually have one of these water bottling
companies which net with natural spring water and I went there
touring it thinking this is just another business that I am
going to tour and I was kind of surprised that they sell 2 to 3
million bottles a day out of this little plant in the middle of
nowhere. And they have got, you know, half a dozen drills going
way down into the ground and water is such an issue.
Now, in the South, Atlanta has got a major problem so where
I live to the north of Atlanta, they want our water and
everybody knows it now. It is just kind of since the Olympics
it has become an even bigger issue and a lot of their folks are
moving up to our part of the world to get away from Atlanta but
there is this big connection now on water. We are trying to tie
this together. Last year we wrote some language in the bill
asking you all on invasive species, and the year before we were
looking at fresh water, water research.
There is this group called the National Water Trust. It has
kind of evolved into the National Water Center and it is a
partnership between all these agencies I am talking about, TVA,
University of Tennessee. We have got a graduate degree program
now in Chattanooga in environmental engineering and they want
to move more into water quality and environmental research. We
are trying to find a way to make it work but USGS is key
because you all are the water guys.
So water supply, though, not just water quality and not
just your mapping and your knowledge of the issue, but water
supply, now we are having these regional roundtables in the
Southeast trying to work together on what kind of a crisis we
are going to have in 10 years when we really have some water
supply problems.
So we wrote language in the bill last year thinking that
the bill might be signed in October that would require you all
within 6 months to have a study back to us, but the bill didn't
get signed till Thanksgiving so now you have till May 1, which
kind of messes me up on my schedule of what to do in the coming
year because your study is not going to be back until he needs
to know what we are going to do next.
So I need to know as soon as possible how USGS can work
with the National Water Center in Chattanooga on both invasive
species and this water supply issue for the Southeast United
States because I am very interested in this. People in
Chattanooga are very interested in this. We have done neat
things in sustainability, the environment, turned our air
quality around. We are beginning to turn our water quality
around, but we really want to look at this sustainable issue on
water supply for the Southeast and play an active role.
There is a lot of private sector money that will come to
the table if we can find a way to link through public-private
partnerships on these issues of environmental responsibility
and stewardship, particularly with water in Chattanooga. I will
just tell you it happened with air quality. It happened with
the Tennessee Aquarium and other initiatives like that.
Do you have anything to update us on on southeastern water
supplies or USGS's role? You all participated in all of our
forums but I really haven't found a way to pull all of this
together where we have a true public-private partnership.
Dr. Groat. We are going to meet the May 1 deadline, Mr.
Wamp, but if you need some advance warning we will try to
provide that for you. I have to comment on the water supply
situation. Who would have thought 20 years ago the Southeast
would be worried about water or that Tampa Bay, Florida, would
be considering a desalination plant with all the rain they get.
Water is not only a western issue. It is a national issue and
there is no part of the country in which water quality and
quantity is not going to be an issue. And the need to
understand the water budget is fundamental to solving those
problems. We think that is a strong role that we can play and
that is why streamgaging is critical. We talk about
streamgaging in the context of floods but it is also how we
measure the quantity and quality of the Nation's water. It is
also why getting more capability and comprehensive programs in
ground water is so important because that is a resource that is
not understood very well in a broad regional sense and which
has a tremendously important role to play.
I think you can make no better investment, whether it is
universities in Tennessee or the Federal Survey than in
understanding water, water properties, water distribution as
far as importance for the country. We see that as a very strong
role for us whether it is regional planning in the Southeast or
whether it is national scale databases and understandings of
processes. It is critically important.
GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Mr. Wamp. Geographic information systems, our State has
made a request to me which the chairman will see here in the
next couple of weeks for a State mapping initiative. Is that in
conjunction with you all or do you know--it is called GIS. Can
you explain what your role is there and where their role might
be if the State is looking at an initiative for a statewide
mapping service.
Dr. Groat. Geographic information system approaches to
assembling information about water, the land, resources, human
occupation and different data layers so we can analyze them is
really a critical part of understanding resource and
environmental issues. We play a strong role in that. We have a
large program within our organization in cooperation with State
programs through the National States Geographic Information
Council to provide them with information they need, provide
them with capabilities that they find useful in developing
geographic information systems.
So with Tennessee and with other States, we work in that
area. One of the kinds of partnerships that is in the livable
communities part of our budget request is intended to work with
States and with communities who have an interest in expanding
their capabilities to develop geographic information systems.
There we can truly partner with them and give them what they
need to make that work. We do some work now and we are hoping
we can do more in the future through the Community/Federal
Information Program.
Mr. Wamp. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Regula. I want to say your point on water in the
Southeast is well taken. I visited the Chattahoochee. We put a
lot of money in the bill to protect its riparian areas because
I was amazed how dependent Atlanta is on the water in the
Chattahoochee. Then they filter it through their plant, and
everybody downstream is drinking it. I think that is a point
well made.
Mr. Kingston.
INTERAGENCY COORDINATION
Mr. Kingston. Mr. Chairman, we enjoy Tennessee water and
Tennessee whiskey equally. I notice they don't have any
shortage of the whiskey up there. Maybe you better tell your
bottling plant you could learn something. I don't know. We just
have to keep our eyes on you guys.
Mr. Chairman, I am sorry I am not wearing my frog tie
today. It would be appropriate too. Let me thank you all for
what you are doing on this amphibian research, and I appreciate
working with your staff on it. It has been great.
The question that I have in terms of coordinating with
other agencies, it always seems and I am not sure that there is
a problem at all but sometimes the government agencies, there
is always a push for who is going to be the lead or who
rightfully should be the lead. I think this committee
recognizes you all as the lead agency. Do you feel you are
comfortable in that position? Are things being coordinated?
Dr. Groat. It is interesting when an issue crops up how
many agencies feel they have a role and sometimes pursue
independent ways of dealing with that. We think at least within
the Department of the Interior that we are seen as a lead
agency and we are working with BLM and others who have interest
in and resources committed to amphibian issues. I think we are
comfortable with the role and feel that we are in it.
SOUTHEAST RESEARCH ON AMPHIBIANS
Mr. Kingston. If we can help on that aspect, let me know.
Also, it is interesting to my knowledge at the moment you
are not doing any real research in the Southeast on the
disappearance. Am I wrong on that?
Dr. Groat. In monitoring and inventorying, the only areas
we are really not working are the Upper and Lower Mississippi
and we have a request in the budget this year to cover that.
Whether we are doing real site specific work on any part in the
Southeast, Denny----
Dr. Fenn. We have a network of monitoring systems put in
place that include the Southeast--Great Smoky Mountains,
Everglades and some other places--so we are covering that area.
Dr. Groat. So the monitoring does include the Southeast.
AVIAN VACUOLAR MYELINOPATHY STUDY
Mr. Kingston. Also on your bird study, the AVM, I will try
to pronounce that, avian vacuolar myelinopathy.
Dr. Groat. That is closer than I get.
Mr. Kingston. Anything going on in the Southeast, on that
coastal area particularly?
Dr. Groat. There is work going on in Arkansas I know. Denny
or Bob McLean--we actually happen to have with us Bob McLean,
the director of our National Wildlife Health Center, who is
probably the world's expert.
Mr. Regula. Please to the table, and give your name and
position so we have it for the record.
Dr. McLean. Robert McLean. I am the Director of USGS
National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin. We have
been involved with this avian vacuolar myelinopathy since 1994.
It first appeared in Arkansas and has now moved to the
Southeast. We have a study currently in North Carolina and are
working in South Carolina and Georgia. There is something that
is killing bald eagles and water birds, so we are continuing to
try to figure out the cause of this unknown etiology at this
time.
Mr. Kingston. Now that we both have been upstaged by
somebody who can pronounce this thing: specifically Georgia
Southern University, or Savannah State University, can you look
into the possibility of getting them in the fold on that
because a lot of coastal birds in our area represent the entire
coast of Georgia. I just kind of like to know not necessarily
just for Georgia but also South Carolina, Florida on that.
Dr. McLean. We do work with the University of Georgia on
this issue on a regular basis and I know many people at Georgia
Southern, Dr. Oliver is a good friend and I have worked with
him in the past. His group has done some bird work there. We
work with Dr. Chandler as well.
Mr. Kingston. Are you familiar with the Raptor Center that
they have there?
Dr. McLean. Yes, I am.
SALTWATER INTRUSION
Mr. Kingston. That could help. Switching gears, on
saltwater intrusion, have you all ever done anything on the
Floridian aquifer in Georgia in terms of saltwater intrusion?
It is always coming up. It goes back to what Mr. Wamp was
talking about trying to look for sources of water.
Dr. Groat. We do have studies underway of the Floridan
aquifer right now, recognizing it is important to Georgia,
South Carolina and Florida as well. This is one of the
important ground-water systems that has relations to water
supply, to surface water as well. So, yes, sir, we do.
Mr. Kingston. Have you ever studied in the past the
Savannah River, Savannah River Harbor? Fish and Wildlife and
Corps of Engineers right now are in the process of looking at
that. Are you all in that at all?
Dr. Groat. Bob Hirsch, do you want to comment on that?
Dr. Hirsch. I am Robert Hirsch, Chief Hydrologist at USGS.
I was just in Georgia last week and was briefed on our
participation in the sound science initiative for the coastal
area. In cooperation with the State we are doing about $800,000
worth per year of studies relating to the Florida aquifer, some
of the overlying aquifers, the saltwater intrusion running the
entire coastline and actually up into South Carolina as well.
Very active program dealing with that issue in conjunction with
the State environmental agency.
Mr. Kingston. As you know, it is a very volatile issue
right now. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
COOPERATIVE RESEARCH UNITS
Mr. Regula. I have reviewed the budget for the National
Park Service's, Biological Research Management Division for
next fiscal year, and they are proposing to establish a number
of new Cooperative Ecosystem Study Units at various
universities. Can you explain how these units would be
different from the co-op research units that you operate and we
fund in your budget? Or is this a duplication of effort?
Dr. Groat. I don't think it is a duplication, Mr. Regula.
We fund--through universities--the Fish and Wildlife
Cooperative Research Units. The program that you referred to is
not only the National Park Service, but the expectation is that
other Federal agencies will provide funding and scientific
expertise to deal with issues beyond fish and wildlife. We are
a participant in that program and we don't really see it as a
buildup of duplicative scientific expertise in the National
Park Service. Rather it is them providing resources to allow
that expertise to be applied to other things they are concerned
about. So at least up to this point, we have been a participant
and are comfortable with it.
USGS PRESENCE IN OHIO
Mr. Regula. Do you have an office in Ohio?
Dr. Groat. Yes, we have water offices in Ohio.
Mr. Regula. I was just curious because many of the
activities like earthquakes and other hazards are in other
States.
Mr. Dicks.
Invasive species
Mr. Dicks. Go back to invasive species again. Tell me again
what you guys do on invasive species.
Dr. Groat. Well, we do things that are related to specific
species. We do things that are in support of the land
management and resource management bureaus within the
Department of the Interior. It is one of the great mysteries to
me, Mr. Dicks, when the President signs an executive order,
when 48 Senators sign a letter saying how important invasive
species are to this country, that when you look at the net
impact of that on budgets of organizations that deal with the
issue, it is very small.
Mr. Dicks. How much is in your budget for invasive species?
Dr. Groat. There is a $2 million increase in our budget.
Mr. Dicks. How much existing money?
Dr. Fenn. Thank you. Denny Fenn, the Chief Biologist for
the USGS. I think we have something in the order of about $5
million currently being spent. The kind of things that we are
doing in the area are in some cases mapping and defining the
extent of the problem. In other cases, it is working on
biological control methodologies for controlling invasive
species that are already established or other kinds of methods
for control and working with the agencies to try to help them
solve the problem. And in other cases, it is expending some
effort to try to provide some national leadership to bring all
the groups together in scientific colloquia and symposiums to
deal with the issues. We were recently involved in an
international program in South Africa on some common problems
between the nations, for example, with invasives.
INVASIVE SPECIES INTERAGENCY GROUP
Mr. Dicks. You mentioned the Agriculture Department. They
take the lead? Is there an interagency group on invasive
species?
Dr. Fenn. There is.
Mr. Dicks. Who chairs that?
Mr. Fenn. It is co-chaired by the Secretary of Agriculture,
Secretary of Interior and Jim Baker from the Department of
Commerce. So it is at the highest levels in the three
Departments. Agriculture has the lead in terms of trying to
protect the country from new invasives moving in and they have
a very large biological control research effort for
agricultural pests, whereas the Department of the Interior is
more concerned about it from an ecosystem and wild lands
perspective.
One correction I would say is that in this budget, there is
in the DOI Science Priorities initiative, the $13 million
includes about $2 million in it for invasive species. It is not
a specific line item but it is contained within----
INVASIVE SPECIES FUNDING
Mr. Dicks. That is in the Interior Department?
Dr. Fenn. In the DOI Science Priority initiative of the
USGS budget.
Mr. Dicks. $7 million?
Dr. Fenn. There is an increase of about $2 million added to
the $5 million we are currently spending.
Mr. Dicks. So that is $7 million total. So that is a total
within the USGS, $7 million--BLM, Parks, Interior, other
agencies have funds for invasive species as well?
Dr. Fenn. For direct management of invasive species on
their lands.
Dr. Groat. Through our science support, they indicate to us
their science support needs, they ask us to request monies for
the science of invasive species and, as Denny indicated, we are
requesting that. In addition they have their own monies for
management of the invasive species themselves.
FEDERAL STRATEGIES FOR INVASIVE SPECIES
Mr. Dicks. Can you--that is what I wanted to get to is this
control. What are we doing to try to deal with these problems?
I understand the science, which is crucial. You have got to
know how to deal with them but does the administration have a
strategy for how we deal with these invasive species?
Dr. Fenn. I think they do. I think that is part of the
reason this new invasive species Council has been put together
is to try to coordinate across the three departments with the
major problems and solutions. An example I will give you just
to describe the kind of things that are going on is sea lamprey
control in the Great Lakes.
SEA LAMPREY CONTROL
Mr. Dicks. What is it called again?
Dr. Groat. Sea lamprey control. It is a kind of an eel like
organism that attaches itself onto the side of lake trout and
salmon and lives off the body juices of those fish. It slowly
kills those fish and it has knocked the population of lake
trout in the Great Lakes very low in the last 50 years. What
USGS has done is to do some research on lampricides, chemicals
that can be used to treat and kill these lamprey--attack them
at their breeding locations in the confined streams around the
Great Lakes, lowering the population of sea lampreys so the
Fish and Wildlife Service and various agencies managing those
animals can recover the lake trout.
That is an example of the kind of things that are being
done now.
HARBOR SEALS AT HOOD CANAL
Mr. Dicks. I notice you also have a program on Hood Canal,
a place dear to my heart, regarding harbor seals. Are you aware
of that?
Dr. Fenn. Yes.
Mr. Dicks. Which I think is a good idea. Because we are
talking about endangered species, Chinook and chum, that are
both listed on Hood Canal and to take a look at the increasing
number of harbor seals that are feeding on imperiled runs of
chum and Chinook and salmon in Hood Canal, a large natural
inlet.
Dr. Fenn. You have a situation there where you have
relatively small populations where there used to be huge
numbers and the seals have found out where the choke points
are, where the narrow passages are and they are concentrating
there, making it easier for them to capture these fish and
taking huge proportions of them, lowering the population even
further. What they are trying to do is keep that in balance.
They are natural predators preying on their natural species but
unfortunately salmon are in too small numbers to support that.
That is what that effort is about.
Mr. Dicks. I applaud these efforts and I think much of what
you are doing is good. I just wish we could have a more
aggressive approach. I don't blame that on you. I know it is
because of budgetary pressures.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Regula. Mr. Peterson.
ZEBRA MUSSELS IN THE GREAT LAKES
Mr. Peterson. If we could go back to the invasive species.
Maybe your partner shouldn't have left. How involved are you in
the zebra mussel issue in the Great Lakes and tributaries?
Dr. Fenn. Zebra mussels, I think we have two or three of
our centers, the Great Lakes Science Center and our Upper
Mississippi Ecological Science Center in Wisconsin that are
deeply involved in monitoring the spread of that species and in
working on control methodologies that might help reduce the
spread and the numbers of those animals that are causing so
many problems up and down the Great Lakes. So we are spending,
I don't know what the exact number is, but a fairly sizable
chunk of money in both of those centers attacking the zebra
mussels issue.
