[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 133 (Wednesday, September 21, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 21, 1994]



      AMERICA'S ROLE IN IMPROVING OCEAN ENVIRONMENTS AND RESOURCES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON. Mr. Speaker, one of the most pleasant parts of my summer 
this year was having the opportunity to travel to the southern part of 
New Jersey, specifically to the area around Wildwood and North 
Wildwood, where I had a chance, with my family and some old friends, 
and also the pleasure of meeting some new friends, to experience the 
positive changes that are occurring with the oceans along our borders 
in this country.
  Because of the hard work of many people, both in this Congress, and 
especially the officials in New Jersey, we are seeing dramatic change 
with the oceans and to our shorelines. That extends all up and down the 
east coast and the west coast. As the ranking Republican on the 
Subcommittee on Oceanography, Gulf of Mexico, and the Outer Continental 
Shelf of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, however, what 
bothers me is what is happening around the world to the oceans, and the 
need for us to join together with other nations to explore how we can 
better protect our oceans, and how we can enhance the ability for 
people to fish and to share information about oceanography and ocean 
resources.
  To that end, Mr. Speaker, approximately 1 year ago I began to work on 
an initiative to assist the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union and 
its republics, with the massive problem of disposing of its spent 
nuclear fuel and its nuclear waste. There was a report released last 
August by one of the premier scientists in Russia by the name of 
Yablakov that documented for the first time the facts that all of us in 
fact had known, and that is that the Soviets had, for the previous 20 
to 25 years, dumped their nuclear fuel, including nuclear powerplants 
and nuclear waste from their submarines and other ships, into the 
oceans of the world, especially those around the Sea of Japan and the 
Bering Sea.

                              {time}  1720

  In fact, we knew they had one submarine that had sunk, the 
Komsmoletzk, which in fact has nuclear fuel that may in fact be leaking 
at this very time. One of the major issues that we have attempted to 
focus on that has led us to the announcement I am going to make tonight 
is this issue of the illegal dumping of nuclear waste. Part of our 
problem was that we in America had also been responsible for a couple 
of incidents involving our Navy ships that had sunk in the ocean and 
were not willing to up-front acknowledge this, that the Thresher and 
Scorpion are still intact at the bottom of the ocean and are in fact 
nuclear powered.
  As a member of the Committee on Armed Services I worked to publicly 
expose that. Finally last September the Navy acknowledged for the first 
time publicly that in fact we do have a potential problem but that it 
is under control at this time.
  With that acknowledgement, the Russians have come forth now and are 
willing to talk to us about coming to terms with an international 
agreement that would ban the dumping of nuclear waste in our oceans. We 
passed my legislation earlier this year which is currently pending in 
the Senate which would make that law, and we are in fact encouraging 
the Russians right now to do the same. Just several months ago, a group 
of us traveled to Murmamsk and to St. Petersburg where we met with 
leading Russian officials to convince them of this need. Through the 
organization called GLOBE, Global Legislators for a Balanced 
Environment, we proposed an international conference on oceans that 
will take place in this country in February, tentatively February 8 
where legislators from Japan, from the European countries, from Russia 
and from the United States and other countries will gather and focus on 
three particular problems with the world's oceans.

  The first, in fact, will be the uncontrolled nuclear dumping that has 
occurred in the past and how we can put a total prohibition against 
that kind of dumping in the future. The second will deal with another 
major problem, and that is the problem of declining fish stocks. In 
1950 the global catch of fish totaled 20 million metric tons. It 
increased until 1990 when it was over 100 million metric tons. Now for 
the first time in history fish catches are declining worldwide and this 
is having a negative impact on all of the free economies and certainly 
our individuals who rely on fishing as a way of living.
  Part of the decline is caused by overfishing but that is not the real 
reason. Under this conference we are going to have in February, we are 
going to focus on what are the problems with the reduction in our fish 
stocks and what can we do, what are the problem with our fisheries, our 
nonpoint pollution problems, our rehabilitating salmon streams. We will 
explore other measures that we can cooperate with other nations on 
dealing with the problem of declining fish stocks. Third, we will focus 
on improving our understanding of the ocean ecosystem.
  We have spent a ton of money exploring outer space. NASA has done a 
good job but we have spent nothing in comparison to outer space in 
terms of understanding our oceans, sharing information that has been 
obtained over the years by our military experts, by our Navy personnel.
  The third part of this conference will allow us to begin to share the 
kind of data and information that we already have about our marine 
ecosystem, about the kinds of technologies that can help us develop new 
breakthroughs in terms of understanding why our oceans can help us as a 
world.
  These are the three main priorities that we will be discussing on 
February 8 and we will involve all aspects of America in this process 
and hopefully Jacques Cousteau will be our keynote speaker. Senator 
John Kerry from Massachusetts who is, in fact, the chairman of GLOBE 
USA, will cohost this conference with me as I act in my role as the 
chairman of the Oceans Task Force for GLOBE. The gentleman from 
Illinois, John Porter, who cochairs GLOBE for GLOBE USA, has been a 
tireless leader on behalf of global issues involving the environment 
and will be a key player also in this conference.
  At the recent conference in Moscow where global legislators came 
together in early September to discuss the kind of issues that we 
should be focusing on and working together cooperatively, the 
legislators there adopted my proposal for this conference unanimously 
and, therefore, the conference will take place. I would hope that all 
of our colleagues would join together with us so that in the future 
legislators and individuals from around the world can do as I did this 
past summer and have the experience of enjoying the kinds of things 
that can occur with our oceans and experience the kind of positive 
economic benefits from allowing our fishermen and women to improve 
their products and also to have our country share in the way that we 
better understand the oceans of the world. I would ask our colleagues 
to join with us.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the agenda for the GLOBE 
conference which will take place in February 1995, as follows:

