[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 34 (Monday, March 11, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1285-S1286]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF JAPAN'S TSUNAMI

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, today is the second anniversary of a 
very tragic event in Japan. An earthquake--a tsunami--claimed nearly 
16,000 lives and destroyed community infrastructure, homes, and 
livelihoods. Years after the fact, our prayers remain with the people 
of Japan for the lives which were lost and for the devastation that 
occurred within that country.
  I had an opportunity to be in Japan in January. I had a chance to see 
for myself some of the devastation that Japan still faces 2 years after 
the 3/11 tsunami and earthquake. The pictures that so many of us recall 
of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor. We all watched with great 
concern as the accident in front of us unfolded. It was truly a sense 
of helplessness that was brought about by an act of nature. A massive 
earthquake which delivered a massive wave which truly brought about 
massive destruction.
  I also had an opportunity--after viewing the Fukushima Daiichi 
reactor--to travel north to a small fishing village by the name of 
Rikuzentakata. It was a community of about 23,000 people. That 
community alone lost over 1,900 residents who were swept out to sea--
including an Alaskan teacher, Mr. Monty Dickson, whose life was lost. 
To be in this fishing village 2 years after the fact and see how this 
community is trying to regain its footing--not only economically but 
emotionally--was quite compelling. Again, Japan is dealing with the 
aftermath of this destruction in ways those of us here probably cannot 
appreciate.
  From an energy perspective, the country of Japan--literally 
overnight--went from a nation where close to 30 percent of their energy 
was generated by nuclear to a point where the nuclear power that was 
generated was truly just shut down as everything was on pause for that 
nation. How a nation rearranges its energy portfolio is a situation 
that country is dealing with as we speak.
  There were connections between Japan and the tsunami that I think are 
still being felt today. When that tsunami hit, the people of Alaska 
were on alert on our coastlines. They were waiting and wondering 
whether we would be impacted by the giant wave that had taken the lives 
of so many thousands of Japanese. Well, we didn't see the big wave, but 
what we did see--and what we are continuing to see--is a level of 
marine debris that has been carried across the currents from Japan and 
the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington State, 
British Columbia, and then circling all along the coastline of my State 
of Alaska.
  It is estimated that there is about 1.5 million tons of debris that 
is floating in the ocean. It was estimated by the Japanese Ministry of 
the Environment that there were 5 million tons of debris that washed 
into the ocean. They further estimated that 70 percent of that debris 
sank near the coast of Japan soon after the event. This is something 
the Japanese fishermen were greatly concerned and worried about.
  What we are seeing now--as the floating debris moves its way across 
the currents--is debris on the shoreline of Alaska in surprising 
quantities. The picture behind me is some of the debris. There is roof 
of a house, the bottom of a boat, and buoys. It is just a floating mass 
of debris in the middle of the Pacific. This is just an example of some 
of what we have seen over the course of 2 years now.
  Sometimes the sightings are pretty phenomenal, such as this picture 
which was off the Oregon coast. This is actually a concrete dock that 
floated all the way across the ocean from Japan and landed on the coast 
of Oregon.
  I have sons who are commercial fishermen. They spend their summers 
out on the water. We worry about obstacles in the water that our 
fishing vessels could encounter. Running into a concrete dock is not 
something any mariner would want to do. So we think that 2 years after 
the fact we should have seen most of the debris we would anticipate. In 
fact, the vast majority is still coming our way.
  These are buoys along the Alaskan shore. This was taken on Montague 
Island which is just off Kodiak Island. Not all these buoys are 
necessarily from Japan. Some are just the general marine debris that we 
see. But what we have been able to determine is that the Japanese buoys 
are coming across. Those things that are sitting higher up on the water 
are moving more quickly, but things that are just below the water 
surface are still on their way.
  How do we deal with all this? How do we reach the beaches, whether it 
is the beaches in Oregon, California, Hawaii or Alaska? In Alaska, we 
have 44,000 miles of coastline. That is a lot of territory for debris 
to come up on, and in so much of this area in my State, these beaches 
are not accessible by vehicle. They are not accessible by road. It is 
extraordinarily difficult to deal with the cleanup.
  This is a picture of marine debris cleanup in a community by the name 
of Yakutat, a small fishing village along the coast. What they are 
finding is that as the community volunteers go out and clean what 
beaches they can, they have no space in their small landfills there to 
accommodate the debris. So it would be one thing if we knew this was 
all we were going to be dealing with. Our reality is we know more is 
coming.
  How we respond is going to be key. It is going to be critical to the 
communities that are impacted. But for so many of these areas where 
there are no individuals to see this, there are none to appreciate what 
has happened, but still we are faced with Styrofoam, plastics, nets--
incredible amounts of nets--things that will not only foul the beaches 
but foul the animals that may be in the area. We have a responsibility 
to act. So how do we do it? How do we do it at a time of difficult 
budgets? We all appreciate that. It requires a level of creativity, if 
you will--partnerships with local and government officials. It requires 
us to be proactive in terms of what is coming to our shores.

