this hearing will come to order good morning i want to welcome everyone to the day's hearing on harmful algal blooms and how these bees are impacting our coastlines marine and freshwater marine fresh waters are overflowing with life however under the right conditions some of the naturally occurring microorganisms found in these waters can create toxic conditions harmful algal blooms can cause a tremendous amount of damage through the production of toxins and b greasing oxygen in the water many of our coastal areas and the great lakes are experiencing the impacts of these blooms these impacts include alteration of the oceans food web human illnesses and economic losses to coastal communities and commercial fisheries are texas parks and wildlife department monitors these buildings to communicate pollution threats to the public but they have continued to work hard to respond to incidents where fish and other animals have been harmed the research and response needs for the u have grown since the last reauthorization of the harmful algal bloom and hypoxia research and control act of two thousand and four there has been an increase in the number frequency and type we need to use the advances in our understanding of these blooms to better predict their occurrence and to prevent them if possible fishery and beach closures are very costly events that can devastate the economies of coastal communities we have a distinguished panel of witnesses here today and i hope they will offer us recommendations on how we can improve the prevention control and management of harmful algal blooms and i want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today and at this time i'd like to recognize actually not the ranking member of the committee but  are additional opening statements they will be placed in the record at this point and this time i am pleased to introduce our first panel of witnesses we have two of our colleagues from florida where we have one of our colleagues from florida with us representative conny mack we may be joined by representative alan ball congressman mack you are recognized for make your statement thank you mr chairman and if it's ok with the committee and the chairman i'd like i have my written statement that i'd like to submit to the committee but if if it's all right with the committee i'd like to just talk openly about the red tide and algae blooms and the effects that they have in my part of the country and what i think the overall impact is if that's ok with the chairman it is absolutely perfect with us please proceed thank you and i think i'm sure that most i know that most people behind me and and also people on the committee are aware of the problems and i will refer to it as red tide there's lots of different names for these algae blooms and and the toxins that are produced from them but just from my perspective growing up in southwest florida we would have a red tide incident that would last maybe a week a year and now we see red tide off our shores and approaching our coastlines thirteen months in a row so obviously the problem is getting worse and as we try to to learn more about red tide and the causes of red tide we always bump into competing research  someone will say that will research shows that it is it is not tied to maybe run off let's say from fertilizer running off into our into our bodies of  water and others will say well the science doesn't prove that at all and then we get members of congress such as myself who would like to go home and take a couple million dollars and and go to our local university and and  hopefully help them with their research projects but then we find that we end up duplicating research projects and so one of the things that i have proposed and there is i think we have forty some co sponsors on the bill  is to have a peer review research so that when we move forward with the red tide research the the monies are being distributed by scientists who understand the research so we don't duplicate research as we move forward and we there's more efficiencies this is not just a florida problem this is all along the coastal the united states also the lakes  and red tide these algae blooms are different in every part of the of the country but we can use if we can combined our dollars if we combined our research and our efforts and we let the science and the scientists direct where those dollars are going we will get a much better product the research will be much more reliable and from that research we can then move into how to better track red tide how to use the research to develop technologies that will limit the red tide outbreaks and if you've ever had the opportunity to visit southwest florida some of the most beautiful beaches i know you know other parts of the state might disagree but some of the most beautiful beaches in the in the in the country are in the world but when you have a red tide  and event people have a hard time breathing it runs people out of our hotels the economy suffers and there's a lasting a long lasting impact to the citizens of southwest florida who have a hard time breathing in their eyes will swell and tear up and it's very uncomfortable and so we like to i'm encouraged that the committee is is again looking at how we move forward how do we continue to have research that's done in a way that will that is reliable that is a fish and that we don't waste taxpayers dollars on duplicating of research and i think that that the committee and the wisdom of of the committee will find a way to ensure that we use peer review research instead of powerful members of congress ok i needed my friend connie mack to show me how to turn this thing on and i thank you mr chairman and represent their hall and other members of the committee for for allowing us to a problem is hearing and not for me in a moment like you know most committees a little bit late start on time but chairman lampson but obviously you're not and and i'm grateful for that i'm also grateful for my friend connie mack and his leadership in this issue and he is absolutely right that southwest florida has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world is problem is he doesn't have the most beautiful beaches that's in north florida and in areas like panama but red tide is gotten to be a very serious problem and it's become more severe and when i was growing up it was something we didn't see very often and we dreaded it when we did see it but in the last fifteen years or so we've had maybe five or so severe outbreaks and i think the important thing to understand is when