Mr. Peterson. Do we have some light at the end of the
tunnel?
Dr. Fenn. It is a tough issue. The animal has some very
fascinating ways of spreading itself and ways of reproducing
rapidly so it is really a challenging problem at this point. We
don't have any clear definitive ways of knocking it back. We
haven't given up yet.
Dr. Groat. Maybe the light at the end of the tunnel is the
water is a lot clearer than it used to be.
Mr. Peterson. They do serve a purpose but they are a
problem. They are a purifier, right?
Dr. Fenn. They are a filter feeder so they take a lot of
the natural plant organisms out of the water, if you will, as
they filter through it.
GREAT LAKES RESTORATION
Mr. Peterson. Could you quickly explain your overall
involvement in the Great Lakes and restoration of them and what
role you play and who you partner with?
Dr. Groat. One of our new initiatives this year in our
place-based studies program is to bring together more of the
partners in the Great Lakes that are interested and to focus on
one area where we could get a good start and that is Lake
Michigan and Lake Michigan Basin. That would be an
interdivisional effort within the USGS and interagency effort
with State and local agencies.
Denny mentioned the Great Lakes Science Center which works
there. We also have a very strong coalition of Great Lakes
States interested in geological mapping and they have formed a
very innovative approach to three dimensional mapping that is
applicable to not only geology but ground water, waste disposal
and resources for the whole Great Lakes area, all the area that
was covered by the glaciers. That is a very active, aggressive
group that we have a strong partnership with.
I think our interest as well is the traditional water
stations, monitoring stations. We have done studies on Great
Lakes erosion. Remember a few years ago when the lake levels
were so high and people were concerned and now we have the
opposite problem. Lake levels are so low. Our coastal group has
been working on water-level effects in the Great Lakes area. I
think as our work in the Great Lakes expands, all of our
divisions' efforts will grow as will cooperation with agencies
from the regions who have concerns.
GREAT LAKES SCIENCE FUNDING
Mr. Peterson. There has been huge progress made in the
Great Lakes. I don't think enough people know about it. Are
there any initiatives we ought to be funding? Is there anything
we ought to be doing that could make us move forward quicker?
Dr. Groat. One of the needs that has been identified in the
Great Lakes is to apply a technology that has been extremely
successful off the Pacific coast at Los Angeles and in Lake
Tahoe and that is to map the bottom of the lake in great
detail. You can see topographic features, sediment patterns and
if we are interested in those things that live in the Great
Lakes, whether they are commercial fisheries or sport
fisheries, understanding the bottom habitat is an extremely
important part. This tool is a wonderful tool. We have had
fisheries people being among the strongest advocates for
applying that tool. We have looked at it. I couldn't give you
any cost numbers right now, but we could for the record.
[The information follows:]
Folios 70 Insert here
Mr. Dicks. Would the gentleman yield.
Mr. Peterson. Sure.
Side-Scan Sonar mapping
Mr. Dicks. What do you call this?
Dr. Groat. It is a digital bathymetry program. It is side-
scan sonar--instruments that send signals which bounce back
from the bottom. We record those and it provides a very fine-
grain detailed map of the bottom. We can provide you some
examples from the West Coast and Lake Tahoe that would be very
striking.
Mr. Regula. Let me interrupt. There is a vote on the rule
for the property rights bill. I had planned to reconvene
because I have some additional questions but, Mr. Moran, I
don't know if you want to come back or would you like to get
yours in now.
Mr. Moran. I would appreciate that, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Peterson. Could I make one final comment. I think the
chairman and I both have a special interest in Lake Erie.
Dr. Groat. I grew up on Lake Erie, so I do too.
Mr. Moran. This also is a special day, as the chairman
knows. That lunch with the Irish ambassador is a no miss----
Mr. Regula. I didn't get invited to that one.
Chesapeake Bay Watershed
Mr. Moran. Consider yourself blessed.
This subcommittee has been appropriately and consistently
supportive of what you have been doing, and I particularly like
the local communities initiative, the sustainable resources for
the future. It is all exciting, and I think it is all
constructive. I look forward to following the GIS system as you
develop this system that John and the chairman have been
talking about. It is going to be very helpful to far more
communities around the country.
I would just like you to address specifically and briefly
the Chesapeake Bay watershed. We have got some serious concerns
that have been raised. I don't know how valid they are, but
with all the development going on, particularly in the
Washington Metropolitan Area, we are losing our trees, thus we
see a lot of erosion. It affects our watershed and I would like
to get your view on how important this is and what the trend is
from the GIS surveys.
Dr. Groat. I think it is extremely important not only for
the Chesapeake itself but for understanding how those key
coastal systems that are impacted by people respond. The more
work we do, more impacts we see. We wouldn't have known a few
years ago that ground water or the atmosphere are significant
contributors to nitrogen loads. Or how important agricultural
practices are in providing nutrients to the system. Perhaps
more importantly, we were not aware of how much long range
planning is needed to deal with these impacts. There aren't any
instant fixes and if the science is truly going to guide the
fixes, then there needs to be the time allowed and the
management strategies developed.
So the Chesapeake is probably the best organized example in
the country of science agencies and regulatory agencies working
together both on the science and the management in conjunction
with State and local areas. So I think it is extremely
important for itself because of where it is. I think it is also
extremely important as a laboratory for how we deal with this
in the Pacific Northwest or wherever we happen to be. We are
putting a lot of effort into it and hope to keep that level of
effort at least as high as it is now.
Mr. Moran. Very good. Norm was showing me you do have some
written material here about it as well. I will have to get out
and see what you are doing.
Dr. Groat. I would be pleased to show you around.
Mr. Moran. Dr. Groat, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Regula. Thank you. We are going to suspend here while
we vote and then I know Mr. Dicks has some additional questions
as do I, so we will be back.
[Recess.]
USGS Reorganization
Mr. Regula. I am aware that you are reorganizing the
Survey, shifting responsibilities to regional directors away
from divisions. Do you think this will be effective in
maintaining your focus on national, long-term concerns of the
Survey?
Dr. Groat. I think it will, Mr. Regula. Rather than
shifting away, we are really trying to bring more balance to
our programs. Whether they be applied in the regions or
nationally they have tended to be largely structured and
controlled through Reston and through our headquarters. The
effort here is to give those programs that are focused in the
regions where our scientists are--where our scientists in the
regions are doing their work and interacting with the people
who use the science--more regional control. We don't intend to
take our national programs like seismic monitoring,
streamgaging programs and so forth and regionalize those. Those
will remain as nationally guided, nationally instructed
programs. We are just trying to get our science closer to the
people who use the science and have them have a more direct
role in the regions, designing programs that suit the regions.
So they are all important and we are not diminishing one but we
are expanding the other.
Cooperation Between USGS and States
Mr. Regula. Do you have a lot of interaction with the
States?
Dr. Groat. We do on many fronts. I don't think you could
find any one of our programs in our disciplines in our regions
that aren't in some way cooperating with State agencies,
whether they be mapping agencies or mapping programs, water
programs, environmental programs. State interactions are a very
strong part of our program and an increasingly important one.
UNCONTROLLABLE COST OFFSETS
Mr. Regula. The Survey seems to be the only bureau that had
to fully offset its uncontrollable cost increases with program
decreases. Doesn't this policy defeat the reason for funding
uncontrollables?
Dr. Groat. Well, that has been a difficult challenge for
us. Having to cut programs to cover uncontrollable costs is
painful to the programs. It is painful to the bureau as it goes
through the process of deciding what to cut and what not to
cut. As far as how we are treated in that area related to other
bureaus--other bureaus within the Department of the Interior,
we have asked some questions as well. I don't know whether John
Trezise wants to comment on that or not, but we are discussing
it. Let me put it that way.
Mr. Regula. Let me say we are sympathetic too.
Dr. Groat. Thank you. We would like to see a more direct
approach to funding uncontrollables.
Coastal and Marine Geology Program
Mr. Regula. We have a high regard for your work and that
may be reflected in our markup.
The committee has a long history of supporting the coastal
and marine geology program. The budget this year proposes
significant reductions and redirections of the core program. In
many instances coastal issues need a better understanding by
members. It appears that your budget would not treat this as a
high priority. Maybe I am just not getting the thrust of what
you are doing?
Dr. Groat. Our budget this year does include a half million
decrease in the pilot program in Kitsap County in Washington,
which we actually concluded. It also includes a half million
dollar increase in the Columbia River area for some of the
coastal work there, so it really comes out as a net even as far
as program monies, and then we do have the uncontrollable costs
added. I guess my answer would be watch us in 2002. We
recognize that coastal issues, whether it be the oceans or the
lakes, are of increasing importance to the country and we have
a wonderful ability with our integrated programs to deal with
issues there.
So we are contemplating and testing on our partners and our
clients a much more aggressive and comprehensive coastal
program in 2002. So I think you will see more light there.
Mapping and Digitizing Schedule
Mr. Regula. Does this year's budget keep you on schedule
for mapping and digitizing?
Dr. Groat. Well, my honest answer is, yes, it does, but the
sad part of the answer is it is a very, very slow rate and at
the rate we are going now, it will take us 40 to 50 years to do
the updating that we need. If we were to be very aggressive in
updating maps and orthophotos--orthophoto based maps--digital
databases, it would cost more on the order of $20 to $25
million a year to keep those constant. Yes, we are on schedule
but the schedule is not nearly as aggressive as it needs to be.
Maintenance Backlog
Mr. Regula. I note that you have a maintenance backlog, and
I think that in prior testimony the total is about $140
million, but you only have $2 million to address this issue. As
you know, we have placed emphasis on all the agencies on
backlog. Would you want to comment? That amount doesn't seem
like it is going to get you there.
Dr. Groat. It is not a big dent at all. We felt we made
some progress last year when we were able to get some funding
in there but relative to the need, it is very small and we
haven't completely solved the puzzle yet as to how to give it
higher priority and move it along quicker than we are now. We
would agree with the subcommittee that it is an important
priority.
Mr. Regula. Does it mean this backlog has any critical
dimensions? Would we be able to meet really serious critical
problems with the $2 million, or do you need some more there,
you know, fixing a roof, for example. Leaks can be destructive
or heating systems, all sorts of things.
Dr. Groat. We have prioritized based on health and safety
first and then on need in general second. So monies we have do
go to those high priorities but it is not going to fix the
leaky roofs and out of date plumbing systems in all the places
that need it. So help there would be appreciated.
USGS and FWS Relationship
Mr. Regula. When Jamie Clark, Director of the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, testified before our committee recently, she
described the relationship between her agency and USGS
Biological Resources Division as challenging. Is that an
accurate description?
Dr. Groat. Well, I guess any family relationship is
challenging. I find it only to be challenging in the amount of
resources available for the work. Whether the biologic group is
within the bureaus of the department or whether they are with
us, there is never enough money to do all the work. That
funding challenge is one that we would all like to see a
solution to. I think the relationship of our scientists to
their scientists, our receptiveness to listening to their needs
and trying to meet them is very high. The folks are still in
the same place. They haven't gone anywhere. They are still
fulfilling the same mission. So I think it is a good
relationship.
I think the positioning of the biologists and the people
that serve them in the USGS is working well. I think the only
significant challenge is dollars and we are doing everything we
can to make it work. I think it is working.
Future Biological Directions
Mr. Regula. What do you see as the future directions of the
Biological Resources Division?
Dr. Groat. I think they have proven their ability to do
science in response to real needs in support of the DOI science
bureaus and that is their first order of responsibility. I
think being housed in the USGS, provides other opportunities to
provide that life dimension to all the critical systems
important to this country. I think we will see that without
diminishing their support of Interior bureaus, they are their
playing more and more of a strong role in many of the issues
you have raised around the table here today. Whether it is in
coast or watersheds or water supply, the biologic dimensions
are going to be applied increasingly.
USGS Botanists
Mr. Regula. It makes me recall, I think we had a garden
club member testify a year or two ago that we don't have enough
botanists in government. Do you have botanists on your staff?
Dr. Groat. I saw the number, and Denny might remember--20
or so--that we do have several botanists and of course botary
is an important part of natural landscapes in general, and in
dealing with invasive species. We think we have a good mix of
the right kinds of biologists.
Great Lakes mapping
Mr. Regula. Great Lakes mapping. The budget for this year
included funding. What is the status of this project?
Dr. Groat. The $0.5 million, I believe it is that we have
requested for Great Lakes, is to start the place-based study
there.
Mr. Regula. The mapping you just discussed a while back,
the mapping at the bottom of bodies of water, or is this a
different type of mapping?
Dr. Groat. This is more of an integrated program focusing
on Lake Michigan. It includes some mapping components but it
has biology and geology as well. The kind of mapping that I
talked about for the bottom of the Great Lakes isn't really
underway right now. There has been some planning but it isn't
being implemented right now.
Mr. Regula. Maybe we ought to do a pilot project on Lake
Erie.
Dr. Groat. I would agree with that. Seriously that would be
an excellent place to do it. Lake Erie is a relatively shallow
lake. The habitats are critical.
Mr. Regula. It is not too huge, but yet it is probably
surrounded by pretty much of a cross-section of the kind of
activities focused on a lake of that size.
Dr. Groat. Our mapping people would welcome an opportunity
to do a pilot on the Great Lakes. We think it would show great
things.
Mr. Regula. How much would that cost? Do you have any idea?
Dr. Groat. I will find that out for you, Mr. Regula.
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Offset Folio 81 Insert here
Ohio Pilot Project
Mr. Regula. What is the status of the Gateway to the Earth/
Ohio pilot project?
Dr. Groat. We learned a lot from the Ohio pilot project.
The real key for an organization like us that has huge chunks
of data, whether it is in map form or other form, is getting it
to customers and people who use it. This is what we learned in
Ohio. While maintaining that we are trying to expand that work,
the $2 million we have for increasing our computer
infrastructure is based on what we learned in Ohio so that we
can get our equipment upgraded to move that information out
into the real world.
Long Distance Learning
Mr. Regula. Do you get involved in long distance learning
whereby a geology class at a university could interact with
people in Reston in your headquarters?
Dr. Groat. That is an interesting question. We have the
capability for people using our facilities for long distance
conferencing and for others to communicate with us. I am not
aware that we have actually had long distance classroom
participation in our programs, but it certainly could help.
Mr. Regula. From what I have seen out there, it seems you
have resources that would be very valuable to classes, science
classes at a high school level as well as at the college level
in the various disciplines. Maybe it is something you ought to
think about because it is a coming thing.
Dr. Groat. No question.
Mr. Regula. The Smithsonian, for example, had a class out
in Canton, Ohio, that was having like a classroom experience
with a person at the Smithsonian, and the potential is
enormous.
Dr. Groat. It is. In fact, we do many things in the
educational area. Many of our websites have programs designed
specifically for different grade levels in the schools and they
make great use of it. We have a teacher's packet, for example,
that we give out. Student contact with our scientists using
those kinds of communication technologies are really things of
the future. In fact, our whole ability as a widely disbursed
organization to communicate with each other to do classes and
training rather than pulling all the people together in one
place can use those very same facilities. The education of
people outside the Survey with those inside can go hand in hand
in using the same technology.
Fire Detection Efforts
Mr. Regula. I think the whole communications area is huge.
Last question. You are developing technology to detect
fires; i.e., heat seeking technology, determining heat as to
the source. Would this be useful to the Forest Service?
Dr. Groat. Yes, we have a remarkable program in cooperation
with the intelligence community and a facility that allows us
to use some magnificent technologies. One of the great
applications that we have been able to develop is to be able to
sense and see very small fires with a very high degree of
accuracy. We have tested it and we have also been out talking
to various States about their ability to use this and also with
the Federal firefighting community. The real challenge that is
left is not the technology itself which is, as you saw, very
well proven, but getting that into the workplace. They have
systems they use now, the fire towers, the traditional ways.
Being able to provide our kind of information to them either
over the Internet or through satellite communication is where
we need to go next. That is our next big challenge.
Mr. Regula. Mr. Dicks.
Mr. Dicks. Under biological research and monitoring plan
areas, you spend quite a bit of money, don't you?
Dr. Groat. Yes, sir, we do.
Endangered and At Risk Species
Mr. Dicks. $113 million. Tell me about what you do on
endangered and at risk species.