[[Page S1286]]

  We have asked the White House to assist with a debris cleanup task 
force to get all the agencies that are involved--State, tribal, 
Federal--to be participants in how we address these issues.
  The Government of Japan last year stepped forward and provided $5 
million to the affected States, plus an additional $1 million to 
Canada--they were not obligated to provide the money for an effort to 
help us address the cleanups. What we need to do in this country--
again, we have asked the White House to establish this interagency task 
force to deal with the debris that continues to come to our shore is to 
determine how we engage, how we are working together to help make a 
difference. That is going to be critical. We also don't want to forget 
the private interests that are potentially engaged in the cleanup. We 
have so many different interests, so many different industries, and 
private citizens who are so dependent on our navigable waterways, our 
healthy ecosystems. What we need is good communication and good 
leadership. We need a plan to guide the interagency and the public-
private partnership approach to solving the challenge. I commend the 
NOAA Marine Debris Program for their coordination and their response to 
the work. The fact is they are small. They are overtasked. They need 
the help of their Federal partners to address this as a national 
priority.
  So as we continue to see increased levels of debris coming over after 
the tsunami, it is imperative we act to address it.
  It has been interesting in the Alaska press because there have been 
ongoing stories about the connections. We think Japan is thousands of 
miles away and we don't have that connection. Beachcombers found a 
soccer ball with the name of a Japanese boy--a 16-year-old boy and his 
phone number--and were able to make that call back to the village of 
Rikuzentakata and tell that young man, whose family lost everything in 
the tsunami, that we have your soccer ball here. It made it to the 
shore of Middleton Island in Alaska. But for that young man to have 
been delivered that soccer ball, after everything else he and his 
family owned had been wiped out, was a reminder that we are all 
connected and how we can be working together to help one another.
  I ask unanimous consent to have this news story from the Anchorage 
Daily News printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
  In Alaska, we have a lot of experience with helping our neighbors 
out. We will continue to work to address the issues, work to address 
the debris that is reaching our shore, but we do need a little bit of 
help from our government. We need a little bit of help when it comes to 
advancing this interagency task force so we can address what we are 
seeing in Alaska, what we are seeing on our coastline in the Pacific 
Northwest and in Hawaii as well.
  With that, I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Anchorage Daily News, Mar. 9, 2013]

           2 years After Japan Tsunami, Debris Spreads in US

                  (By Becky Bohrer--Associated Press)

       Juneau, AK.--Two years ago, the yellow buoy was hanging as 
     part of a restaurant sign in the coastal community of 
     Minamisanriku in northern Japan when an earthquake triggered 
     a tsunami and washed it--and so much more--out to sea.
       About a year later, the buoy was found more than 3,000 
     miles away on a remote Alaska island, discovered by an avid 
     beachcomber who, through sheer coincidence, was later able to 
     find the owner, who had lost her home and business. Hundreds 
     of similar buoys have been found on beaches along the West 
     Coast, a combination of the everyday trash that has plagued 
     coastal areas for years and debris washed away by the March 
     11, 2011 disaster.
       Distinguishing between the two is difficult. Just 21 items 
     from among the more than 1,500 reports of possible tsunami 
     debris have been firmly traced back to the tsunami, according 
     to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
       The confirmed items include several derelict vessels, 
     including a small boat found in Hawaii waters, large docks 
     that have washed ashore in Washington state and Oregon and a 
     motorcycle that washed ashore off the coast of British 
     Columbia.
       These are items that tend to have unique markings--names of 
     people and places, registration numbers or other identifying 
     information. The agency lists scores of other items along the 
     West Coast and across the Pacific Ocean as potentially linked 
     to the catastrophe.
       The Japanese government estimated 1.5 million tons of 
     debris was floating in the ocean in the immediate aftermath 
     of the disaster, which devastated a long stretch of Japan's 
     northeastern coast and killed thousands of people. But it's 
     not clear how much is still out there or what might reach 
     U.S. shores. NOAA has said the debris is spread over an area 
     roughly three times the size of the contiguous United States, 
     and that beachgoers may notice an increase in debris ``over 
     many years,'' in addition to what normally washes up.
       Beachcombing on Middleton Island, in the northern Gulf of 
     Alaska, has long been a favorite pastime for radar technician 
     David Baxter and some of his colleagues. In early 2012, there 
     had been talk about finding tsunami debris--``a wall with a 
     safe in it or a briefcase of money, we'd always joke about 
     that''--but Baxter said he didn't think it was realistic he'd 
     find anything related to the tsunami, given models he'd seen 
     at the time that suggested the debris would move much further 
     south.
       Then, in February 2012, a co-worker found a soccer ball. 
     Baxter subsequently found another soccer ball--a discovery 
     that made international headlines as one of the first 
     identifiable pieces of debris to wash up--a volleyball and 
     the buoy.
       The buoy stood out to Baxter as a bit different from other 
     buoys that have washed up. For example, it was hard, not 
     inflatable, and had writing on it. By chance, when a Japanese 
     film crew was visiting him and his wife after the discovery 
     of the soccer ball, they panned on other items he'd found, 
     including the buoy, he said. A friend of the restaurant's 
     owner, Sakiko Miura, happened to recognize it, and the owner 
     later confirmed it was hers through a photo sent by Baxter.
       FedEx, which flies regularly between Anchorage and Tokyo, 
     volunteered to return items including the balls found by 
     Baxter and the buoy last June. The team traveled by plane to 
     Tokyo and then by train to outlying communities, hand-
     delivering the items, spokeswoman Sharon Young said.
       ``It was a wonderful experience, to reunite people with 
     things that meant a lot to them and that survived this 
     incredibly devastating situation.'' she said Friday.
       Baxter and his wife were recently able to talk to Miura, 
     who said she plans to rebuild. He said he found the owner of 
     the soccer ball his colleague found, an 8-year-old, and plans 
     to return it this summer.
       Baxter said he can't help but be affected by what he's 
     found. He wife is Japanese and he said he has visited the 
     nation several times. But it's more than that.
       ``I wonder all the time, when you see (things) if the 
     person was in the house, if they survived,'' he said, adding 
     later: ``Of course, when I see the housing insulation and 
     household items, shampoo bottles, shaving cream bottles with 
     Japanese writing on them, yeah, it hurts a little.''

     

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