that outbreak comes it really renders the coast e and the use of the coast worthless not only for commercial activity like fish and because of what it does to the fish but also it renders it useless for human use people can't use the coast when there's a red tide and so you see that those of us who live in coastal areas and in florida eighty percent of our people do live within twelve miles of the coast city area that turned into quite a tourist spot but we also have a long and startle productive fishing industry particularly had after katrina we had an outbreak and then subsequently the drought which happened in georgia and the reduced amount of fresh water coming down the apalachicola river we weren't able to  flush that red tide out and it stayed with us an extra extra long time so those are the kinds of problems that that that we experience with the algae bloom that causes the red tide mr chairman i want to again thank god mack for his leadership on this issue and also for you and your committee for holding this hearing and we'll be glad to answer whatever questions that we can breathtaking and i have a great opportunity to be with you mr boyd almost wants a year for the last several years and your gracious host and you have represent a beautiful part of the country my first home during world war two daytona beach florida and now is intended to go back there but you know you can't do that when you have families at home and fathers and parents but it's a great state you do good job thank you for coming before the committee they are together on something you know i would question whether or not the best fishing is in the eastern gulf or the western gulf but we won't get into that we have a lot of mr chairman it depends on what you're fishing for  but i would i would suggest on a serious note i know that the i've had an opportunity to talk to members of the committee and and i know that you're going to hear from the experts on this and fortunate enough to have had the ability to have many conversations with who i believe are the experts and i think my my colleagues recognize the need for us to  get moved forward with the ability to have research that's meaningful because research is what we rely upon to develop the technologies to protect our our waterways from these toxins and so i'm  very honored to be here and to have the opportunity to speak but i i really look forward to hearing from the experts as well we thank you both for being here and clearly it's a huge issue it affects the food chain it affects our tourism activities effects the economy significantly and we hope we come up with some of the right conclusions that need to so thank you both for joining us today we will take a very short break as the next panel takes its place at the table and we will begin we have my dear friends from florida spoke earlier but as that knows we have harmful algal blooms off our coast in the puget sound as well and has been a real leader in trying to deal with those and i'm glad he's here thank you thank you mr baird well you'll each have five minutes for your spoken testimony your written testimony will be included in the record for the hearing and when you all complete your testimony will begin with questions each member will have five minutes to question the panel dr magnan you may be also known as how barkha which includes the only two national programs devoted solely to harmful algal bloom research and hear me refer to harmful algal blooms as habs in the rest of my testimony appreciate the opportunity to discuss now all in the national response to haves in our coastal waters and our great lakes i'll briefly discuss what habs are highlighting i was approached this problem and touched on some of our accomplishments to date on philology are often visible microscopic organisms but they can also appear as visible scums b c we'd like some harmful algae produce potent toxins and cause illnesses or death in humans and marine life including fish sea birds and marine mammals humans and animals can be exposed to  toxins for the food they eat the water they drink or swim in or the air they breathe other algae harm ecosystems by smothering value of valuable habitats such as corals or grow to such proportions that their subsequent the composition depletes all life giving oxygen in the water thus killing most most of the president organisms have events have been increasing in frequency and now fact all major regions in the us and the great lakes to varying extents from year to year the widespread occurrence and diversity of blooms challenges our ability to keep pace with the needs of coastal managers and protect human health and local economies reports just days ago people being hospitalized in new england from eating tainted shellfish show how real these threats are our approach in no it to these problems are national in scope they are targeted to the different regional needs and they are relevant at the state level where managers are on the front lines and the new tools and knowledge positionally and effectively combat existing and emerging threats partnerships with state managers like mr ayres and research scientists like dr anderson who will address you shortly bring a wealth of expertise to  programs and keep us focused on the management needs coordinating and collaborating between programs within the us and other federal agencies ensures broad engagement and efficient use of our resources in addressing these difficult problems our research programs yield valuable products we are transferring this knowledge to operational programs in know as well as supporting the transfer an adoption of successful technologies to sustained operations at state agencies or other local or regional entities we have a long record of accomplishments since a passage of a barca in one thousand nine hundred eight in virtually every coastal state including improved have monitoring and detection capabilities identification of methods to prevent the development of blooms and forecasts to provide more efficient comprehensive ways of assisting state managers and warning the public a potential exposure i'll mention only three examples of right a sense of the progress we have made together with our partners one has developed a satellite based warning system for the devastating red tides in florida which you just heard about this is the habal and it comes out twice a week and forecasts the the progression of red tides and gives local managers a heads up we're hoping to expand that system to texas and then eventually go national with this system