[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13388]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         NATIONAL OCEANS POLICY

  (Mr. FARR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. FARR. Mr. Speaker, 10 years ago, the United States Congress 
enacted legislation to create an Oceans Commission to look at how we 
can prevent the oceans from dying. Yesterday, the President of the 
United States enacted, by Executive order, the first national oceans 
policy and governance for the oceans and Great Lakes of the United 
States--our greatest national heritage and our greatest national trust.
  We, the people, are going to be taking care of the oceans like 
they've never been taken care of before. We're not going to allow the 
conflicts of the sea of overfishing, of overmining, of overdrilling, of 
overeverything and dumping all of our waste and garbage and sewage into 
the oceans. We're now going to have a policy that's like the clean air 
policy, where we cleaned up the air in America, cleaned up the water in 
America with the Clean Water Act.
  Thank you, Mr. President, for being the best steward our oceans have 
ever had and implementing the recommendations of the National Oceans 
Commission, which Congress enacted but could not enact legislation. 
Hopefully, we'll move out from here and the world will see and the 
children will appreciate the actions that the President took yesterday.

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