[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 29, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S817-S818]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. HELMS:
  S. 234. A bill to direct the Secretary of the Interior to transfer 
administrative jurisdiction over certain land to the Secretary of the 
Army to facilitate construction of a jetty and sand transfer system, 
and for other purposes; to the Committee on Energy and Natural 
Resources.


                THE OREGON INLET PROTECTION ACT OF 1997

  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, in offering today the Oregon Inlet 
Protection Act of 1997, I must emphasize that this legislation is vital 
to thousands of North Carolinians, especially citizens who work along 
the northeastern coast of North Carolina known as the Outer Banks, 
where commercial and recreational fishermen risk their lives every day 
trying to navigate the hazardous waters of Oregon Inlet.
  These fishermen have been pleading for this legislation for decades 
because it is a matter of life or death for them. At last count, 20 
fishermen have lost their lives in Oregon Inlet during the past 30 
years, the latest tragedy having occurred on December 30, 1992, when a 
31-foot commercial fishing vessel sank in Oregon Inlet. This was the 
20th vessel to be lost in those waters since 1961. Fortunately, both 
crewmen were rescued, but the Coast Guard never found the wreckage.
  Mr. President, this legislation proposes neither the appropriation of 
money nor the authorization of new expenditures and projects; it merely 
requires the Secretary of the Interior to transfer two small parcels of 
Interior Department land to the Department of the Army so that the 
Corps of Engineers may begin work on a too-long-delayed project 
authorized by Congress in 1970--25 years ago. In doing so, 100 acres of 
land, adjacent to Oregon Inlet in Dare County, will be transferred to 
the Department of the Army.
  Reviewing the legislative history involving this project, in October 
1992, then Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan issued conditional permits 
for the Corps of Engineers to begin the construction process; the 
Clinton administration unwisely revoked those permits. Therefore, the 
bill I'm offering today serves notice to the self-proclaimed 
environmentalists who have for so long stalled this project that I will 
continue to do everything I can to protect the lives and livelihoods of 
the countless commercial and recreational fishermen who have been 
denied greater economic opportunities because of the failure of the 
Federal Government to do what it should have done more than a quarter 
of a century ago.
  Consider this bit of history, Mr. President: In 1970, Congress 
authorized the stabilization of a 400-foot wide, 20 foot deep channel 
through Oregon Inlet and the installation of a system of jetties with a 
sand-bypass system designed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But 
ever since 1970, this project has been repeatedly and deliberately 
stalled by bureaucratic roadblocks contrived by the fringe elements of 
the environmental movement.
  As a result, many lives and livelihoods have been lost. North 
Carolina's once thriving fishing industry has deteriorated, and access 
to the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge and the Cape Hatteras 
National Seashore has been

[[Page S818]]

threatened. Since 1970, critics of this project have repeatedly claimed 
that more studies and time were needed. This was nothing more than 
stalling tactics, pure and simple, Mr. President, while men died 
unnecessarily and livelihoods were destroyed.
  Mr. President, surely a quarter of a century devoted to deliberate 
delay is enough. The proposed Oregon Inlet project is bound to be the 
most over-studied project in the history of the Corps of Engineers and 
the Department of the Interior. Note this, Mr. President: Since 1969, 
the Federal Government has conducted 97--count them--97 major studies 
and three full-blown environmental impact statements; but, always 
environmentalists have demanded more and more delay.
  As for the cost-benefit factor, the Office of Management and Budget--
as recently as March 14, 1991--found the project to be economically 
justified. Then, in December 1991, a joint committee of the Corps of 
Engineers and the Department of the Interior recommended to then-
Interior Secretary Lujan and subsequent to that, to Assistant Secretary 
of the Army for Civil Works Page that the jetties be built. The people 
of the Outer Banks have waited in vain. And they still wait, Mr. 
President.
  Congress must act soon. Too many lives have been lost; the continued 
existence of the Outer Banks is now in question because nothing has 
been allowed to be done to manage the flow of sand from one end of the 
coastal islands to the other. If much more time is wasted, the self-
appointed environmentalists won't have to worry about turtles or birds 
on Cape Hatteras, because a few short years hence, Oregon Inlet will 
have disappeared.
  To understand why this project has become one of the Interior 
Department's most studied and controversial projects, the October 1992 
edition of The Smithsonian magazine is highly instructive. In an 
article titled, ``This Beach Boy Sings a Song Developers Don't Want to 
Hear,'' the magazine chronicles the adventures of a professor at a 
major North Carolina university who has made his living organizing 
opposition to all coastal engineering projects on the Outer Banks--
Oregon Inlet in particular. The article further relates the 
confrontation between the professor and an angry Oregon Inlet 
fisherman, a man whose livelihood has been made more hazardous by the 
bureaucratic failure to keep open a safe channel at Oregon Inlet. When 
questioned about his motives and actions this university professor 
retorted that he and his radical friends boasted that they would not be 
satisfied until all the houses are taken off the shore to leave it the 
way it was before.
  Mr. President, this is the response from a professor whose home 
occupies a large plot of land 200 miles west in the middle of North 
Carolina, a professor who is all too ready to deprive other North 
Carolinians of their rights to live and prosper.
  That is not environmental activism. It is environmental hypocrisy.
  Mr. President, the issue is clear. The time for delay is over. This 
legislation will mark the beginning of the end of the jetty debate on 
the Outer Banks, and will address the long-neglected concerns of North 
Carolina's coastal residents. Congress should not delay further in 
doing what it should have done a quarter of a century ago.

                          ____________________