another funded monitoring system of texas recently the tech that are rare have species which alerted state public health managers to this threat shellfish harvesting was suspended in shellfish recall just days before the fault an oyster fest a major event the region attended by thousands of people early detection a quick warning prevented human eles which could have been a devastating blow to the local shellfish industry the current severe red tide affecting new england states was predicted months in advance as a result of noah funded research the prediction subsequent data being supplied in the real time is landing stage managers and the shellfish industry to deal effectively with this difficult situation so in conclusion over the last ten years we've made an precedent progress in understanding the causes and quansah consequences of harmful algal blooms which is led the development of numerous tools that are already in service and improving have management we're working hard to build upon these successes by continuing to move newly developed technologies into application operations at the national regional and state levels and we also plan to spend additional effort with managers and other partners so then if i critical future needs region by region and develop strategic plans to fill those gaps thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of noah on the topic of halves and mr chairman and members of the subcommittee my name is dan anderson and i'm a senior scientist at the woods hole oceanographic institution where i've studied red tides in the habs for over thirty years i've also been actively involved in the formulation of the programs in legislation that support our national have program and to reinforce what rob magni and just said i'd like to go through some images here for you has are caused by algae many of them microscopic as you see here these species make their presence known through massive blooms of cells that discolor the water this is sometimes sometimes through the illness and death of humans who have to consume consume contaminated shellfish or fish for the mass mortalities of fish sea birds and rain mammals and sometimes through irritating aerosolize toxins that drive tourists from beaches seaweeds can also cause harm is seen in these images from china where the sailing events new lympics are threatened by massive blooms and some rather spectacular is affect every coastal state in the united states now florida texas and other states in the gulf of mexico are affected by halves that make shellfish poisonous that kill fish aerosolized toxins because of organisms can be found in the water year round over wide areas these cells proliferate in certain areas and at certain times often off shore and events ran sported to shore by wind events and special features of the ocean bottom facilitate this transport in focus cell delivery to sites of recurrent blooms as you as you see here and the studies are ongoing to address the highly controversial issue of the potential link between red tides and nutrient inputs from land including those associated with agriculture and other human activities now in contrast in the northeastern united states a different algal species produces toxins that accumulate in shellfish but that does not cause massive fish kills or become aerosolized bees bloom shows and show no obvious link to land derived pollution the organism is not present in the water year round instead the blooms are heavily reliant on assists or a seed stage that lies dormant in the sediments for most of the year and then germinates to inoculate the surface waters so the blooms are highly seasonal here again the transport pathways have been identified that are critical in carrying the toxic shells to both near shore and offshore shellfish as shown in this image industry efforts to open a fifty million dollar a year sustainable offshore shellfish resource near georges bank are being severely constrained by the offshore comp onan of these blooms so in these and many other cases research progress has been significant and is providing tools to managers for example a computer model of hab dynamics in the gulf of maine has advanced to the level where we were able to forecast this spring a major bloom for the region that did occur several months later an outbreak that close shellfish beds from canada to massachusetts this is the first time a forecast of this type has ever been attempted anywhere this model is now being used to provide weekly forecasts to managers and will be used by no as the basis of an operational have forecasting system for the gulf of maine research progress on halves has been significant in the u s and in part because the scientific and management communities work together fifteen years ago to formulate a national plan or research agenda the one thousand nine hundred three national plan is outdated however we therefore formulated a new plan called harness a framework that will guide the us have research and monitoring well into the future and i enthusiastically support this program now under harness several existing national research programs will continue but new programs are needed and prominent among these is a program on prevention control and mitigation of harmful algal blooms this is something that romney and described as the r d d t t program i also endorse this program and recommend that funds be provided for it that are separate from existing fundamental research programs such as eagle have there are a number of promising have mitigation and control strategies under development that are highlighted my written testimony perhaps we can explore during questions so in conclusion the diverse nature of habs phenomena and the hydrodynamic and geographic variability associated with different outbreaks throughout the us pose significant challenge doubt as a result of research funding through eagle have and other programs however the scientific and management community has the skills and the knowledge to deal with these issues and stands ready to partner with congress and federal agencies  expanded national have program that transitions science to practical applications in this concludes my oral statement thank you for the opportunity to present my views thank you dr anderson mr pierce you are recognized now for five minutes chairman and members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to speak to i represent coastal fishery and human health managers not only from washington state but also from around the nation who face the task of providing citizens with access