   Proposed Agenda for GLOBE Oceans Protection Washington Conference

(Presented by Congressman Curt Weldon, Chairman GLOBE Oceans Protection 
                             Working Group)

       On March 1, 1994, the GLOBE International General Assembly 
     Recognizing:
       The importance of maintaining the health of the world's 
     ocean environment:
       The degradation of the earth's aquatic ecosystems can have 
     significant short and long-term impacts on the world's 
     weather, climate, food supply and biodiversity;
       The oceans cover the vast majority of the earth's surface 
     but are poorly understood and in need of increased scientific 
     study;
       The oceans are a sensitive global resource and actions 
     taken within an individual nation's coastal waters impact 
     directly on the health of the resource; and
       The radioactive contamination from ocean dumping of 
     radioactive waste poses potentially significant future 
     threats to the marine environment;


                               sanctioned

       (1) The creation of a GLOBE Ocean Protection Working Group: 
     and
       (2) Making Ocean Protection a major issue area to be 
     addressed during the 1995 GLOBE International General 
     Assemblies.
       To further these goals, GLOBE USA will sponsor a major 
     Oceans Protection Conference in Washington, DC in February 
     1995.


              (1) end dumping of radioactive waste at sea

       The Conference will explore methods to secure compliance 
     with the November 12, 1993, amendments to the Annexes to the 
     1972 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by 
     Dumping of Waste at Sea and Other Matter (London Convention) 
     which banned the international dumping of radioactive waste 
     at sea.

                               Background

       The following pressure from GLOBE USA, the United States 
     supported amending the London Convention to ban the ocean 
     dumping of low-level radioactive waste. With the U.S. joining 
     a long list of other nations supporting a ban, the London 
     Convention was amended to create a global ban on the ocean 
     dumping of radioactive waste.
       Subsequent to the London Convention amendments, the U.S. 
     House of Representatives passed H.R. 3892, the Ocean 
     Radioactive Dumping Ban Act to conform U.S. law to the London 
     Convention ban. The measure is currently awaiting Senate 
     action.
       The threat of radioactive contamination of the oceans still 
     exists. Russia currently does not posses the capacity to 
     safely dispose of its radioactive waste.
       The immediate threat to the ocean environment is liquid 
     radioactive waste. Last year, Russia dumped 900 tons of 
     liquid radioactive waste in the Sea of Japan. Immediate 
     progress on this issue is vital since liquid waste storage 
     facilities in the northern Russian harbor of Murmansk will 
     reach capacity in the next two years.
       Significant progress is being made. Japan has entered into 
     an agreement with Russia to construct a liquid waste 
     treatment facility near the Sea of Japan. The United States 
     and Norway are now considering helping Russia to expand its 
     Liquid radioactive waste treatment facility near the Arctic 
     Ocean.
       The Conference will explore the potential of these 
     international initiatives and search for solutions to the 
     long-term problem of safely disposing of the solid 
     radioactive waste likely to be generated by the dismantling 
     of numerous Russian nuclear vessels.


                       (2) declining fish stocks

                               Background

       In 1950, the global catch of fish totaled 20 million metric 
     tons. That total increased steadily until 1990 when over 100 
     million metric tons of fish were harvested. Now, for the 
     first time in history, fish catches are declining world-wide. 
     Currently, up to one-third of the oceans's marine fish 
     resources are fully or over exploited.
       The decline in fish stocks has been largely attributed to 
     over-fishing, but habitat loss and ocean pollution play a 
     significant role. Ninety percent of the oceans's fishery 
     resources spend some portion of their life cycle in near-
     shore waters. Urban and agricultural runoff, coastal wetlands 
     loss, and river obstructions, such as dams, have all 
     contributed to the decline in fish populations.
       From reducing wasteful by-catch, which in some fisheries 
     can total as much as seventy percent, to addressing non-point 
     source pollution, to rehabilitating salmon streams, the 
     Conference will explore methods for conserving the oceans' 
     fishery resources.


           (3) improving understanding of the ocean ecosystem

       The Conference will pursue options to open access to data, 
     technologies, and water bodies for the purpose of expanding 
     the scientific knowledge of the oceans and marine life.

                               Background

       Although the world's oceans cover over two-thirds of the 
     earth's surface, our understanding of this resource is 
     extremely poor. Oceans control the world's weather and 
     climate and hold vast but finite supplies of food and energy. 
     All life originated in our oceans and our oceans still hold 
     the key to the continued health of our planet's environment.
       Historically, the United States has spent little on 
     enhancing our understanding of the marine environment, while 
     at the same time expending billions of dollars on the 
     exploration of space. The irony is that we have probably 
     spent more money searching for water bodies on other planets 
     than we have on understanding the earth's oceans.
       The end of the Cold War has made previously classified 
     military data and technology available to civilian 
     scientists. The potential for using these formerly secret 
     technologies to expand our knowledge of the marine 
     environment is significant.
       Already, civilian marine biologists have been given access 
     to data from the Integrated Underseas Surveillance System 
     (IUSS) to conduct research on whales and study hydrothermal 
     activity on the ocean floor. IUSS was originally designed to 
     track enemy submarines and warships, but these recent 
     cooperative ventures have demonstrated the system's great 
     potential as a civilian scientific resource.
       This new role for military technology has become known as 
     ``dual use'' and language has been included in both the 
     Department of Defense and National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
     Agency (NOAA) authorization bills to promote the concept. 
     Unfortunately, just as the full research potential of these 
     previously classified technologies is being recognized, 
     budgetary cuts are threatening to close down these resources.
       The Conference will investigate opportunities to use 
     existing defense technologies for civilian research, improve 
     international cooperation and information sharing, and 
     increase marine research efforts.

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