Dr. Groat. Our role there is really to provide the
information that understands the distribution, the ecology, the
stresses that are put on various species whether they are
threatened, endangered or whether they are part of the general
population. So we lead towards understanding and we try to
provide the scientific information that determines what the
stresses are and then also to support the plans, the habitat
conservation plans that are put in place to recreate the
habitats that make them viable. And that is the approach we are
really taking in the Pacific Northwest is understand the
habitat so that you can deal with the issues.
Mr. Dicks. And you do get into ecosystem analysis too.
Dr. Groat. Yes, sir, we do. We try to apply a systematic
approach to understanding critical ecosystems--the Mojave
Desert, the work Mr. Regula referred to in the Everglades--
those are all part of the ecosystem effort that we have.
Mr. Dicks. And you did play a role in the Pacific Northwest
forest plan?
Dr. Groat. Yes, we did. We didn't have the lead but we
provided some science support there. We have a laboratory in
Oregon that was an active participant.
Information To Local and State Governments
Mr. Dicks. How do you get the information to the local and
State governments? For example, right now we have a listing of
these salmon and each of the communities is developing a rule
underneath the 4(d) rule to come into compliance so that they
are not hit on take. Do you have a way of communicating with
the local communities on this stuff?
Dr. Groat. We have a way that is very general right now.
One of the things we would hope for with the partnerships that
we are proposing is that those communities that have a need for
specific types of information could receive funding to work
with us so that we provide exactly what they need. Right now
much of the information they might need is there but they have
to find a way to make it useful. This way we would fund a
partnership to work with them to do that. The answer is that we
are doing some but could do more if we had that kind of program
in place.
Mr. Dicks. That is all I have, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.
PARTNERSHIPS WITH COLLEGES
Mr. Regula. Just a couple of questions. You have
partnerships with colleges. I think I was in Los Angeles or
somewhere in California where the earthquake system was such
that the county government, the city government, the State
government all were tied together for information purposes.
Dr. Groat. We do. We have many partnerships with colleges
ranging from our cooperative research units in the biological
area to cooperative research arrangements, particularly on the
West Coast in earthquakes, with Cal Tech and a whole bunch of
schools there. They provide some of the science that underpins
and supports the science we are doing and actually operate,
help operate, some of the seismic monitoring networks that are
there.
Mr. Regula. Do you have similar facilities in Seattle and
the State of Washington?
Dr. Groat. We do have cooperative arrangements with
University of Washington and Washington State for programs,
both biological and physical.
Volunteer Program
Mr. Regula. Do you use any volunteers? I am just curious
because that is a very strong feature of parks and forests? Do
you use any in your programs?
Dr. Groat. We do. We use lots of volunteers. We have folks
we can't get rid of frankly who want to help. They volunteer
and they provide science and provide other services. We have
people who just have an interest in the things we do that serve
as docents and participate in programs. So both at the center
levels right up to the headquarters level we make extensive use
of volunteers.
Visitors To USGS Facilities
Mr. Regula. Do you get visitors at any of your facilities?
I am not speaking of Reston but throughout the country.
Dr. Groat. We do. At the regional level we hold large open
houses at our regional centers and attract thousands and
thousands of people. This year the big open house is being held
at Menlo Park. We figure we will have 20,000 people show up
there. We make a very extensive effort to showcase our programs
and to showcase them in a way that is meaningful to the general
public. Many of our centers and laboratories do the same thing
on an individual basis.
USGS Public Communication
Mr. Regula. Do you and your staff people get invited to go
to the Rotary, the Kiwanis and the Chamber of Commerce to tell
your story in these communities?
Dr. Groat. They do. One of the reasons for the
reorganization and the regionalization related to this. One of
the important aspects of balancing the regions with the
headquarters is to empower and encourage those people that are
out there in the regions to talk to anybody who will listen
because if we are going to be better known, then we have got to
be aggressive about it. So for Rotary Clubs, garden clubs,
schools, citizens groups of all kinds, we think we have
something interesting to tell them and they generally find that
to be the case.
Basic Research
Mr. Regula. Basic research. Will the reorganization
strengthen it or at least maintain it as you have done it
historically?
Dr. Groat. We hope it is going to strengthen it. We define
basic research as the research that provides the understandings
of those systems and processes that we want to make useful to
people. If we ever leave the basic research function, we are
going to cut off the seed corn that makes our programs work. We
hope that by expanding our programs, by expanding the
appreciation for the need for the science, we will be able to
attract more resources and more interest in doing the science
itself. So the basic research function, the fundamental
research function, needs to remain strong and needs to grow and
needs to be relevant. As we replace people who retire, as we
add to the work force, we need to be sure we are hiring the
types of scientists that meet the needs of the future, not the
needs of the past. That is an important part of our planning
effort.
Visits To USGS Web Sites
Mr. Regula. Do you get a lot of hits on your web site?
Dr. Groat. We certainly do. We have an arrangement with
Microsoft for the TerraServer where we get 5 or 6 million hits
or so a day. These are people all over the country who are
interested in geographical information about where they are
located, their houses and maps. Many of our websites get
thousands and thousands of hits a day from all kinds of people.
Mr. Regula. So you have several websites?
Dr. Groat. We have one website that has hot links to many,
many subsites and subsets so people can come into that central
site and get access to all of them. The TerraServer is a
separate entity.
Information Access
Mr. Regula. If someone were thinking about buying a piece
of property, could they get information about the potential of
that particular piece of property for, say, earthquake hazards,
flooding or some of the other things that you cover?
Dr. Groat. That is really the significant major objective
of our Gateway to the Earth program. We want a citizen to be
able to put their finger on a point on the map and access it
and say I want to know everything I can about this area. Or
they want to know whether it is safe for my house, whether the
geology is stable, whether it is landslide or hazard potential,
whether if I drill a well, I am likely to find water.
Mr. Regula. Can you get that information?
Dr. Groat. That information is all there now but it is not
accessible in any easy sort of way. It is back to the question
asked about the communities. How do we make it easy for a
person who is not a scientist, not a technical person to get at
our data, and that is what Gateway to the Earth and Community/
Federal Informaiton Partnerships programs are intended to do,
to facilitate their access. We think if we can do that we are
going to serve a larger, greatly increased number of people
more meaningfully than we are now.
Mr. Regula. I would think planning commissions, zoning
commissions, developers would certainly use your information.
Dr. Groat. They do. They use it extensively now. We just
feel we have got 120 years worth of understanding of the Earth
that we could make available to people and we need to organize
it better and work with those communities to make sure it is in
a form that they can use it. That is the major objective.
Mr. Regula. Mr. Dicks, you have anything further?
Mr. Dicks. No, I don't, Mr. Chairman. But we do appreciate
the work you are doing and we hope you will keep us informed
especially on this earthquake hazards issue. I think that is
very important.
Dr. Groat. We would agree.
Mr. Regula. Thank you. I think this has been a very good
hearing. Your testimony has been effective, and we all learn
new things every day. We will try to be sensitive to your needs
and a lot of what we are able to do will be determined by what
kind of an allocation we have. We recognize the value of what
USGS does on behalf of the American people.
So thank you for coming, and with that the committee is
adjourned.
Dr. Groat. I thank you, Mr. Regula, and the subcommittee
for being interested and supportive.
[Additional questions for the record follow:]
Offset Folios 92 to 121 Insert here
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Wednesday, March 8, 2000.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS AND OFFICE OF SPECIAL TRUSTEE FOR AMERICAN
INDIANS
WITNESSES
ROYCE HANSON, NAPA FELLOW AND PANEL CHAIR, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
CAROL E. NEVES, STUDY DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
KEVIN GOVER, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR INDIAN AFFAIRS
THOMAS M. THOMPSON, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY SPECIAL TRUSTEE FOR AMERICAN
INDIANS
HILDA A. MANUEL, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
JOE CHRISTIE, ACTING DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF INDIAN EDUCATION PROGRAMS,
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
DAVID A. GILBERT, BUDGET OFFICER, OFFICE OF SPECIAL TRUSTEE
THEODORE R. QUASULA, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT SERVICES,
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
Opening Remarks
Mr. Regula. We have a lot of ground to cover this morning
and I think it will be interesting to hear some of the
challenges we have. We will start out with the National Academy
of Public Administration, Mr. Hanson, then Mr. Gover, and then
the new trustee.
Mr. Hanson, we look forward to your testimony.
Mr. Hanson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am joined by Carole Neves, who is the study director at
the Academy for this project.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to present the
findings and recommendations of the report of the National
Academy of Public Administration on management and
administration of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The full text
of our testimony has been given to you, so I am only going to
highlight some of the important findings and recommendations.
Basically, the Academy study found that the management and
administration of the BIA and the Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Indian Affairs are not adequately organized and
staffed to carry out effectively their various trust and
program responsibilities or to operate an effective and
efficient agency.
Specifically, there is no existing capability to provide
budget, human resources, policy, and other management
assistance to the Assistant Secretary and to the Bureau. The
staff do not receive adequate management and administrative
training. The BIA does not have adequate standards to determine
its staffing and other administrative and resource
requirements. The strategic planning, annual performance
planning, and program analysis are not institutionalized. And
important manuals and other administrative handbooks are out of
date.
The panel made specific recommendations to deal with each
of these problems and I will emphasize here only the most basic
of those recommendations.
First, to ensure that the Assistant Secretary of Indian
Affairs has the capacity to lead the Bureau and to hold its
components accountable for their performance, we recommended
three things. First, the establishment in the Office of the
Assistant Secretary of a Policy, Management, and Budget Office
that reports directly to him. The Office should include a
comptroller unit with program analysis, budget, and accounting
groups, a plans and policy group, a human resources group to
deal with work force issues and services, an information
resources planning group charged with creating and maintaining
Bureau-wide information systems, and an equal employment
opportunity group.
Secondly, the Assistant Secretary should utilize more fully
the working group of the Domestic Policy Council in a strategic
way to coordinate and harmonize programs for American Indians
and Alaskan Natives.
Third, there should be a recognition that the three
service-providing organizations--the Bureau, the law
enforcement, and the education components--are independent,
operating entities and each should report directly to the
Assistant Secretary and have responsibility and authority to
provide programs and services to handle its own administrative
functions.
The second major category of recommendations dealt with the
establishment of managerial discipline in the Bureau and to
bring it into compliance with GPRA's focus on results that make
a difference in the lives of Native Americans. So we
recommended that the Assistant Secretary strengthen the
Bureau's strategic planning and annual performance plan to meet
GPRA requirements, to establish a system of management and
performance reviews of key managers and staff, and to use
modern information technology to update, disseminate, and keep
current BIA manuals and operating handbooks.
We estimated that the implementation of these
recommendations will require approximately 50 positions in the
Washington headquarters. The headquarters operation cannot be
effective without adequate support staff in the agency and area
offices. The amount of staff needed in the field we felt can
really be determined only after very careful work force
analysis to assess the existing capabilities and deficiencies
in each of the offices. Our research staff and the panel
estimated that this may entail as few as 150 or as many as 200
positions when the recommendations of the report are fully
implemented.
The panel emphasized that the management and administrative
reforms we propose should not be undertaken on faith by the
Department, by OMB, or by the Congress. Tangible results should
be demanded and the Assistant Secretary should be held
accountable for their achievement. One of the first tasks of
the new management staff that we recommended should be the
development of management milestones to achieve tangible
results such as: getting a clean audit in a reasonable period
of time, to be able to produce credible and well-documented
estimates of program requirements, to reduce friction among the
program and service units of the Bureau, and an end to the
perception that some tribes hold that central service units are
unresponsive.
Performance measures should be established consistent with
GPRA that allow the Assistant Secretary to hold program
directors accountable for their performance as managers of the
services and resources that are allocated to them.
There should be clear policies and guidelines for employees
to follow in the performance of their trust, program delivery,
and oversight responsibilities. One of the tests would be
mechanisms for better coordinated Indian policy across all
relevant Federal agencies and increased confidence among the
tribes that moving to self-determination and self-governance
will not result in neglect of Federal responsibilities.
Finally, as a measure to improve and ensure accountability,
we have recommended that the Assistant Secretary prepare an
annual progress report to the Secretary and to Congress on the
implementation of the recommendations, the effect of the
changes on the effectiveness and efficiency of the Bureau, and
the reasons for progress or the lack thereof.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The statement of Mr. Hanson follows:]
Offset Folios 177 to 185 Insert here
Mr. Regula. Thank you.
We will have Mr. Gover's testimony, and then we may have
some questions for both of you.
Mr. Gover, we are happy to welcome you. As you have
observed, you have a challenge, but we would like to hear from
you, however you choose to present your issues.
Opening Statement of Mr. Gover
Mr. Gover. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
When I came on board as the Assistant Secretary for Indian
Affairs, I learned to my dismay the scope of the management and
administration problems we had. Of course, looking back it is
easy to see a number of causes, not the least of which was the
loss of personnel in 1996.
First of all, let me say that we appreciate NAPA's work. We
appreciate your support of our contracting with NAPA to do this
study. We learned a number of very important things.
A number of the findings were no surprise. We were well
aware, of course, that we were not performing the way that we
needed to. I think the result of that is that when we come
before this committee and other committees of the Congress to
ask for more resources or more authority, you are skeptical as
to our ability to properly handle the authority and the
resources you provide. That is why it is so important to me
that we gain your confidence and the confidence of the entire
Congress in our operation.
What NAPA identified that I had not realized completely is
that when Congress created the Office of Indian Education
Programs a few years back, what it had essentially done was to
create another bureau. But it wasn't completely another bureau.
It left a number of administrative and management functions
sort of in the discretion of the Assistant Secretary and the
Bureau of Indian Affairs. What we found is that fairly
consistently the OIEP felt they were not being properly served
by the BIA management and administration operation.
I had hoped when I first began to look at this issue that
we would be able to find a way to maintain a single line
organization in order to realize whatever savings we could in
management and administration. I had hoped that we would not
have to create another whole organization to manage these sorts
of things in both parts of the Bureau. NAPA advises--and I now
agree--that is not going to be possible and what we really do
have to do is provide the resources, the authority, and then
demand accountability from the managers in those separate line
organizations.
NAPA also appreciated, in a way that I had not, that the
ambiguity as to what the Assistant Secretary actually is and
does creates its own set of management problems. If my office
is treated like the other Assistant Secretaries in the
building, then the Bureau never really does have the sort of
accountability systems it needs. Each organization--the Office
of Indian Education Programs, the Office of Indian Programs--
reports to the Assistant Secretary, but the Assistant Secretary
really is very much at the mercy, shall we say, of the line
organizations because I have basically six staff to evaluate
the entire operation of what is now a $1.9 billion operation.
With all the case work we have to do with the tribes as they
come in, there is very little time for this effort.
I do appreciate NAPA's recommendations and we intend to
implement them.
Along those lines, we have begun the implementation of the
NAPA recommendations. Frankly I had hoped that we would be able
to report to you today that the Secretary has signed the
reorganization of our office. That has not happened yet. The
document is prepared and it is in the system. We expect that
the Secretary will sign it in a matter of days. But I do think
we will be able to complete that within the next couple of
days.
Relocation
The second part of the empowerment program, if you will--
and more accurately, the accountability program--is that we
have to deal with the material weaknesses in our audits. Most
of those exist in our Division of Accounting Management and our
Office of Information Resource Management. Those two offices,
and about 125 employees that work for them, were located in
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
I do not know how that happened, and Bureau lore does not
really explain how those organizations ended up in Albuquerque,
but what I experienced personally as well as by managers was
just a lack of responsiveness out of those offices that we
attributed to the distance between the senior managers in the
agency and the personnel who were responsible for executing
these responsibilities. After due consideration and after
consulting with both NAPA and with our senior managers, we
decided that what was really called for was to bring those
people back here where they could be directly supervised by the
senior management in the agency so that we can begin to address
all these accounting concerns.
Mr. Regula. That is consistent with their recommendations,
is it not?
Mr. Gover. NAPA did not make a specific recommendation to
that effect. They did make the observation that it may be
necessary to make such a move in order to create the kind of
accountability we are looking for. So we felt that we were on
firm ground, based on the NAPA report, and based on our own
observations of the unresponsiveness of those organizations to
direct this to the most senior management in the agency.