to some of the most productive fish and shellfish resources while protecting those citizens from the threats posed by harmful algal blooms i've spent a significant portion of my career working for the washing state department official wildlife management key shellfish fishery harvest of the pacific razor clam this abundant  delicious shellfish species has long been a part of the lifeblood of the small communities that line washington specific coast over two hundred fifty thousand avid razor clam harvesters are drawn to these small washington towns during the periods when this fisheries opened bringing with them millions of dollars spent on lodging food gas and entertainment one local restaurant owner left me a message on my office phone saying that a recent morning razor climb opener meant an additional eight thousand dollars in sales important income for him and his employees then just last week  sat in a small restaurant in the pacific county town of long beach i overheard a conversation between a waiter and some out of town customers he told them the only way the restaurant can survive the winter is the few days each month the state opens the razor clam fishery in addition to the economic impact one cannot overlook the significant role the ability to dig for razor clams plays in the lives of so many washington residents the joy of joining with family and friends to brave the elements to hard to brave the elements to harvest the shellfish and then return home prepare a big meal  fresh razor clams cannot be overlooked these kinds of activities have gone on for generations for coastal families and they are a big part of the social fabric of these communities however the opening of this fishery does not come cheaply to the state of washington each monthly opener must be preceded by favorable results from work conducted both by my agency and the washington department of health sampling for harmful algal species and the testing for levels of talks in clam tissue razor clams are also important to tribal communities not only for subsistence but also for income generated by the sales of clams through commercial harvest conducted by the tribe my agency works closely with the quintal indian nation to jointly manage razor clams along a portion of the washington coast and we share the monitoring for harmful algae but amidst all the good news about successful harvests some positive economic impacts on small communities is the very real threat of closures as a result of significant increases in harmful algal species and the uptake of toxins by these tasty shellfish these closures can be devastating events have lasted up to a year more closures heavily impact the citizens who count on the shellfish for a portion of their livelihood many other coastal managers from around this nation could tell you similar stories of how important our coastal resources are to the citizens of our nation and the devastating impacts habs have had on the fabric of other us coastal communities over the last several years i've had the pleasure of getting to know many of these other coastal managers as we were brought together by noah to assist in the preparation of the national plan for harmful  harmful algal blooms as dr anderson referred to the harness plan this document was made much stronger by bringing together federal and academic scientists and the state level managers the process was a unique opportunity for each of these groups to teach the other about their work their struggles and the goals they share this process the resulting plan have spawned other important devers including the harmful algal research in response a human dimension strategy which brought together key social scientists would have researchers and coastal managers to define and address the impacts habs have on what i described earlier the social fabric of the affected communities and more recent noah sponsored workshop brought together a larger group of have researchers and coastal managers from around the nation to brive to write provide input into the national scientific research development demonstration and technology transfer plan on reducing impacts from harmful algal blooms the writ planet dr magnan referred to in russian state we've also fold this model by bringing together northwest based federal have researchers university of washington oceanographers and algal experts state and tribal fishery managers and human health experts to form a sessile partnership the olympic region harmful algal bloom project began in two thousand with funds from nose monitoring and event response for his program it is now slowly funded by state dollars generated through a surcharge on shellfish licenses working together we are doing what we can to monitor our shellfish and our waters to ensure the safe continuation of the state's important fisheries using the example of washington's razor cl fishery i hope i provided you with a better understanding of what our nation's ocean resources mean to the citizens of our small coastal communities i hope you also see the impact have events have had on these communities and how important the continued involvement of the federal government in bringing the experts and the needed resources to the better understanding and perhaps in the future control of these events is to our state and local governments and finally i hope you see the value in using federal resources to continue to bring all the players state tribal academic and federal to the table to jointly address the issues presented by the presence of harmful algae thank you again for the opportunity to be here today thank you very much mr ayres dr arnall you're recognized for five minutes this morning and thank you for inviting me to testify about fresh water habits i'm dr hilton king of huddle and i served as a neuro toxicologist at the u s the p a for twenty three years where i led an interagency effort to address the freshwater have problem i'm now  adjunct professor at the university of north carolina and vice president director of science for solar be incorporated today i would tell you about have cells in their top of the wrist they pose for human health and ecosystems the stain ability the increasing occurrence and causes the freshwater haves approaches to preventing freshwater haves and the need for improved legislation to address haves and all of our nation's waters breast water haps are primarily caused by cyanide bacteria blooms make highly potent toxins much more potent than industrial chemicals and about equally potent to cobra venom many make multiple toxins and many make the same toxins the toxins affect the liver nervous system and other organisms organs the toxins threaten human health and the sustainability of our aquatic ecosystem unfortunately we are making the earth a better place for them to live the frequency of fresh water have is the increasing rapidly there are no regulations or guidelines for fresh water habits the p a has not addressed assess the risk or developed a national research plan for freshwater heb the world health organization and some countries have developed regulation the guidelines states and local governments are left without federal guidance if humans are exposed they have toxins in drinking in recreational waters there is no affordable method for removing all have toxins from drinking water ab toxins are causing acute chronic and delayed health effects acute effects range from rapid death to severe gastrointestinal and flu like illness some people remain chronically ill science indicated that repeated exposures caused cancers and probably neurodegenerative diseases like alzheimer's all levels of aquatic life suffer lethal and sub lethal effects from have toxins when they sink to the bottom and use up all the oxygen means the fish die annually due to lack of oxygen scientists scientists and water managers know the incidence of freshwater haves is increasing increasing rapidly in the u world wide each year habs occur where they had not occur before and for longer durations halves require new drea sunlight warmth and calm water habits are increasing because too many nutrients are going into our fresh waters increasing temperatures and decreasing flow rates the nutrients come from point sources like wastewater treatment plants and non point sources like fertilizer runoff from our yards and farms water flow rates are dropping as demand increases and droughts are more frequent by mid chains exacerbating the problem cost in the us are estimated to be many millions of dollars per year we can only target have causes of nutrient him put in calm water nutrient usage should be reduced in nutrients should be recaptured an array used water flow rates cannot use lead be increased however water can be circulated i joined solar be because i believe they make the best technology for moving water cheaply floating platforms powered by solar cells circulate water over long distances continuously halves are prevented over a thirty five acre area per unit with the success rate of ninety five bunce authorized through commerce to no us support competitive have research grants e p a funding was not authorized but a p a was statutorily required to help produce a scientific assessment of freshwater habs and a plan for a national research program to mitigate and control freshwater habs i helped prepare those documents however the e p a then unilaterally determined that it statutory requirements were completed there is no age is the effort to develop or implement a national research programme for fresh water have the agency ceased virtually all participation in freshwater hab research mitigation e p a quit funding the inner agency extramural have research grant programs and feast all have research in his national health and environmental effects research laboratory congress should pass a fresh water hole barkha legislation that authorizes funding for and requires the e p a to develop and implement a national research program for fresh water have the agency should be directed to form partnerships through a strong extramural peer reviewed competitive research grant program open to all private and public for profit and nonprofit organizations funding should be directed to the existing interagency grants programs and the newly proposed r d d t t program perhaps control technologies legislation will provide clarity to the e p a that fresh water have research is authorized and required by congress should then appropriate funds for fresh water have research i would urge the house science and technology committee which has primary jurisdiction over e p a research to develop in advance a national freshwater have a research bill and i am pleased to offer my expertise to help develop such authority for the e p a i thank the subcommittee for allowing me to express my views today  thank you very much and thank all of you for your testimony at this point will begin our first round of questioning the chair will recognize themselves for the first five minutes dr magnan before the discussion on how to move forward on the issue i want to ask a question about the last of zero four there were a number of reports and plans that were supposed to be done within a year or two of an accident and i've only seen one transmitted to congress can you tell me about the status of each of these reports watch taken so long to produce them and return referring specifically to the research development demonstration in technology transfer plan the three assessments of harmful algal bloom freshwater harmful algal blooms and boxes as you mentioned are four reports of the two thousand  authorization one has been produced and the three others are essentially completed there's going through the final stages of review and will be transmitted to congress shortly part of the challenge in putting those together was to fully engage both the research community the management community and the federal agencies in coming to consensus on these reports so i think the product even though it is a little bit beyond the deadlines as it is well worth the extra effort and we made all attempts to keep congress informed throughout the process of some of the delays that were occurring know it leads to important competitive research programs they go have and more have programs these programs got off to a very good started and funding many projects that have contributed to the advancement of knowledge and management capabilities we have now are there any new solicitations for these programs to continue these we had a competition in this fiscal year for the eco have program and we alternate between years between the eco having them or have program unfortunately our funding availability this year would not allow us to start any new wards for the zero eight competition although we did provide funding for some of the multi year awards for past competitions thanks to dr anderson you mentioned that the current national plan is outdated and now we have a new plan harness help address the issue for the next decade or more what specific components of this plan should be incorporated into the next  you've heard us mention several possible