Yes, I believe it is consistent with what NAPA had in mind.
It is very difficult to supervise employees that are
literally 2,000 miles away. And it is hard for them to
understand and even share the priorities that management puts
forward. Our belief is that by bringing those organizations to
the Washington area, putting our information resource
management organization out on the Dulles corridor with its
great capabilities in terms of information technology, and
putting them under the direct supervision of people who then
report directly to me, we will then begin to achieve results.
That is the rationale behind that move.
FIELD RESOURCES
The third element of the implementation has to be to put
more resources into the field in the two line organizations,
under the Deputy Commissioner in the Bureau of Indian Affairs
and under the Office of Indian Education Programs. I cannot
hold the managers accountable if I am not also giving them the
resources to do what I have asked them to do. So our budget for
next year does request funds to do exactly that, to put more
resources into these two line organizations and out into the
field as well as in my office to begin to carry out this
program of accountability.
Mr. Regula. Will that require an increase, or will that
require reallocation of your funding?
Mr. Gover. We will reallocate some of the funding, but it
will also require an increase, which we have requested. NAPA is
now conducting a workload analysis for us to tell us what is
the best distribution of both the personnel and the financial
resources. We expect that plan this spring, and that will guide
our efforts in deploying these new resources.
Mr. Chairman, again I want to commend NAPA and thank them
for their work. They grasped very quickly a very complex
organization and maybe that was what was called for: an outside
look to help us find our way to what may seem obvious to many
observers. I think it is a strong report. We intend to
implement virtually all the recommendations NAPA made. We thank
them for their work and we thank you for your support of our
commissioning NAPA to do this work.
[The statement of Mr. Gover follows:]
Offset Folios 192 to 197 Insert here
Mr. Regula. Thank you.
As I understand you, you see the NAPA report as a blueprint
for reorganization of the Bureau.
Mr. Gover. Yes.
STATUS OF IMPLEMENTATION
Mr. Regula. This question is on the current status, and the
answer is whether you are underway in implementing their
recommendations at this time.
Mr. Gover. We are well underway. I would have liked to have
been a little further along, but I think we are moving very
aggressively in that direction. Certainly by the end of this
fiscal year we will have established the institutions that NAPA
calls for, and then in 2001 we can begin to implement the line
authorities that are necessary to hold managers accountable and
to provide the resources in the field that are going to be
necessary to meet our obligation.
Mr. Regula. Will you fill these positions in-house, or will
you go outside for the administrative functions that they
outline?
Mr. Gover. I intend to advertise for each position. I
expect that we will get some applications from in-house.
Hopefully we will also be able to attract some new talent to
the Department.
Mr. Regula. Are the NAPA recommendations consistent with
GPRA?
Mr. Gover. Very much so. NAPA is basically saying that we
now have no proper capabilities to report results from the
programs that we operate. They are correct. And one of the
problems is that we do not have the internal capabilities to
provide that kind of accounting.
There is another whole series of problems that arise from
the self-determination and self-governance policy in that we
have only limited ability to request information from the
tribes to tell us how Federal dollars are being spent. That is
something that we want to analyze very carefully with this new
staff capability that we are developing and come back to the
Congress and the tribes and show some areas where we think we
need more accountability at the local level. But in the
meantime, we can certainly make the BIA-operated programs very
accountable to the Committee.
Mr. Regula. You are saying that you want oversight on the
expenditure of funds as they are allocated to the tribes. Is
that correct?
Mr. Gover. Yes, sir. We want oversight.
Mr. Regula. And accountability?
Mr. Gover. And accountability. We are not looking to
control how the tribes spend the funds except in the sense that
these funds are being spent for the authorized purposes. I
cannot tell you today from the information the tribes are
required to submit to us on an annual basis that in fact those
funds are being spent for the authorized purposes. And we
really need to take a careful look at that.
The problem is that the tribes will immediately interpret
this as an attempt to go back to the bad old days when the
Bureau of Indian Affairs told them what to do with every single
dollar. I can only emphasize that that is not what we want to
do and that we have to find a middle ground where we can both
tell the Congress where we spent the money, what we
accomplished, what remains to be done, and what it is going to
cost. We cannot do that right now.
Mr. Regula. Would you contemplate at least summarizing the
NAPA recommendations and distributing them to the tribal
leadership so they understand where you are coming from?
Mr. Gover. We distributed the report to each tribe and
frankly did not get a lot of feedback on it, interestingly
enough. What I have done with the tribes is to ask the National
Congress of American Indians to set up a working group to work
with us on what we are calling reporting and accountability.
Ideally, we will be able to simply negotiate with the tribes
the kind of reporting and accountability that is necessary for
us and for you to evaluate program performance in the field.
The Deputy Commissioner has funded that task force to
assist us in that effort. I am fairly hopeful that we will be
able to work it out with the tribes without involving the
Congress. We will certainly be reporting to the Committee and
the authorizing committees the results of that work.
Mr. Regula. Is there any language we could include that
would be helpful to you? You may want to submit something for
the record on that. Sometimes it is helpful to be able to point
to something when trying to get a desirable response.
Mr. Gover. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I will think
about that and get back to you in writing.
Mr. Regula. Is it your impression that the BIA is moving in
the direction you have recommended in your report?
Mr. Hanson. Yes, that is correct. We do think that there is
great receptivity by the Assistant Secretary and the Department
to implement these recommendations.
Mr. Regula. As I understand it from the staff, you went out
into the field and talked to people there. What was your
impression? Do you think there will be a willingness to try to
work with the recommendations? I am talking about on the part
of the employees in the field and the tribal leaders.
Mr. Hanson. Let me ask Dr. Neves to respond to that because
she and others were directly involved with the field work.
Ms. Neves. It is my impression that the people working in
the field are very receptive. They were receptive not only to
have us come and listen to what they had to say and take an
interest in the work they are doing, but they are clearly
overworked, understaffed, and we found them to be very capable
and competent. I think they are looking for help and will be
willing to do what is necessary from their side to make this
work.
As you might guess, I think they are concerned about the
distribution of those 200 people. Once the workload analysis is
done, I think they will feel more comfortable with the
recommendation.
NAPA's IMPACT
Mr. Regula. One last question.
If these recommendations are implemented, what will be the
impact on the average individual out in the tribes? How will
their quality of life be improved? What is your opinion if we
can get these recommendations put in place and implemented?
Ms. Neves. I think the provision of services will be
improved measurably. One of the things that is important to
understand and which we did not include in our report are the
programmatic needs. They are huge. When you have a social case
worker with a load of 140, you need to address the program side
also. We addressed the administrative needs.
In reports issued by the BIA and the tribes, there are
countless examples of the lack of resources on the programmatic
side. I think to really make a difference you need a
combination of resources on the administrative side of the
house as well as the programmatic side. There I think we are
talking about a very large amount of resources.
If you look at law enforcement, education, the provision of
social services, natural resources--and it can go on and on.
This is a growing population and a population whose needs have
not been adequately addressed for decades.
Mr. Hanson. I would just add, Mr. Chairman, from the
panel's perspective, to address these program needs effectively
there have to be--from the Bureau's perspective--credible
estimates of what those needs are. From your perspective, you
need those credible estimates. They cannot be made without the
kind of administrative support that we have recommended for
both the headquarters and field offices.
Mr. Gover. I agree with that, Mr. Chairman. That is the
idea here. I do not look to see that my legacy will be that I
was a budget hawk, but I do believe that we owe you and we owe
the Congress a very careful accounting of the dollars you give
us before we come back and ask for more. This has to come
first. We have to get those systems in place so that year after
year, regardless of who is sitting in this chair, that person
can come to you with numbers that are real and based on real
evidence out in the field. We do not have that capability right
now.
Mr. Regula. You are really saying that if the
administrative structure is improved in conformance with these
recommendations that it ultimately will translate into a better
quality of life for your constituency?
Mr. Gover. I believe that. I believe it will take some time
for that to happen, before these improvements show up out in
the field.
Mr. Regula. I understand that.
Mr. Gover. But the essence of the NAPA report is
accountability. Right now, I do not have the ability to hold
the program managers accountable in any meaningful way against
identifiable performance measures. I believe once this
oversight organization is in place--oversight and
policymaking--that that will in fact improve the delivery of
services on the reservation, whether or not we get more
resources from the Congress.
Mr. Regula. That is a positive note. I think you both agree
that these objectives are consistent with GPRA.
Mr. Gover. Yes.
Mr. Hanson. Yes, sir.
Ms. Neves. Yes.
Mr. Regula. Mr. Dicks?
Mr. Dicks. I want to welcome all the witnesses here today.
Mr. Hanson, I am sorry that I was not here for your
presentation, but I got a chance to take a look at it and our
staff has reviewed it. Of course, I, too, am troubled by the
conclusions of the report.
``Current management and administration of the BIA are not
adequate to meet all its trust responsibilities to American
Indians. The BIA has had difficulty satisfying the Government's
requirements for strategic planning and annual performance
planning. BIA has been unable to meet basic administrative
requirements. It does not have a unified approach to human
resources. The budget structure does not provide the
information necessary to estimate actual needs. The financial
management systems do not permit matching funding to
requirements. There is not an unqualified audit. Since 1991,
procurement has been identified as an area of material
weakness. BIA procurement improvement efforts have been ongoing
for 25 years without success. There is no human resources
succession plan or management development program. BIA uses
information technology far less than other Federal agencies. In
the area of record management, the BIA has major longstanding
problems.''
I would like to ask one thing.
Mr. Hanson, you say here that they need additional people
but you do not want them to get the people until they have made
the commitment to make the change.
Does that paraphrase this accurately?
Mr. Hanson. Well, in a sense, yes. We take it that they
have made the commitment to make that change. To establish the
systems that are necessary to correct these problems, they
really have to have additional people.
One of the problems that the Assistant Secretary has
pointed out to you is that he has six people in his office to
manage this entire operation. He needs the kind of policy,
program analysis, budget, human resources, information
resources staff that makes it possible to collect, assemble,
analyze data, prepare budgets, establish performance goals,
develop a strategic plan, and have the kinds of information
available to him that makes it possible for him to hold the
operating parts of the Bureau accountable for their
performance.
Without that, he is engaged in a good guessing game, which
is about as good as you can put it.
Mr. Dicks. I understand that we are waiting for the
Secretary to sign this order requiring that these changes be
made. It is one thing to sign an order and require things to be
changed. It is another thing to do it.
Is that true?
Mr. Hanson. Of course.
Mr. Dicks. Just signing the order is not going to get this
job done.
BUDGET INCREASES
I understand that your budget requires 596 additional FTEs
to the BIA and a 10 percent increase in its operating budget.
Is that correct?
Mr. Gover. That is correct. Not all of that, of course, is
necessary for implementation of the NAPA recommendations.
Mr. Dicks. How do you separate the request?
Mr. Gover. About an additional $4 million we are looking
for----
Mr. Dicks. An additional $4 million on top of this?
Mr. Gover. No, over fiscal year 2000. The Committee gave us
$5 million last year to begin implementation of the NAPA study.
Our current estimates--and of course we are still working on
the workload analysis--our current estimates are still
consistent with the request for next year, which would give us,
in essence, $9 million over fiscal year 1999 to conduct these
administrative functions.
BUREAU COMMITMENT
Mr. Dicks. One other statement made here was particularly
troubling. ``The Academy's concern stems from the lack of core
capability in the management of the Bureau and the lack of
proactive, consistent, and committed leadership within BIA and
the Department.''
Will this order and the additional funds enable you to
provide consistent and committed leadership within BIA and the
Department?
Mr. Gover. It is difficult for me to answer that in light
of the fact that I will only be here another year. But I can
assure you that we are committed to this effort.
One of the problems has always been that there has never
been in the Bureau of Indian Affairs a very stable system of
rewarding good management. That is part of what has to change.
We know that with this $9 million and with the secretarial
order--which is important in the sense that I have no authority
to go out and start hiring this new Chief Information Officer
or Chief Financial Officer and the other people NAPA recommends
until the Secretary has told me that I can--that is the
significance of the order. That is why we need it so badly.
As soon as that is done, we have already prepared the
position descriptions and we are ready to run them through the
system and start hiring these folks.
Congressman, all I can tell you is that I am committed to
it. I believe we can start a ball rolling that regardless of
who my successor is, they will be unable to stop it. Certainly
with this committee's oversight and with the Resources
Committee's oversight, we will be able to keep this train on
the track.
Mr. Dicks. Do you plan to recruit people from outside BIA
or outside the Department of Interior? Are you going to hire
people from within the agency?
Mr. Gover. I would expect that we will do both. We are
going to advertise these positions per the Civil Service
requirements. I expect that some people who are currently
within the agency will apply. Certainly in those circumstances
where they are the best qualified, we will hire them. But it is
of great concern to us that we attract new talent into the
Department to carry out these functions.
EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT
Mr. Dicks. One area that was also mentioned--hopefully not
being redundant--on page 13 of the executive summary, the NAPA
report states, ``BIA gives employee development almost no
organized attention, nor does it systematically invest in
employee training.''
Will this be part of the area that you will address under
the order? Trying to do a better job of training your own
people?
Mr. Gover. Yes, sir. One of the positions NAPA recommends
is a Human Resources Director to develop exactly those
policies, including training and succession planning, so that
we do always have capable people in line to take over as people
leave the agency. That is not the case right now. The personnel
capabilities at the Bureau are almost zero. We contract with
other agencies in the Department to do our personnel work
because we basically lost our human resources office in the
1996 RIFs.
SELF-DETERMINATION
Mr. Dicks. Under self-determination, a grant is given to
the tribe and they use that money to manage their programs,
correct? How would you explain it better?
Mr. Gover. I would say that we provide the resources for
the tribes themselves to carry out programs that we otherwise
would be providing on the reservations.
Mr. Dicks. Do we have good information about how that money
is being spent?
Mr. Gover. No, we do not. Not the kind of information I
would like to come before this committee with.
SINGLE AUDITS
Mr. Dicks. Thus far it is not auditable. Is that correct?
Mr. Gover. It is auditable, and they do submit single
audits every year in accordance with the law. The single
audits, though, do not tell you very much.
First of all, they tell you almost nothing about program
results. What they do say is whether or not the Federal dollars
are being spent for Federal purposes, in essence. But one of
the things we are finding out is even where we find that a
tribe is not spending money for the appropriate purposes, we
have very little leverage to force compliance. Our basic option
under the statute is to take the program away. That is not a
meaningful alternative for us.
Mr. Dicks. Take away the whole self-determination program?
Mr. Gover. Exactly.
Mr. Dicks. An all or nothing remedy?
Mr. Gover. That is exactly right. And we need some more
tools.
This year we began withholding from tribes that were not in
compliance with the Single Audit Act their contract support
funds. I have met with a number of them and they say that I
have no authority to do that. I say that it is a close call
under the law. I do not know if I do or not, but I am going to
do it because I do not think they will be able to convince any
decisionmaker that they should be able to violate the Single
Audit Act and still get their money.
Mr. Dicks. When you say ``single audit''--what does that
mean?
Mr. Gover. That is the unified audit that recipients of
Federal funds--be they States, localities, or Indian tribes--
must submit to the United States to account for the Federal
dollars they have received. It is unified so that it combines
all the agencies.
Mr. Dicks. Do you have auditors that go out and check
verify this is the way the money was spent?
Mr. Gover. I have an audit and evaluations staff that
eventually receives the audits submitted by independent
auditors. The tribes have to retain independent auditors to
provide reports to us. That audit staff then reviews those.
Where we see problems, we follow up. Quite often the Inspector
General will direct us to pursue certain issues that arise in
the review of the single audits.
ACCOUNTABILITY OF EXPENDITURES
Mr. Dicks. Are we finding a lot of problems?
Mr. Gover. There are problems, yes. Certainly when we do
identify them we have been very aggressive in trying to resolve
those over the past couple of years.
The problem is much less with the accountability for the
Federal dollars. We are relatively confident that the level of
misappropriation is not a major concern. The real problem is
that even though we know it is spent for Federal purposes, we
have no idea what sorts of results are being achieved in the
field.
Mr. Dicks. And accountability is the problem. If you look
at the statistics, there are still a lot of problems in Indian
country in terms of unemployment, educational attaintment, and
other areas that are much more serious than in society in
general.