programs one that keeps coming up is this or a better way to think of it perhaps is prevention control in mitigation of halves and the way that report has been written and i in fact of appended  executive summary of that report to my written testimony it has three components to it one is an actual research and demonstration programme on prevention and control mitigation strategies but then there's also an event response element and then an infrastructure element without going into great details each of those is needed because we need programs that will help us test and demonstrate mitigation and control strategies and practical as science brain science through the practical applications but we also need to help the states in the regions respond to these massive outbreaks and unexpected outbreaks so an event response element is needed and then we also need what we're calling infrastructure which means toxins standards for all the measurements that are needed and and culture collections and many many other things that we need to conduct our research that everybody shares that's an infrastructure element so we put all of that under this r d d t t l s so that's one program that i think really is needed and as i said it needs to be separate from the end shouldn't steal funds or shouldn't take funds away from the basic research that already there with the eco haven't what are the major research gaps and obstacles and as she spoke some of that but that are making the making that make predicting the occurrences of the harmful algal blooms difficult and or there are other technologies that we could be using to help make better predictions one of the i mean i'll use my own region as a perfect example we have developed what is probably one of the best numerical models in the world for harmful algal blooms and it's the one that allows us to make predictions that we give forecasts to our our managers but at the same time it is restricted by our ability to collect data during these outbreaks you get very good weather forecasts because there's a continual flow of data from sensors and weather stations everywhere that's being used to constantly update your weather models we don't have that in our system so what we need as as one answered your question the ocean observatory system is starting to instrument the coastal ocean what we need are instruments as part of that system that will detect tabs and their toxins and relay that information to us so that we can and it's simulated into our models and improve those forecasts and predictions to me that's a very very important step forward you can do it with satellites satellites will only work in some said there is a great need to give a window of opportunity to risk managers to take action before harm is done better we can develop models like d anderson has to predict when these events will occur the better we can protect public health from these very potent toxins the only thing i might add is i did spend some time working on the event response portion of the r t t workshop about the capacities of the imposed satellite to see as well as or get images as good as we're getting now is it is that your understanding as well or and well i'm afraid i'm not a satellite expert so i really wouldn't be able to comment on the specifics of that satellite technology but i'd be happy to provide that information following the hearing will be helpful because  that i can't comment specifically other than that i have been to several meetings where the members of our community that do work with remote sensing information have spoken very strongly about the need for for some some strong guidance to the government to improve the next missions that go out the instruments that are going up there because we are reliant as i understand it on an indian satellite that will be coming up that we don't even know will have the correct wavelength the correct information that we've been getting or satellites they're already belong there beyond their design life and so the next five or ten years is sort of a black hole for some of these sensors up in space and that so i heard that there is a genuine concern then that's perhaps what what you're also referring to in speaking of images dr anderson i think if you had had the particulars you said dramatic images from china is that  what's going on there typical as to the what we see elsewhere is this particularly unusual amount of growth they truly are dramatic images the answer really is that in some parts of the world that is i don't quite call it typical but in many developing parts of the world where where there is a strong input of pollutants into coastal waters this is the type of event that you can see china has unfortunately over over many years focused a lot of energy on feeding its population on agriculture and aquaculture in the coastal zone and you're now seeing that that the effects of that there's no question that those seaweed blooms are being driven by pollution much heavier pollution than we typically have in this country so we don't see some of those types of events in that extreme but down in florida for example there are seaweeds washing up on beaches and rotting indicating that occurs up in new england areas well it just is not quite as extensive maybe a question better directed to the chairman because i think he's he's had some business experience with this but we could learn something from these rapid there is a sort of a twofer to figure out how to prevent it from happening in the ocean but maybe have it happen rapid growth where we want it so we can use harvest material right is that  offer a comment there we all get comments and questions these days from industry and so forth about about exactly that couldn't we harvest these blooms and turn them into biofuel and the answer is that the economics aren't really there for most of them and especially given the that not all of these blooms are as spectacular as some of the pictures you're seeing and you need to be having a sustainable resource but there's no question that if you move this whole process on land and and develop the ability to grow these that m mass quantities of algae they are much better approach to biofuel than growing corn and going the ethanol route you can grow them in desert desert locations there's many many advantages to using algae for biofuel but i just i'm not i don't think one can do that with natural blooms i think they're too sporadic and in many cases actually the harm we get is from very dilute suspensions of cells that that would not be suitable for b my time is up mr chairman thank you but if we could create some giant vacuum cleaner and back all the stuff up and filter out the algae squeeze the oil out of it and make fuel apparently that's not the best idea in the world baird you are recognized for five minutes thanks chairman thank our witnesses this is indeed an important topic as mentioned earlier by my colleagues and i mentioned that's not only our puget sound in our offshore environment also that cooper lake right near my own home one of the  basically transforming current experience in the long term memories and winnipeg campuses bilaterally lesion you get a phenomenon where when you have your old term memory a long term memory but nothing gets in so if we left the room and came back a couple minutes later you would remember that we seen one another sometimes congress seems to have suffered from this but but it is really quite astonishing and highlights the seriousness of this you know it's not just about closing our shellfish industry it's about a permanent severe neurological impairment that results and that's why this topic is so important i would caution by the way that notion of commercial algae is petroleum production is just an article in science i think last week about a reef structure in india that's been devastated by the release of algae algae apparently used for commercial production purposes and is just flooding over this wreath and you should see the pictures been wiped out but a lot to get to the question of what do we do about these things i think you've talked about the monitoring it sounds like mr had know that there are some approaches to actually reduce i mean you know once you've got a bloom these things are pretty intractable what are there what do we know about how to get rid of them once they're there especially in relatively small close water environments i know a big bloom of a close might be are but what are spectrum of opportunities for this yes well speaking for cyanide bacteria and freshwater blooms and some what it pertains to the red tides  developed in warmer areas south and they move north as temperatures increase and they need qui essence stagnant water so when you're talking about solutions for control you look at the causes you can do something about nutrients you can reduce nutrient input into our water we need to do that for many reasons not only the haves and the water quality but we need to reduce nutrient input because phosphorus were predicted to peak production in thirty years and be out of resources for phosphorous in fifty to one hundred years we need to be recapturing in reusing these instead of let them run into the water and cause problems we can't do much about warmth and sunlight but we can do something about stagnant water unfortunately can't just open the floodgates and lot a lot of water rushes out because of increasing demand and drought but we can circulate water that's why i went to work for solar b because they made solar powered floating platforms that are solar powered with a battery high efficiency pumps you put a big hose down you draw in water horizontally from long distances waters in different density layers so you draw in from one layer long distances bring it up to ten thousand gallons per minute and pushed out smoothly on the surface to circulate water over a thirty five acre area and have if it's strong enough circulation to prevent these habs over a thirty five acre area per unit so in the effect is additive the more units you put in the more air you can protect and for example now we have about twenty some circulator is protecting the water intake in houston in their reservoir which is had bad and have problems and so i think that we should combine our efforts to do do two things grow nutrient input to water through best management practices reduce the amount of nutrients we use for example there are bills now to take phosphate out of  detergents we should do some of that find other ways to use only what we really need not just throw all the fertilizer out you think the more the better and we need to recapture the nutrients at the point sources where they come out of the pipes into the water there can be systems there that perceptor out the phosphorus before it goes into the fresh waters then we can take it and reuse it and we need to combine that approach of nutrient input reduction with the circulation of water where it just there's no other means for it to be anything other than cool yes and stagnant we need to cape moving and we're doing research now to figure out why that works we know it works but we haven't done the research yet to figure out how it works so that's my approach to happen eventually in control to bring this to the marine side of the story we do have a number of technologies protected their their fish farming industry with with a modest investment compared to the value of that industry interestingly though in my lab has been actually doing work on that we've encountered quite a bit of environmental opposition to this  as you might understand but at the same time it it's rather frustrating from from my standpoint because we do everything i think we need to do to demonstrate that this is much less damaging than the red tide itself and that clay flows into the ocean constantly from rivers and so forth and yet there is this there there are groups that oppose it and so what's what's happening is we're developing certain technologies and i could mention viruses and parasites and bacteria that will destroy these red tide cells but there is a social that we need to address and actually to give us a society to accept this in the ocean is going to be a big step we already accept spraying for mosquitoes spraying for pests on broccoli or corn or whatever but people are not yet ready to let  us do the same in the ocean and i think this is an important area for this topic it's an important area for invasive species as well and it's one that i think we can approach and that's one of the reasons that i think we need this separate  r d t t program because when i write a proposal that tries to get funding for clay work and it's competing against basic science proposals from other investigators guess which ones tend to get supported because mine is much more controversial i can get easily people who say it's never going to work it's going to cause all these problems and so it's you need to have a separate pool of money where it where engineers and everyone else comes in and starts to attack these problems while the basic research keeps moving this fight was to get our side