Mr. Gover. Much more serious. And even though we can see
progress, we have no notion whether that is because of the work
that we are doing and the work the tribes are doing with
Federal dollars. So it gives us very little ability to properly
allocate resources.
Mr. Dicks. What are we going to do to address that problem?
How do we get a handle on it?
Mr. Gover. First of all, we are working with the tribes and
have asked the tribes to form a group to work with us on this
reporting and accountability issue. The tribes have been very
forthcoming, I must say, about participating because they see
that it is in their interest to provide that kind of
information to you. So we will pursue that.
If we find that that is not enough and that voluntary
compliance by the tribes is not enough, I would assume that one
of my successors will be coming to you and asking you to take a
look at the authorizing statute, P.L. 93-638.
I guess I will just be candid since I will not be here
again.
Mr. Dicks. We always expect you to be.
Mr. Gover. Congress went a little overboard in making sure
that the Bureau of Indian Affairs stayed out of the tribes'
business under this law. I perfectly understand the reasons
that it did so. But by telling the Bureau that they cannot make
regulations regarding any program requirements and that sort of
thing, it leaves us with virtually no authority to direct how
services are delivered on the reservation. Somewhere there is a
better balance, I believe. The Bureau should not be telling
these local communities that they will do this and they will do
that. However, we need the ability to get that information and
bring it to you to show how these dollars you are giving us are
being spent. Right now, we do not have that authority.
Mr. Dicks. So you think there may be a necessity--unless
you can work this out with the tribes--to have possible some
additional authority?
Mr. Gover. Yes, sir.
Mr. Dicks. And that will be controversial?
Mr. Gover. Very.
TRUST RESPONSIBILITIES
Mr. Dicks. How are we doing on natural resource programs?
This has been a concern in my area--timber and other issues--
where there is a trust responsibility to the tribes. This is
another area that is mentioned in the report.
Mr. Gover. It is, and we face many challenges in that area.
All of this litigation and the great tumult over our execution
of the trust responsibility in the past demonstrates the kind
of problems we have.
We have undertaken a massive reform program that is
proceeding and is beginning to yield results. There is no
question that we have a lot of work left to do. What we have
realized in the course of going through and trying to clean up
what has happened in the past is that if we do not increase the
resources that we are devoting to these programs, 5 years hence
we will be back in the same situation we are in now. What is
required is not only to design, establish, and implement these
systems, but get highly qualified people to operate them. Then
and only then will we be meeting our trust responsibility to
the tribes for these resources.
Mr. Dicks. And we have heard from the Secretary about the
problems with the recordkeeping and the various lawsuits. How
long do you think it will take us before we see real progress
on all these issues? Will it be 5 years, 10 years, 15?
Mr. Gover. We are seeing real progress now, but we have
sort of started at the bottom. We can begin making progress
immediately, and we are. We are very hopeful that by the end of
2004 we will be able to present to the Congress a reformed
trust management system. Meanwhile, it obviously is taking
place piecemeal. It will go into effect bit by bit. We have
twelve different projects that are part of the overall effort.
In each case we are making progress--some faster than others.
But the main projects we have to complete are the Trust
Fund Accounting System, TFAS, and the Trust Assets and
Accounting Management System. If we can successfully deploy
those, our field personnel will have the tools they need to do
this job correctly.
Mr. Dicks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
OFFICE RELOCATION
Mr. Regula. Reform is the watchword these days.
I understand on March 6 the plaintiffs in the Cobell case
filed suit to get a temporary restraining order against moving
the Office of Information Resource Management to Washington.
This is inconsistent with the recommendations of NAPA, if I
understand it correctly. Would you agree?
Ms. Neves. NAPA did not explicitly say to move the office
here, nor did it say not to. NAPA believes that that is the
Assistant Secretary's decision.
However, NAPA saw advantages to moving the office here,
having face-to-face contact, and enhancing the responsiveness
of the people working in that area. A lot of it depends on the
style of the individual administrator. A lot of it depends on
how far decentralization has taken part. A lot of it depends on
whether you have strong integrative mechanisms to tie together
an organization in Albuquerque with Washington. NAPA feels some
of those elements are definitely missing.
In this lawsuit, it is my understanding that there is some
misunderstanding about what NAPA said and what NAPA did not
say. But we were at times persuaded to believe that face-to-
face communications would be very useful in order to better
manage this agency.
Mr. Hanson. The specific recommendation of the panel
appears on page 45 of the report.
Mr. Regula. That would be directed at this question, then?
Mr. Hanson. Yes.
Mr. Regula. Will the Department appeal this decision?
Mr. Gover. First, we will comply with the decision. The
judge said that we were not to move information that is now
housed at the Office of Information Resource Management in
Albuquerque until we have provided a satisfactory plan for the
security of that data. And we will supply----
Mr. Regula. The transition? Or once it is here?
Mr. Gover. Both.
But the irony is that one of the criticisms both the
Inspector General and NAPA had of our IRM operation is that
there is inadequate security now. We believe security will be
improved when we bring it back into a proper facility and a
proper direction by the Central Office.
But of course we will comply with what the judge has said.
We have taken irrevocable personnel actions to cause the move
of the personnel associated with that office. In fact, some of
them are probably in their cars on their way here as we speak.
So we are sort of at a point of no turning back. But the judge
has imposed conditions on that move that we believe are
reasonable. It is probably easier simply to comply than to go
through the trouble and turmoil of an appeal.
INFORMATION SECURITY
Mr. Regula. What kind of information do they have that
would be top secret or be a concern?
Mr. Gover. It is not top secret information. It is
information having to do with the economic interests of
individual account holders in our IIM system. It is Privacy Act
material that we have responsibility to keep secret and not to
share with those who are not otherwise authorized to have such
information.
The judge felt that we had not gone far enough--and I am
working on second-hand information myself here--in our contract
requirements with the contractor to assure the security of that
information. We have already talked to the contractor. We will
amend the contract as per the court's directions, and we will
submit the security plan the judge has asked us for.
SYSTEM MANAGEMENT
Mr. Regula. This is the contractor that manages the
information system on behalf of BIA?
Mr. Gover. No, it is actually a contractor we brought on to
help us specifically with the move. But in order to do that,
they are going to have to have access to this Privacy Act
material and that creates certain requirements on them. The
court has made that clear to us and we will comply.
Mr. Regula. Your plan is to move, but to do this you will
have to adjust to the order of the court, which has set certain
parameters that you need to meet as a prerequisite of moving
OIRM?
Mr. Gover. Of moving the information, yes.
Mr. Regula. The office would have to go with it, right?
Mr. Gover. The plan was to move the people here, to get
them set up and organized with their own system. Meanwhile, we
would use a contractor out in the field to keep the system
running while they are transitioning.
Mr. Regula. Do you have any problems with the present
operation?
Mr. Gover. Oh, my. We have a number of problems.
As I indicated earlier, they have been identified as a
material weakness by our auditors. There is inadequate security
for the information they manage. There are inadequate controls
and inadequate policies and procedures, which is why we need a
Chief Information Officer that is directly supervising this
office in order to get the kind of results we expect.
Mr. Regula. Do you have one now?
Mr. Gover. No, we do not. In the Trust Management
Improvement Project, we are finding out that we still have
field personnel who are operating on old DOS operating systems.
They do not even use a Windows system. They are still using the
control keys. They do not know how to use a mouse. They do not
know how to point and click. They do not know what a pop-up
menu is.
Frankly, these are all new terms to me, too. [Laughter.]
Mr. Gover. But for modern management, this is old stuff. So
our IRM operation fails to take advantage of the kind of
technology that is available to do our job. That is what NAPA
identified and it has to stop.
Mr. Regula. The records aren't really computerized in the
sense that you can recall them instantly?
Mr. Gover. That is correct. We keep some current data on
the system, but we still have field personnel--another thing
NAPA pointed out--getting into files and using the original
conveyances from as much as 100 years ago in paper records in
their offices. That is not how people do business today.
Mr. Regula. You do the accounts where you show the
leasehold revenues that flow to the tribes. Wouldn't the tribes
want you to have these records in good shape because it affects
the access money coming to them?
Mr. Gover. The tribes do want it in good shape, and they
have been very supportive of our efforts in that regard.
Some tribes have not been cooperative in the sense that
they want to keep those records on their reservation because
they are very concerned that they might be lost, destroyed--and
who can blame them for having that concern? But it is up to us
to persuade them that we are going to take good care of those
records.
Mr. Regula. Does the tribe have a set and you have a master
set?
Mr. Gover. Unfortunately, no. There is a set. Some are in
the possession of the tribes and others in our possession,
depending on whether or not the tribes have taken over these
functions. There may be duplicate records of various sorts, but
not kept systematically as duplicates.
Mr. Regula. No consistent system? Sort of on a tribe-by-
tribe basis as to how the records are maintained?
Mr. Gover. Yes, I am sure that is true. That is why we have
as an element of the Trust Improvement Project a records
management project.
Mr. Regula. Do you agree with this?
Mr. Hanson. Yes, I do, Mr. Chairman.
Just speaking personally for a moment, there are two kinds
of administrative problems: some are problems and some are
messes. What Mr. Gover has is a mess. He really has to have the
power to correct it.
Mr. Regula. I think this is a good point to move on to the
Special Trustee.
Mr. Dicks, do you have any further questions?
Mr. Dicks. No, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Regula. Thank you very much for doing the report and
for being here today. I think it is clear that it has resonated
well with the Assistant Secretary trying to move the Department
in the right direction. We appreciate your thoughtful response
to the request.
OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL TRUSTEE
Mr. Regula. Mr. Thompson, you are the Acting Trustee?
Mr. Thompson. I am actually the Principal Deputy.
Mr. Regula. You are in charge of the ``mess'' he described.
Is that correct?
Mr. Thompson. I was a little afraid to come up here when he
mentioned ``mess'' but we can report some improvements to the
mess we inherited.
Mr. Regula. We look forward to your testimony. Your entire
statement will be placed in the record and you can summarize as
you choose.
OPENING STATEMENT
Mr. Thompson. I will do that quickly. Let me just change
the theme a little bit here.
Again, I appreciate the opportunity to present the OST
budget. The budget we present is for the entire trust reform
effort for the Department with a couple of exceptions. The
request is about $95 million, about the same level as last
year.
We basically have a couple of major changes. The actual
reform dollars amount is going down a little bit from $65
million to about $58 million and we are asking for additional
funds to support the Indian land consolidation effort that
Kevin has running now. We would like to increase that effort to
buy down the fractionated interest.
We also support the need for additional money and staff in
the field for BIA. We are bringing major reforms to trust
management in Indian country, but without additional staff we
will see those regress to the condition that we are trying to
fix right now. Kevin needs additional help out there and we
support his budget request in that arena.
Again, the request that you see this year supports the
emphasis and the importance of trust reform to the
Administration, to Secretary Babbitt, and to Kevin and I.
Let me mention some of the things we used the money for
that you gave us last year. We do have some successes to
report.
TRUST REFORM ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Later this month we will complete the conversion of all the
BIA regions to the new Trust Fund Accounting System, which
means that all the 270,000 odd accounts and all the investment
money is under a commercial standard trust system. It is
operated by a company in Pennsylvania for us, and they are
doing a very good job. That is the first major piece we were
trying to do.
In addition, Kevin's people have piloted the Trust
Accounting and Asset Management System that will manage the
land, the trust assets in the BIA. That has been piloted in the
Rocky Mountain Region and we expect to make a decision shortly
to extend that to at least the land title portion of the BIA in
the next few months.
We have done a lot of data cleanup. You have heard a lot
about that, but there is still more to do. The condition of the
records we spoke of just a moment ago, obviously. In the
records management area, we have consolidated our effort into a
single office that supports both OST and BIA. We hired a very
seasoned and highly respected records specialist from the
Department of State and he has now brought his staff on board
and is moving--to answer Mr. Dicks' question, we think you will
see significant changes in the records arena over the next 3
years. We have a very extensive program and a lot of milestones
and made a lot of commitments.
I would also say that BIA is well on its way to eliminating
the appraisal backlog we have uncovered in the trust reform
effort. We have just published a new High Level Implementation
Plan. That is the Plan that we use to manage the effort
overall.
This Plan is much more robust than the Plan we did 2 years
ago. It has a lot more detail and a lot more milestones, if you
will. The first Plan had about 134 critical steps; this one has
over 220. So we are basically showing everybody our hand and
where we are going to go.
REFORM TIMEFRAME
Mr. Regula. How long will it take you to implement this?
Mr. Thompson. A lot of this work you will see in the next 2
years, but there are some pieces of it that will run out to
2003 and 2004. To finish up the policies and procedures is
going to take a little longer. As I mentioned, the records
piece probably will not be done until 2002. Some of the systems
will not be finished until 2002. It is a massive effort. We are
dealing with over 4,000 people in BIA alone, probably 400 sites
across the country, and millions upon millions of pages of
records. And we are also spending a lot of time responding to
the court, to be frank. A lot of the time in the last 6 months
has been spent responding to the court, supporting the court
effort. The same people who are doing the trust reform are
doing the work for the court and also trying to carry on their
day-to-day jobs.
We were a little ambitious in our scheduling and we have
had to change the plan to reflect that in some cases.
As I said, there is a lot of work that has been done and
there is more that needs to be done.
I would like to mention one final thing. As you know, Mr.
Slonaker has been nominated by the President to be the Special
Trustee. The hearing in the Senate is scheduled for the 22nd of
March. We hope they will move quickly in confirming him. I
particularly look forward to having Mr. Slonaker sitting here
instead of me.
[The statement of Mr. Thompson follows:]
Offset Folios 227 to 230 Insert here
SUNSET OF TRUSTEE'S OFFICE
Mr. Regula. I take it the trustee's office will be out of
business.
Mr. Thompson. It will probably be in business until 2004,
because that is what the schedule calls for. The trustee's job
is to make sure that----
Mr. Regula. Do you think you will meet that schedule?
Mr. Thompson. I believe we can meet that schedule, yes.
BIA TRUST INCREASES
Mr. Regula. The Bureau's budget proposes significant
increases for real estate services, probate, survey, and land
record improvement. Have you developed a long-term plan to
eliminate this backlog and get these records up to date?
Mr. Thompson. That request is the one I mentioned earlier.
It is about $35 million, 250 new staff all dedicated to the
trust management area in the BIA. It is critically needed. We
find the people are overworked, they are stretched, and there
is work that is not getting done.
The long-term plan to fix those things is contained in the
High Level Implementation Plan. You will see very specific
pieces of work broken down about how to tackle areas of
probate, appraisal, and cleaning up the backlog of data in both
OST and BIA.
Mr. Gover. In addition, Mr. Chairman, one of the things the
judge asked us to supply was a plan for the adequate staffing
of all the trust functions in both OST and BIA. We did so, and
that plan calls for us to examine exactly the issue you just
described--how many people it will take to do this right.
LAND OWNERSHIP RECORDS
Mr. Regula. If I understand it correctly, the information
on who owns what, who is owed what--all of that is in a
somewhat chaotic condition. Your mission is to get deed records
corrected, probate records to establish ownership of land, to
establish the distribution of revenues to the proper
landowner--is that essentially the case?
Mr. Thompson. That pretty well sums it up, but I have lots
of help because Kevin gets to do a lot of this work in the BIA.
Mr. Regula. So it is a team effort?
Mr. Thompson. Absolutely a team effort. In fact, this
effort involves five different bureaus and offices within the
Department of Interior--the Minerals Management Service, the
Office of the Special Trustee, the Bureau of Indian Affairs----
Mr. Regula. Because in some way they impact on the land
management, either in leasing or----
Mr. Thompson. Yes, sir.
FRACTIONATED SHARES
Mr. Regula. Are you dealing with the fractionated shares
issue?
Mr. Gover. Yes, sir. In fact, we asked Congress for quite a
bit of money to continue working on that. We have now spent all
the money we were given in fiscal year 1999 in the pilot
project in the Great Lakes Region and we had enormous success.
My figures are now about a month old, but we found that we
purchased 16,000 fractionated interests for about $4 million. I
forget the statistics, but that allowed us to close a couple
thousand accounts that we will no longer have to bear
responsibility for.
Given what it costs us year by year for OST to even have
these accounts open--and remember, these are accounts that are
generating virtually no money to the beneficiaries--just to
keep those open, there is a significant savings to the
Government to no longer have to maintain those accounts.
Mr. Regula. And the Government will get the value of the
royalties represented by those fractional interests. Am I
correct?
Mr. Gover. The idea is that we will be repaid out of income
that is produced by these interests that we get. Having said
that, I do not want to suggest that we are going to get this
money back dollar for dollar. We are also finding that a number
of these lands do not generate any income, never have and
probably never will.
Mr. Dicks. Could we do more of this? Are there more of
these accounts that we could do if you had the money to settle
with the individuals?
Mr. Gover. Absolutely. That is why we are looking to expand
the program.
Mr. Dicks. How much could you use?
Mr. Gover. We do not know the entire universe yet. We know
we will spend the $5 million we have for fiscal year 2000 with
no problem. And I believe we have asked the Congress for $12.5
million next year. We have had no shortage of willing sellers
and there is certainly no shortage of tiny interests that need
to be bought out rather than to try to continue to manage them
with all this expense.
Mr. Dicks. Is there a report being done on this particular
subject?
Mr. Gover. Mr. Chairman, I will provide such a report.
[The information follows:]
Land Consolidation Program
In addition to the $12.5 million requested in the budget of
the Office of Special Trustee for an expansion of the Land
Consolidation Program, the Bureau conservatively estimates that
it would cost approximately $500 million to eliminate the
fractionated ownership problem associated with individually
owned trust and restricted lands. It is important to emphasize
that the problem of fractionated ownership is essentially a
problem of the Federal Government and not that of Indian
Tribes. Fractionation affects lands held in trust or restricted
status by the United States for individual Indians and,
therefore, administered and managed by the Federal Government.
As of February 2000, the Bureau has acquired 18,956
undivided interests (90 percent of the interests are less than
two percent) approximately 11,000 acres at a cost of $4.5
million under its Indian Land Consolidation Pilot program
operated on three reservations under the administrative
jurisdiction of its Midwest Regional Office.
Mr. Dicks. It seems to me that if we are spending a couple
billion dollars on trying to get these records straightened
out--if we can eliminate a number of these accounts it seems to
me that ought to be able to help us somewhat in dealing with
the problem.
Mr. Gover. We believe it is an excellent long-term solution
to this problem.
Mr. Dicks. I would rather take $2 billion and use it to
settle the claims than try to--it seems to me, to be a better
investment, to try to settle these claims.
How many more years is this going to take?
Mr. Gover. To get the systems back the way they are
supposed to be, as Tom indicated, should be by 2004. But that
does not resolve----
Mr. Dicks. That is another $8 billion.
Mr. Gover. Well, no.
TRUST REFORM BUDGET
Mr. Thompson. Can I put some numbers on the table about
what the cost is?
To date----
Mr. Dicks. So $2 billion is the entire operating budget for
the whole period of time?
Mr. Gover. For the whole BIA. That includes everything in--
--
Mr. Dicks. How much of that $2 billion is for the trust
accounts?
Mr. Thompson. Sir, I can tell you what we have spent to
date and what you have appropriated to date for trust reform.
From 1997 through today in our request it is going to be
about $200 million for the reform effort.
Mr. Dicks. I feel better.
Mr. Gover. However, Congressman, you have touched on an
important issue. The likelihood is that we owe some people some
money for what has gone on in the past. We can go about that in
one of two ways. We can actually try to audit each and every
one of these accounts at some phenomenal expense, or we can try
to find another solution. As you say, I would much rather pay
the accountholders than spend it trying to audit the accounts.
Mr. Dicks. If it makes more sense, why wouldn't we try to
do that? Would the people who are owed this money cooperate?
Mr. Gover. We have a process underway now where we are
going to go to the reservations and ask that very question:
Here are a set of options, which one makes the most sense to
you? Literally, to the accountholders. We do not know what the
answers are going to be, but the point is to learn what exactly
the question is you are asking. What do they want us to do?
Mr. Dicks. Mr. Chairman, don't you think that if we can
work out a settlement to minimize the amount of money going to
people auditing these accounts, and these people would be
satisfied, that that would be a better way to handle this
instead of auditing thousands--how many accounts are there?
Mr. Thompson. There are 300,000 accounts.
Mr. Regula. It sounds like a good management tool.
Mr. Dicks. Thank you for allowing me to interrupt, Mr.
Chairman. I do have one additional question.
On March 3 there was an AP article stating that it would
take much longer to come up with the computer system to manage
funds held in trust for the Indian community. The article
further states that there are some severe development problems
and there is no longer a time table to have it up and running
nationwide.
Could you please comment on these serious charges? Is this
true?
Mr. Thompson. What they are referring to----
Mr. Dicks. Rex Hackler, a spokesman for the Bureau of
Indian Affairs, did not return calls on Thursday.
Mr. Gover. Congressman, let me leap to our defense here.
First of all, as it happened, Mr. Hackler was out sick that
day, so in fact he did not return phone calls. I thought that
was kind of a cheap shot, frankly.
We do not agree with the assertions that were made.
Certainly, as Mr. Thompson testified, as we learn more and more
about these systems we are finding that our original schedule
was very, very ambitious and probably too optimistic. That does
not change the fact that we have made remarkable progress in
the development of this system.
In fact, the system itself works. The software system
works. That is not really the problem. The problem is that the
data that exists in the field is on such antiquated systems and
in such various conditions of disarray. That is the challenge,
to convert that data into the system.
The great irony here is that at the same time the folks
that are making these types of accusations are telling us to
slow down and put good data into the system--and we are now
slowing down so we can ensure the integrity of the data--and
then they say that we are not meeting our schedule. So we are
damned if we do and damned if we don't on that.
Mr. Dicks. But is there a possibility of getting all good
data at this point?
Mr. Gover. We will probably never get 100 percent accurate
data going all the way back to the initiation of the system.
That is correct.
SETTLEMENT
Mr. Dicks. Has anyone approached the judge about a
settlement on this matter? Is the Justice Department and the
Department of the Interior trying to settle this case?
Mr. Gover. We did, sir.
Mr. Dicks. And the judge would not settle it?
Mr. Gover. The judge was very interested in seeing the case
settled. In fact, we had a settlement effort under the guidance
of a mediator and it was unsuccessful.
Mr. Dicks. Can you explain why it was unsuccessful?
Mr. Gover. Unfortunately, Congressman----
Mr. Dicks. You are a distinguished member of the bar. What
happened?
Mr. Gover. I am a member of the bar.
Mr. Dicks. Distinguished, maybe? [Laughter.]
Mr. Gover. We made an agreement with the plaintiffs when we
began the effort to settle the case that we would not discuss
the details. And we remain under court order not to do so.
I think it is fair to say that we tried, they tried, and we
were just too far apart to settle it at that point. We remain
open to further discussions on any aspect of this and are
hopeful that at some point in the not-too-distant future there
will be another effort to simply settle the case.
Mr. Dicks. Who is the plaintiff's lead lawyer on this? Is
it an individual or a group of lawyers?
Mr. Gover. A group of lawyers.
Mr. Dicks. Anybody in charge? One name in this article was
Keith Harper, a Cherokee lawyer representing----
Mr. Gover. He is one of the attorneys for the case on that
side, yes.
Mr. Dicks. But is there any one law firm or anybody who is
really the lead on the litigation?
Mr. Gover. It seems to be a team effort, Congressman. There
are three different law firms involved. Depending on the issue,
we may see one firm or we may see another.
Mr. Dicks. But it seems to me that this is the kind of case
that would--with all this uncertainty and over 150 years of
data--it would seem that the Government could come up with a
fair settlement. It seems to me that would make good sense.
Mr. Gover. I agree with that.
Mr. Dicks. Then you need a system for the future to do this
job appropriately. Do the best you can to recreate the records.
But if it is going to be this expensive, then it seems to me
there should be another effort to try to settle this thing.
Mr. Gover. We agree with you.
Mr. Dicks. I think it would be a good thing for this
Administration to attempt before it leaves office.
Mr. Gover. I take your words to heart and we will make
another effort at it.
Mr. Dicks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman
Mr. Regula. Thank you.
We have to deal with the budget yet.
We appreciate your coming, Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Slonaker, I think you realize there will be something
to do when you get confirmed. There are a few challenges left
for you. We wish you well in your Senate experience in 2 weeks.
Thank you for a good job thus far. You have a big challenge.
Mr. Gover, now you can tell us why you need more money.
[Laughter.]
OPENING STATEMENT OF MR. GOVER
Mr. Gover. Mr. Chairman, I can be very brief now. We have
discussed so many issues.
FY 2001 BUDGET PRIORITIES
We basically are looking at four priority areas in our
fiscal year 2001 budget request. Far and away the largest
element of the increase we have requested from the Congress is
in the area of school construction. Our school system is simply
in terrible condition. It is really not acceptable that a
country with the resources that ours has, and a Federal
Government that is responsible for only two school systems in
the end, that one of those school systems should be in such bad
condition in terms of its physical plant.
We have been heartily criticized by the Congress and others
for not making requests that are adequate to begin to attack
this problem in a systematic way. We have tried to step up this
year and really begin a comprehensive attack on this problem.
So that is the majority of our request.
Let me introduce the people who just joined us. Hilda
Manuel is the Deputy Commissioner of Indian Affairs and Joe
Christie is the Acting Director of the Office of Indian
Education Programs, so I will refer all difficult questions to
them.
Another area in which we have asked for increases is in
trust management. As we move forward with our trust reform
effort what we find is that the cleanup and the reform of the
system is not going to be enough. The reality is--as NAPA notes
and as Mr. Thompson noted and as Judge Lambert noted--we just
do not have enough people in the field to do the job we are
responsible for doing, and that if we do not do it we are
legally liable for any failures.
So this is the first year we have requested major increases
in our ongoing trust program. It is absolutely necessary that
we begin to get those resources or else future administrations
and future Congresses will find themselves inheriting the
situation we have inherited.
The second area is in the area of housing improvement. We
have basically asked you to double our budget for the Housing
Improvement Program. The Housing Improvement Program goes to
the most needy people on the reservations. These are folks that
could not even qualify to get into the HUD low rent program and
could not even begin to qualify for the mutual home ownership
program that HUD operates. So these folks are not served by the
Department of Housing and Urban Development because they are so
very poor.
The tribal leaders that we worked with identified a need in
excess of $800 million for this program area alone. I did not
come to you with those numbers because I did not find that the
analysis behind them was solid enough, but I am confident that
we are talking about several hundred million dollars of need in
this area. And this is something that we have not really
focused on during my time here. So we ask you for that
increase.
The final major increase we requested is in the area of law
enforcement. As the Committee well knows, the Congress has been
very generous with us for the last 2 years in the area of law
enforcement in response to the crisis that exists in Indian
Country. If you are a Native American in this country, it is
two and a half times more likely that you will be the victim of
a violent crime than if you were not an Indian according to the
latest Justice Department statistics. So it is essential that
we continue to expand the law enforcement presence on the
reservations.
This year we are asking for about $18 million in new money
to continue to expand our police services on the reservation.
This would be on top of the increases we have requested before.
This is year three of the Administration's 4-year effort to try
to upgrade law enforcement on the reservations. In fact, we are
putting more and more and more officers into the field. The
problem, of course, is that as we begin to experience success,
we are making more arrests, that creates more cases, that
creates more people that we have to jail. So we have increasing
needs in those areas as well.
Mr. Regula. Does it have a deterrent effect on crime?
Mr. Gover. I cannot say that yet. The way money gets spent
in the Government, there seems to be a lag between the time you
give it to us and the time we begin to see results in the
field. But we will get you whatever information we do have on
that.
[The information follows:]
Bureau of Indian Affairs Law Enforcement--Deterrents to Crime
The additional resources the Congress has provided for the
Presidential Initiative on Improving Law Enforcement in Indian
Country have been used to invigorate and strengthen the police
presence in Indian Country. An increased police presence
creates a strong deterrent to crime.
Just a few years ago, many calls to police departments for
service in Indian Country were not answered and officers were
required to patrol alone due to insufficient resources. As a
result of increased funding provided through the Initiative,
additional trained officers have been hired and are available
to respond to calls and develop proactive crime prevention
strategies. As more officers are hired, police departments are
becoming increasingly involved with programs such as Drug Abuse
Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) and Gang Resistance Education
And Training (G.R.E.A.T). These programs help police officers
develop rapport with young people and their communities, and
reduce the likelihood that they will engage in crime. In
addition, police managers are implementing community-oriented
policing strategies, to draw on the problem-solving skills of
other service providers and citizens in their communities.
The Bureau's FY 2001 request for an additional $18.8
million in law enforcement funding would help build on these
proactive efforts to reduce crime and allow the Bureau to
continue its collaborative law enforcement efforts.
I think we are actually going to see an increase in the
crime rate, but only because we are arresting more criminals
than we have in the past. So the statistics may be deceptive.
But certainly the anecdotal information I receive from the
field indicates that law enforcement is becoming more
aggressive and more pervasive on the reservation and certainly
badly needed.
EDUCATION
Let me just mention a couple of other items briefly from
our education budget.
We asked for funds to increase our Family And Child
Education program. It is an early childhood development program
that currently operates at 22 sites. We would like to expand
that to 44 because we are getting some very strong results. The
heart of the program is to bring parents into the school to
work with their young people and really involve them in the
education of their children. Given the results we are having at
the schools where the program exists, we would like to expand
it.
The second is a program that we call the Therapeutic
Residential Dorms Model. What we are asking is for money to
fund six pilot sites at boarding schools to begin to address
some severe social and psychological problems that we see.
Mr. Regula. What percentage of the Native American school
population is in boarding schools versus living at home?
Mr. Christie. That would be 10,000 out of the 50,000 that
we serve, so about 20 percent.
Mr. Gover. In these boarding schools, we find that we end
up primarily with troubled young people. These are not model
students. They are not the kids that come from very stable
family environments. In fact, they are very likely to have had
previous experiences with the criminal justice system,
certainly have already failed in their local public or tribal
school. Quite often we are dealing with alcohol and substance
abuse issues, whether in the child or in the family. Often we
are dealing with domestic violence or sexual abuse.
We get these kids in a very damaged condition. All we are
able to do is provide them a warm bed, warm meals, and a basic
instructional program. Right now we have no availability to
provide them the kind of therapy, emotional, and psychological
services that are required if we are going to rescue these
young people. If they fail in our schools, the next stop is
juvenile detention or jail, whether it be a tribal jail or the
Federal prisons.
I have a long presentation that I make about this in
general, but I think we have inherited the legacy of a horribly
misguided boarding school policy at the beginning and through
the middle of this century. So now we are dealing with the
children and grandchildren of people who themselves were abused
or dehumanized in the boarding school system that we operated
earlier in this century.
Mr. Regula. Your boarding school operation is not
necessarily because of distance. It may be because of lack of
family stability and they are put in the boarding school.
Mr. Christie. That is correct. Geographic isolation is not
the issue anymore. Less than .5 percent would be for that
reason. The rest of it is socioeconomic, physical abuse, mental
health problems, family and home problems.
Mr. Regula. It makes your job a challenge.
Mr. Gover. It makes it virtually impossible right now while
we are unable to offer anything beyond the very basic
instruction program that any school could provide.
As I said, these young people are slipping away from us.
They will become burdens on the Government--both the tribal
government and the Federal Government--in years to come if we
cannot intervene at an earlier stage and try to get them on a
path that will lead them into productive and useful lives.
Mr. Chairman, those are the highlights of the request we
have made this year. Obviously, we have asked for a large
increase. We are part of a larger Administration initiative to
improve our services to Indian Country. In our budget, we tried
to focus on needs that are basically indisputable, things that
we know need to be done, areas where we carry a legacy of
failure. We would like to reverse that legacy and begin to
address some of these issues.
We know it is a lot of money. We know the constraints under
which the Committee operates. But we certainly ask for and
appreciate your assistance in trying to deal with some of these
very serious human issues that exist in Indian Country.
[The statement of Mr. Gover follows:]
Offset Folios 250 to 258 Insert here
Student Performance
Mr. Regula. Your role would be somewhat custodial as
opposed to being an educator.
Mr. Christie. In the dorms, that is correct.
Mr. Regula. But the dorms are operated under your bureau?
It is a total package.
Mr. Christie. That is correct.
Mr. Regula. Do you get children only of school age?
Mr. Christie. Our FACE program moves into the home at birth
and deals with the parents up to age three. Then we bring them
into a center-based program. Then we move them from that
center-based program into kindergarten. But from then on they
are in our schools in both day schools--which means they can
live at home and go to school. in our peripheral dorms where we
have a dormitory adjacent to a public school, and in our own
reservation dorms where they can stay in the community and move
back and forth--but a large segment of them live 7 days a week
in those dorms--and then our schools of last resort are our
off-reservation boarding schools where everybody is in the
dorms and everybody has these major mental health, behavior,
and social problems.
Mr. Regula. I see your report card for 1998 showed
improvement in key statistics. Is this a real improvement in
student performance? Is it reflected this year?
Mr. Christie. The data that we collected from the last
school session--165 out of 173 schools have been collected--
preliminarily it shows about a 2 percent increase in our
language arts achievement. Our math achievements are staying
virtually the same. Our attendance rates have gone up and our
drop-out rates have gone down.
So it is good. It is not where we want it to be, but it is
moving in the right direction.
Mr. Regula. Do you have a problem getting teachers?
Mr. Christie. Yes, sir, we do. As you know, nationwide
there is a major teacher shortage. We are paying the DOD rates
in our Bureau-operated schools, which allows us to be very
competitive. Then we are allowed geographic and other additions
to those salaries to attract teachers. We are having a major
problem in attracting enough special education teachers.
Mr. Regula. Does your Department have supervision over the
students who go to the non-Indian schools but are paid for by
the BIA on a tuition basis? Do you have any impact on those? If
these students go off-reservation to non-Indian operated
school, then you lose any jurisdiction. Is that correct?
Mr. Christie. That is correct. Our ISEP Program funds
Bureau-operated, grant, and contract schools. They can be
either on-reservation or off-reservation according to where
they are located. We have jurisdictional control over those,
but we have reporting problems under our P.L. 100-297 grants
that is similar to the problems with P.L. 93-638 contracts
because our legislation does not allow us to go in to monitor
and evaluate the actual education program there.
But if they go to a public school, where 90 percent of the
Indian students in the United States go, the only program we
have for public schools is the Johnson O'Malley Program, which
is in the TPA part of the budget and is run locally by the
tribe and by the local education parent committees. But all the
rest of the schools, whether parochial or public, are out from
under our control.
Mr. Regula. But 90 percent of the potential student body
goes to the public schools?
Mr. Christie. That is correct. Out of about 500,000 school-
age Indian children, we have about 50,000; 450,000 go to public
schools or parochial schools.
Mr. Regula. Ms. Manuel, you are in charge of programs other
than education. Can you give us some success stories?
Law Enforcement Progress
Ms. Manuel. I am very proud of our law enforcement
initiative. As the Assistant Secretary has indicated, we are
beginning our third year. Although it is the third year, I
think it will take--when you take into account the recruitment,
the training, and actually putting the officers on the street,
it will take us another year or two before we actually start
seeing the results of the initiative.
Trust Management Improvement
I am also very engaged in the Trust Management Improvement
Project. In that regard, this last go-around where we spent a
great deal of time revising the High Level Implementation
Plan--I am particularly proud of the fact that the Bureau has
come quite a long way from 2 years ago when we were just
beginning to appreciate the magnitude of the problems and what
we were seeking to address with the High Level Implementation
Plan.
As Mr. Thompson indicated, in the backlog area we are now
actually going to be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel
in that the appraisal backlog will be brought to a manageable
level.
I am looking forward to the implementation of the Probate
Reinvention Lab recommendations, and in particular putting in
place the attorney decisionmakers at the ten Regional Offices
that have the largest volume of probate backlogs, bringing on
probate specialists, paralegals--the skills that we need to
start moving these cases through the system and over to the
Administrative Law Judge.
The commitment is there. Now we need to bring on additional
staff. As you have heard from testimony this morning, the same
people are doing collateral duty.
Mr. Regula. Do you support the NAPA recommendation?
NAPA Support
Ms. Manuel. Absolutely. I knew that it was there. I have
been at the Bureau 10 years, in my present position 5 years. It
has been frustrating, to say the least, to try to bring some
reform to the organization and all it took was to have a
credible organization come in and confirm everything we have
been saying for years.
Mr. Regula. This should give you some leverage now to make
some of these improvements.
Ms. Manuel. Exactly.
Mr. Regula. Mr. Dicks?
School Construction
Mr. Dicks. On your school construction budget, you are
asking for very substantial increases.
How much of the fiscal year 1999 and fiscal year 2000
construction funding has been obligated as of this time?
Mr. Gover. I have to apologize, Congressman. I do not know
the answer, but I will provide it in writing.
[The information follows:]
Offset Folios 264 Insert here
Mr. Dicks. Does anyone here know it?
Mr. Gover. In the last couple of years, Congressman, we
have been able to spend--as I recall, in 1998, we committed
over 100 percent of what had been appropriated because we are
still pulling out of previous years. This year I believe we
fell just short of 100 obligation.
Mr. Dicks. Some people have suggested that if you did a
phased funding--in other words, you could do more schools if
you budgeted over a 2-year period than requiring all the money
to be put up front. Have you thought about that?
Mr. Gover. We have thought about it. The way we are
directed to prepare our budget, it was not an option that was
presented to us. But certainly if the committee wants to work
on such an approach, we are amenable and would look forward to
working on it with you.
Budget Cycle
Mr. Regula. Would a 2-year cycle for budgeting and
appropriations make your job more effective? And would you be
able to be more efficient?
Mr. Gover. I believe that it would. I have been reading
about that proposal. I think it is an excellent idea. I would
just add that, of course, things come up in the course of 2
years that one would not anticipate.
Mr. Regula. We have supplemental appropriations bills, as
you well know.
Mr. Gover. I do support that idea.
Mr. Regula. Thank you.
I yield back.
School Construction Costs
Mr. Dicks. The average cost per school in your budget
request is $21 million. That is very high.
Mr. Gover. It is very expensive.
Mr. Dicks. Is it because of the rural nature? We have the
same problem in military construction of housing. One of these
had a price tag of almost $40 million. The cost per square foot
was well over $200, more than double the average cost for
building public schools elsewhere in the country.
Tell us why.
Mr. Gover. I think the cost of building schools is simply
going up because of a number of new requirements like the ADA
requirements, the special education requirements, and a variety
of other education reform initiatives that do create new
structural requirements in these buildings.
I think the heart of the matter, though, really is the
rural location and the fact that we build one school at a time.
We get no advantages of having a major ongoing construction
program that would allow us to contract long-term at better
prices than others could get. We are building schools in
Chinle, Arizona, and places even more remote than that as
opposed to some of the more urban or less rural locations. I
believe that is responsible for most of the additional costs we
seem to incur.
Mr. Dicks. Are these competitively bid?
Mr. Gover. The tribes can contract to build these schools.
And they are entitled to the contract if they ask us for it.
However, they in turn are required to bid at least most
elements of the project.
Mr. Christie. And we don't have sewer systems and water
systems to hook into, so we have to create our own sewer
systems and water systems as part of these construction
efforts.
Contract Oversight
Mr. Dicks. Last year numerous questions were raised about
construction practices at the Lac Courte Oreilles school. What
have you done to assure that the type of problems that occurred
at this school will not happen again?
Could you explain for the record what did happen?
Mr. Gover. We had some severe cost overruns at Lac Courte
Oreilles and compounded by the fact that the tribe built a much
larger school than the Congress had authorized or that we had
authorized for them. So they had built a building much bigger
than the one we had agreed to and then were looking to us for
more money that went beyond what we had already agreed to.
Mr. Dicks. Sounds like defense contractors. [Laughter.]
Mr. Gover. I think the idea was sort of possession being
nine-tenths of the law. It made sense to them to be aggressive.
We have since resolved the matter with Lac Courte Oreilles.
The tribe actually has accepted the responsibility and the cost
for finishing that school.
Mr. Dicks. So it will be finished?
Mr. Gover. It will be finished.
Mr. Dicks. And then equipped?
Mr. Gover. Yes.
Mr. Dicks. I understand one of the problems was that they
built the school but had no money left to put any equipment
into it.
Mr. Gover. That is correct. That is the cost that I just
talked about.
In order to avoid those kinds of problems in the future and
at this Committee's urging, we did put together an oversight
plan that involves empowering some of our field managers,
training them to oversee these kinds of projects, and to
evaluate up front rather than later in the process the
capabilities of the tribes to monitor this kind of construction
so that we can put them in a category that will describe how
much oversight we need to expend in any given situation. We are
hopeful that that will avoid situations of that type in the
future.
School Operations
Mr. Dicks. According to your budget, the average
expenditure per weighted student is $3,685 at BIA facilities.
The average cost per student nationally is about $6,800. How do
these numbers relate to each other?
Mr. Gover. Not very well, frankly. I think probably the
larger number--the $6,800--probably includes construction costs
or something because the number we work with is about $5,300 or
$5,500, which we think represents the expenses that go into the
ongoing operation of the school.
Regardless of how you do it, we come in considerably behind
the national average in terms of dollars spent per student. A
weighted student unit is not necessarily a student. A
particular student might actually equal 1.8 WSUs because we add
factors of disabilities, special education needs, and that sort
of thing.
But we are about $1,000 per student behind the national
average in our judgment.
Student Count
Mr. Dicks. Do you have authority to oversee student counts
at contract or compact schools?
Mr. Gover. Yes, we do. I must say we have not done a
particularly good job of that in the past. I believe that is
changing under Joe Christie's leadership and we are beginning
to crack down on how those counts are conducted.
We were finding that the schools were inflating their
enrollments and their student counts in some very creative
ways. We have identified many of those ways and are stopping
those practices.
I think the problem here, Mr. Chairman, in all honesty, is
that we have not exercised the authority we have as
aggressively as we should. That is about to change. We are
going to issue some new regulations on the conduct of the
student count to again see that this sort of thing is not going
on.
Tribal Colleges
Mr. Dicks. There was an increase of $2.9 million for the
Tribally Controlled Community Colleges. How will these funds
affect the per student funding level? We still have a major
shortfall here, correct?
Mr. Gover. It will leave us well behind the national
average. It closes the gap only a small amount between what
Tribal Community Colleges receive and what is expended on, say,
a northern Virginia community college.
Law Enforcement Request
Mr. Dicks. Your budget request again identifies reducing
violent crime in Indian Country as a critical need. We
understand that you have set specific goals for reducing so-
called class one crimes over a 5-year period beginning last
year.
Would you review for the committee where we are, starting
in terms of rates of crime and what goals are being set?
Mr. Gover. Mr. Chairman, maybe we can supply that for the
record, or we have our director of law enforcement services
here.
[The information follows:]
Offset Folios 272 Insert here
Mr. Dicks. Well, let the Director say a word or two. He has
been back there waiting eagerly. [Laughter.]
Mr. Quasula. My name is Ted Quasula, Director of BIA Law
Enforcement Services. I am certainly pleased to provide some
remarks. Thank you.
Specifically to your question, we will get you more
specific information, but we just started out with this program
for increasing law enforcement in Indian Country. Like
education, we are in the process of hiring. Our requirements
are such that not too many people get to become cops. You have
to undergo a stringent background check, various tests, and
what not. We are starting to hire, as are tribes.
As the Assistant Secretary said earlier, violent crime in
Indian Country is much higher than off-Indian Country. The age
of the Indian is very young. We have a number of young people
approaching the age where there is a tendency to commit crime.
Between 1997 and 1998 calendar years, according to the records
provided by tribes and the BIA field offices, we have had a 56
percent increase in violent crime, Part One of the FBI annual
crime report, which is terrible. We are way behind the curve as
far as sufficient and adequate staffing out there. We are
playing catch-up. We do not have our 1999 figures yet, but we
will shortly. But from all indications, crime is continuing to
increase, particularly violent crime involving young people.
Mr. Dicks. Part of this crime effort is shared with the
Department of Justice. Their fiscal year 2001 budget for Indian
law enforcement increases from $57 million to $139 million. How
are these activities coordinated?
Mr. Gover. Very closely. We participate with Justice and
Justice tries to fill the gaps that we are unable to fill. For
example, in the construction of detention facilities, their
COPS programs is supplementing our efforts to put more officers
on the street. They are also targeting, for example, tribal
courts, some drug law enforcement issues that we are unable to
reach, and child protection issues. So we are trying not to
spend money twice. We are trying to go forward in locked step
with a unified program.
Timber-Fish-Wildlife Programs
Mr. Dicks. I was disappointed that your budget did not
continue funding for the timber, fish, and wildlife program
which Congress funded last year with $4 million. Is that based
on budgetary constraints?
Mr. Gover. I assume so, Congressman. We certainly agreed
with you that that was an important program and sent it forward
into the process. When it came out the other end, it was not
there.
Forestry
Mr. Dicks. I can just tell you that those are very good
programs. We have very serious problems under the Endangered
Species Act in the Pacific Northwest, which is why we are
trying to fund this. We will try to continue this.
Finally, there is no current forest plan in place that will
allow harvesting of timber?
Mr. Gover. That is correct.
Mr. Dicks. How long does it take to get a forest plan in
place? And there is no money in the budget.
Mr. Gover. That's the larger obstacle. If we had the
people, we could do them really fast.
Mr. Dicks. BIA has to do them?
Mr. Gover. BIA or the tribes have to do it. It can be one
or the other.
Mr. Dicks. Was this a shock? Did this come out of the blue
or did the tribes know this was going to happen?
Mr. Gover. It came as a shock to me. I do not know what the
tribes knew about it. I was surprised to hear that we were
unable to harvest timber without such a plan. We are scrambling
right now to deal with this contingency and to start getting
plans in place where they do not already exist.
Mr. Dicks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Regula. As a follow-up, is there a lot of harvestable
timber out there on Indian lands that as a matter of good
management ought to be harvested?
Mr. Gover. Yes.
Mr. Dicks. And a lot of it is being and has been harvested.
Mr. Regula. But it cannot be done now, can it?
Mr. Dicks. If they have a forest plan----
Mr. Regula. Do some of the tribes have forest plans?
Mr. Gover. Yes.
Mr. Dicks. They want to know what their sustainable harvest
can be.
Mr. Regula. It makes sense.
Mr. Dicks. And for good environmental reasons, too.
Mr. Regula. Mr. Nethercutt?
Replacement School Priority List
Mr. Nethercutt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to you all.
I would like to ask about the issue of priority for
replacement school construction.
Until 1992, BIA revised its priority list each year. The
Paschal Sherman School in my district in eastern Washington is
a good example of how the rankings were changed. In 1982, the
school was ranked 14th on the priority list. By 1985, the
school's ranking increased to number three. After 1985, the
school dropped off the list. It didn't appear again until this
year. Now it is ranked 12th out of 13. Just 2 months ago, we
had a fire at that school, an electrical fire. This is a very
serious need we have. We need a replacement school. I think we
feel as if we have been jockeyed back and forth, up and down,
and around with respect to being on the list, or not on the
list, and why we were not on the list. If we were number three,
why is it not fully constructed by now?
So, please tell me what is happening with respect to this
priority list. If we are 12th of 13, are we going to stay that
way? Or could we be number one in 2 months?
Mr. Gover. I have to give you just a little history.
When Congress froze the list in 1992 and told us to stop
having a new list every year because of exactly the complaint
that you are presenting. So we did. That left us with a list of
16 schools. In a sense, it was arbitrary because you have to
ask why the 1992 list as opposed to 1991 or 1993, but that is
what happened. This business of changing the list every year
needed to stop. We have stuck to that list since that time.
We are now about to complete it. The first three schools on
the new list you just mentioned are the last three on the old
list.
Mr. Nethercutt. The old list as of 1992?
Mr. Gover. That is right.
The new list that we developed--we did an application
process and told every school in the country that if they
wanted to apply now was their chance. Paschal Sherman competed
successfully.
I will commit to you that I do not intend to change that
list and I would encourage the Committee to tell us not to
change that list so that again we can work our way through the
current list, get it done, and then start looking to yet
another list.
I certainly understand the frustration. There are so many
schools out there that are in a dangerous condition right now.
I hate not being able to say that I can take care of all the
problems, but the reality is that we cannot.
Mr. Nethercutt. I understand.
I appreciate your willingness to stay with the list and not
take people off when they get to number three. That was
difficult for us out west.
Detention Facilities
The same is true with respect to law enforcement and
correction facilities, detention facilities for the tribal
organizations. We were on the list for a detention center--I
understand that goes through the Department of Justice with
respect to construction.
Mr. Gover. It does now.
Mr. Nethercutt. I am wondering to what extent the Colville
Tribe is listed or not listed or in line to get some detention
facilities for adults in our tribe.
Mr. Gover. I would like to let Mr. Quasula respond.
Mr. Quasula. We have one list in law enforcement. Colville
is number eight. The first five projects have been completed.
Number six, the tribe got tired of waiting on us and built it
themselves. So we are at number seven, and number eight is
Colville.
Justice awarded out of their fiscal year 1999 funds to
Colville for detention construction about $4.5 million, which
is short of what is really required. The tribe has to leverage
considerably.
Mr. Nethercutt. What communications are ongoing with
respect to their ability to raise that additional money or to
get the additional assistance? Do you know the status as we sit
here?
Mr. Quasula. I think just about every project DOJ has
funded, tribes have come to us saying, would you pay a
percentage of this? Of course, our construction dollars are
zero and that is not what they want to hear.
Mr. Nethercutt. Well, that is a very real problem. We talk
about law enforcement, and the community policing is another
one that we really need in our region, as well as other regions
of the country in tribal areas.
I would hope you would be thoughtful about it. Maybe it is
up to us to try to decide how we can provide some additional
assistance--and that is a challenge--but this is a serious
problem in Indian Country.
Mr. Quasula. It is a real issue.
Mr. Nethercutt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Regula. Thank you.
Mr. Moran?
Mr. Moran. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
RECOGNITION OF TRIBES
First of all, I want to thank the BIA for providing
technical assistance to us in the effort to introduce
legislation granting sovereignty to eight tribes in Virginia.
This is an unbelievable history. These are the original tribes
that first met the colonial settlers--Chief Powhatan and
Pocahontas were members of those tribes--since that first
contact, Virginia made it illegal to be a Native American.
Between 1912 and 1966, it was punishable by imprisonment if you
were to describe yourself as American Indian or Native
American. In fact, you could not get your baby out of a
hospital unless you described them as ``colored'' in those
days.
So it was impossible to sustain their claims, even though
their claims date back to the kings of England in the 17th and
18th century. It was an illegal usurpation of their rights. But
it is going to be very difficult now because obviously the
lands have been settled and there are people who are afraid
that they may use their sovereignty for gambling on those
lands. I am sure that some Indian tribes are going to oppose it
because it means dividing up the pie even further. But it is
the right thing to do.
In fact, if I can, I would like to introduce a couple of
articles on these tribes into the record.
Would that be all right, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Regula. Without objection, the referenced articles will
appear in the record.
[The information follows:]
Offset Folios 282 to 299 Insert here
TUITION ASSISTANCE
Mr. Moran. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Last year, Congressman Davis, Delegate Norton, and I
introduced legislation that granted children of the District of
Columbia the ability to get reimbursed for in-state tuition if
they went to college out of State because there was
insufficient higher education opportunities in the District of
Columbia. So they could get the same tuition that Virginia, for
example, would offer its residents and likewise for Maryland.
Do you think it is possible that that kind of approach
could be used to obtain more affordable higher education
opportunities in the States outside of Indian reservations for
residents of the reservations?
Mr. Gover. We had that thought when we first heard about
the legislation, and yes I do. It would allow us to stretch
very, very scarce scholarship dollars that we allocate to the
tribes much further. And I am sure the tribes would welcome
that sort of initiative.
Mr. Moran. You would think. And you would think it would be
a reasonable, fair, and affordable thing to do.
Mr. Regula. If you clear that with the authorizers, we
might consider putting it on our bill.
Mr. Moran. Wonderful. Terrific.
Mr. Regula. That can sometimes be a challenge, though.
Mr. Moran. I understand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is
worth pursuing.
INDIAN COUNTRY TOUR
Mr. Chairman, has the committee gone out to visit Indian
reservations like Pine Ridge and so on?
Mr. Regula. Not as a committee. I have done it personally.
Mr. Moran. I know you have.
Mr. Regula. Would you like to visit one?
Mr. Moran. I think it might be useful. I know the President
was moved when he saw the conditions at Pine Ridge. It might be
helpful to put it together.
Mr. Regula. That's a big responsibility we have. You were
not here earlier, but I reported that the taxpayer spends $9
billion on Indian programs. We have about $4 billion in our
bill, but Ag, HUD, and a whole host of other bills have
programs they fund, as well. So it is a major policy
expenditure.
Mr. Moran. I know you have gone to see them, but maybe more
of us ought to go with you.
Mr. Regula. That's a suggestion.
Mr. Moran. I think most of the questions I would have asked
have already been addressed, so I am not going to take up your
time. We will have other opportunities and obviously I am in
support of the recipients of the BIA's efforts and funds.
That is all, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
CONCLUSION
Mr. Regula. Well, I think, Mr. Gover, you can see that the
Committee is sensitive to the problems, and I think you are,
too. I think the NAPA report provided a good blueprint. It is
going to take some funding, and we are well aware of that. But
if we can enhance the quality of life of the Native Americans,
we have all done a good deed. I am sure that is part of your
goal.
Mr. Gover. Mr. Chairman, we should all assume this is my
last appearance before this Committee and that I will not be
presenting the 2002 budget, but let me just say what a pleasure
it has been and how much we appreciate the support we have
gotten. I hope to leave my successor a much stronger
organization than I inherited. If I am able to do so, that is
very much the work of this committee more than my own.
Mr. Regula. Thank you. I think it has been a team effort.
It takes leadership in your Department and it takes our
sensitivity to what you are trying to do. It is bipartisan, as
you can well see. That has been the goal of all of us because
particularly the young people on the reservations depend on us.
Their future is in our hands in many respects.
Is family life, which is so fundamental, improving on
reservations? We hear a lot about family and family life.
Mr. Gover. I suppose it depends on which reservation you
are talking about. In some places we are seeing the families
really reemerge, restrengthen themselves, and provide the kind
of guidance to the young people that is necessary. In other
places, they have not yet turned the corner. In fact, we get
increasing indications of family not just dysfunction, but
family violence and the sexual abuse of children is on the
increase in some communities. So there is good news and bad
news.
You have to remember that the United States set out at the
turn of this century to destroy the Indian family. That was
essentially what the policy was. We shipped off the young
people to boarding schools, we denied them their languages, we
denied them their usual cultural practices--all of which were
very much constructed around the family. So what we inherit
today is the legacy of some terribly misguided policy.
Mr. Regula. I think what you are saying illustrates the
importance of leadership in your positions. But we in turn have
to give you the support you need to provide that leadership. We
thank you all for what you have done and for your testimony
today and for taking a sense of responsibility.
With that the subcommittee is recessed until this
afternoon, when we hear from the Smithsonian on its fiscal year
2001 budget request.
[Additional questions for the record follow:]
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W I T N E S S E S
----------
Page
Burzyk, C. M..................................................... 3
Christie, Joe.................................................... 133
Clement, Kathy................................................... 3
Devaney, E. E.................................................... 315
Fenn, Denny...................................................... 3
Gilbert, D. A.................................................... 133
Gover, Kevin..................................................... 133
Groat, C. G...................................................... 3
Hanson, Royce.................................................... 133
Hirsch, Robert................................................... 3
Leahy, Pat....................................................... 3
Manuel, H. A..................................................... 133
McLean, Robert................................................... 3
Neves, C. E...................................................... 133
Quasula, T. R.................................................... 133
Thompson, T. M................................................... 133
Trezise, J. D.................................................... 3
Witmer, Dick..................................................... 3
I N D E X
----------
U.S. Geological Survey
Page
Advanced National Seismic System................................. 26
Avian Vacuolar Myelinopathy Study................................32, 33
Basic Research................................................... 49
Biography of Charles G. Grant.................................... 13
Biology in USGS.................................................. 25
Chesapeake Bay Watershed......................................... 40
Clean Water Programs............................................. 15
Coastal and Marine Geology Program............................... 42
Cooperation Between USGS and States.............................. 41
Cooperative Research Units....................................... 34
Coordination With Federal Partners...............................19, 20
Credible Science................................................. 19
Early U.S. Mapping............................................... 3
Earthquake Program............................................... 27
Endangered and At Risk Species................................... 47
Everglades Science Before Investment............................. 17
Everglades Scientific Research................................... 14
Federal Strategies for Invasive Species.......................... 35
Fire Detection Efforts...........................................46, 47
Future Biological Directions..................................... 43
GAP Program...................................................... 28
Geographic Information Systems................................... 31
Great Lakes...............................................37-39, 44, 45
Mapping..................................................39, 44, 45
Restoration.................................................. 37
Science Funding..............................................37, 38
Ground-Water Research Funding.................................... 21-23
Ground-Water Study............................................... 16
Harbor Seals at Hood Canal....................................... 36
Information Access............................................... 49
Information to Local and State Governments....................... 47
Interagency Coordination......................................... 32
International....................................................14, 15
Concern for Endangered Species............................... 15
Information Sharing.......................................... 14
Scientific Cooperation....................................... 14
Introductions.................................................... 4
Invasive Species.........................................27, 28, 34, 35
Funding...................................................... 35
In Washington State.......................................... 27
Interagency Group............................................ 35
Lead Federal Agency.......................................... 28
Lands Legacy Initiative.......................................... 21
Livable Communities Initiative................................... 20
Long Distance Learning........................................... 46
Maintenance Backlog..............................................42, 43
Mapping and Digitizing Schedule.................................. 42
Nation's Water Supply............................................ 16
Ohio Pilot Project............................................... 46
Opening Remarks.................................................. 4-7
USGS Mission................................................. 4
Listening Sessions........................................... 4
Outstanding Scientists....................................... 5
Infrastructure Investments................................... 5
Budget Highlights............................................ 5-7
Partnerships With Colleges....................................... 48
Proposed Budget's Funding Level.................................. 18
Questions Submitted for the Record............................... 51-80
From Congressman Kingston.................................... 78-80
From Congressman Kolbe....................................... 75
From Congressman Nethercutt..................................76, 77
From the Subcommittee........................................ 51-74
Real-Time Hazards Funding........................................ 27
Real-Time Hazards Initiative..................................... 29
Salmon Research.................................................. 28
Saltwater Intrusion.............................................. 33
Scientific Integrity............................................. 24
Sea Lamprey Control.............................................. 36
Side-Scan Sonar Mapping.......................................... 40
Southeast Research on Amphibians................................. 32
Southeastern Water Supplies...................................... 29-31
Stream Restoration Partnerships.................................. 24
Streamgage Monitoring............................................ 15
Streamgage Replacement........................................... 16
Testimony........................................................ 8-12
America's Natural Heritage................................... 12
Budget Highlights............................................ 10-12
Livable Communities.......................................... 10
Safer Communities............................................ 10
Sustainable Resources for the Future......................... 11
U.S. Geological Survey's Age..................................... 3
U.S. Water Quality............................................... 17
Uncontrollable Cost Offsets...................................... 41
USGS.................................................21, 34, 41, 43, 48
And FWS Relationship......................................... 43
Botanists.................................................... 43
Presence in Ohio............................................. 34
Public Communication......................................... 48
Reorganization............................................... 41
Visit Worthwhile............................................. 21
Visitors to USGS Facilities...................................... 48
Visits to USGS Web Sites......................................... 49
Volunteer Program................................................ 48
Wellsboro Research and Development Laboratory....................25, 26
Zebra Mussels in the Great Lakes.................................36, 37
Minerals Management Service
Geological Interpretive Tools.................................... 85
Management of Funds.............................................. 89
Offsetting Collection of Fees.................................... 83
Oil Valuation Rulemaking......................................... 88
Royalty Reengineering Initiative................................. 87
Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement
Appalachian Clean Streams........................................ 109
Emergency Reclamation Program.................................... 106
Environmental Protection......................................... 115
Federal Reclamation Program...................................... 108
Internet Service................................................. 127
Minimum Level Programs........................................... 112
Mountaintop Mining............................................... 122
Small Operators Assistance Program............................... 102
United Mineworkers Health Fund................................... 104
Bureau of Indian Affairs and Office of the Special Trustee for American
Indians
Accountability of Expenditures................................... 160
Additional Questions Submitted for the Record:
From the Committee........................................... 220
From Mr. Dicks............................................... 266
From Mr. Skeen............................................... 269
BIA Trust Increases.............................................. 171
Budget Cycle..................................................... 192
Budget Increases................................................. 158
Budget Priorities................................................ 175
Bureau Commitment................................................ 158
Conclusion....................................................... 218
Contract Oversight............................................... 193
Detention Facilities............................................. 198
Education........................................................ 177
Employee Development............................................. 159
Forestry......................................................... 196
Fractionated Shares.............................................. 171
Indian Country Tour.............................................. 218
Information Security............................................. 162
Land Ownership Records........................................... 171
Law Enforcement:
Progress..................................................... 189
Request...................................................... 194
National Academy of Public Administration Report:
Relocation................................................... 146
Field Resources.............................................. 147
Status of Implementation..................................... 154
NAPA's Impact................................................ 155
Office Relocation............................................ 162
NAPA Support................................................. 189
Office of the Special Trustee.................................... 164
Opening Remarks.................................................. 133
Opening Statements on FY 2001 Budget Requests:
Mr. Gover.................................................... 175
Mr. Thompson................................................. 165
Opening Statements on NAPA Report:
Mr. Gover.................................................... 145
Mr. Hanson................................................... 133
Recognition of Tribes............................................ 199
Replacement School Priority list................................. 197
School Construction.............................................. 190
School Construction Costs........................................ 192
School Operations................................................ 193
Self Determination............................................... 159
Settlement....................................................... 174
Single Audits.................................................... 159
Statements Submitted for the Record:
Mr. Gover..................................................148, 179
Mr. Thompson................................................. 167
Mr. Hanson................................................... 136
Student Count.................................................... 194
Student Performance.............................................. 188
Sunset of Trustee's Office....................................... 171
System Management................................................ 163
Timber-Fish-Wildlife Programs.................................... 196
Tribal Colleges.................................................. 194
Trust Reform:
Accomplishments.............................................. 165
Budget....................................................... 173
Timeframe.................................................... 166
Trust Management Improvement................................. 189
Trust Responsibilities........................................... 161
Tuition Assistance............................................... 218
Office of Insular Affairs
American Samoa................................................... 284
Brown Tree Snake Program......................................... 304
Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands......................... 291
Compact of Free Association...................................... 294
General.......................................................... 275
Grant Management System.......................................... 299
Guam............................................................. 286
Hawaiian Natives................................................. 280
Virgin Islands................................................... 281
Office of the Inspector General
Audits........................................................... 315
Full-Time Employment............................................. 320
Investigations................................................... 316
MMS Embezzlement................................................. 321
Statement of Inspector General Devaney........................... 315
Summary of Audit Recommendations................................. 351
Top Ten Management Problems...............................318, 323, 327
Uncontrollable Increases......................................... 320
Indian Health Service
Construction:
Fort Defiance, AZ Hospital................................... 389
Hospital and Clinic.......................................... 391
Joint Ventures............................................... 396
Priority List................................................ 388
Staff Quarters Construction.................................. 390
Contract Health Services......................................... 381
Equipment......................................................366, 385
Equity........................................................... 366
Facilities Maintenance.........................................365, 383
Fixed Costs...................................................... 362
Health Professional Shortages.................................... 369
Hospitals and Clinics............................................ 364
Increases, Distribution of....................................... 378
Indian Health Care Improvement Fund.............................. 367
New Tribes Funding............................................... 382
Other Health Service Programs.................................... 364
Indian Health Professions.................................... 365
Tribal Management Grant...................................... 365
Urban Health................................................. 364
Pharmacist Interns............................................... 368
Podiatry Program Plan............................................ 376
Sanitation Deficiency System--Priority List...................... 399
Sanitation/Water and Sewer Facilities..........................365, 386
Self-Determination Contracts and Self-Governance Compacts........ 380
Services......................................................... 363
Shoalwater Bay Infant Mortality.................................. 381
Staffing of New Facilities--Parker River, AZ Clinic.............. 379