labelled so that we could kill it was fourteen a grass and we almost lost the estuary we were beating it now in a remarkable success story but we need at some point to gauge the cost benefits in a better way and just saying under no circumstances intervene when the condition that you're trying to beat may be far more destructive than the intervention and finding a way to deal with that would be very helpful maybe we could pursue this in this committee thanks  henderson could you outline briefly or in detail if you wish what you think the impact of climate change and specifically ocean acidification would be on i'll take the marine side of that and i think dr will probably have some comments to add about the freshwater side we were asked that question a lot and it is a very difficult one to answer because these are very complex phenomen and in my own region again i'll use that as an example we now have computer models for the future climate scenarios that would say we will have more rainfall and longer warm temperatures and things like this and we can start to put that into our models about what might like that might do to our blooms but these organisms are very adaptive as i said they these have a cyst age that remains in the said it's a lot like a seed of a higher plant so if the if the winter is shorter it just means it will germ little bit earlier if it's hotter summer it may may and it's blooms sooner so it's very hard to say how much difference that would make but i think in general we could say that we are going to see a a movement of these problems from some areas where they occur now into other areas where they don't just because temperatures become more tolerant but on the other hand you might actually see the disappearance of some of them from some areas as the temperatures become too warm for example  n is a an issue that really i don't have any specific answer of with all of our different have organisms there are so many different kinds that each one would have to be studied separately and that research is i just beginning i think on the freshwater side of the picture though it's it's a little more clear that that with the warming temperatures and the changes of even the ph that one would see more of the sign of bacterial blooms protein production this is occurring in many places in this country now and expanding because of it's getting the warrants that it needs but on top of temperature the precipitation and storms is another issue that sort of ironic that with climate change it seems that you get on the one hand more frequent heavy storms and what this does is wash off more nutrients into our freshwater but on the other hand you also get more frequent and extended drought periods and so when you get drought you get slower water flow more stagnant water so those both of these factors tend to increase the occurrence of these freshwater harmful algal bloom thank you doug many of you mentioned you went over the predictions of the new england event how effective would that modeling be in terms of other types of of these events around the coast other coastlines other sections of our coastline well that's that's a good question because it it speaks to the national scope of our programs as well as tailoring things regionally so there definitely are components of all of these types of research weather forecasters attack sion or a control issue with a virus or bacteria or clay that is transferable from one region to another so the knowledge that we've developed through our partners in new england can definitely be transferred elsewhere not necessarily lock stock and barrel but with adjustments to the particular have species or the circulation patterns in a given region with much less effort and a lot shorter time frames so we're looking at all of those opportunities to get  efficiencies and transfer knowledge from one region to another and we've already got a number of very good examples where that's been done there was a coordination define the coordination between agent c s or scientists to be workshops through the harness report which we provided funding for we've had workshops in florida recently we're going to have a another workshop on the regional problems in the west coast we've gotten great participation from the managers social scientists the federal agencies and we're also working very hard with the all of these groups in putting together the reports for the park legislation that the chairman asked me about earlier and that's you know a big job but it's one worth worth taking on and doing to the benefit of everybody thank you my time's expired but would you let mr hanson  is just to add to to the issue of the transferability of the model results since it was our model that was doing this prediction there is right now many of these models have generally two complements of physical model which is of the circulation of the water and those are being developed all over the country and and to into those we have to build the biology of these have organisms and many of them have organisms that we work on do occur in other parts of the country so the one that causes problems in the wing also occurs along the coast of california and washington and even alaska so i actually have received inquiries and inviting someone from washington to my lab to do some of the experiments that are needed to take their organism and to just change the parameters slightly so that they can use that that modeling so in many cases i think these modeling efforts are transferable with some tweaking of the of the organism to so that it reflects this region is supposed to that region thank you  testimony first question i have is the problem of fertilizer runoff and things like that off of land particularly farmland has long been a problem i think of it more in connection  erie and freshwater bodies more than salt water perhaps and then there is also talk though about conditions in the ocean where there are some ph change it's not driven by fertilizer i think as much as it is ph change which then tends to destroy coral formations and things like that where these in any way connected are they to totally separate situations and and which is more serious anderson addressed some of the issues related to the ocean acidification and that it's so early in the research phase there that we really don't know how that particular situation is going to affect the multitude of different species that compose the group of harmful algae the nutrients do you know for sure that it is a ph thing that's driving those conditions ph is involved but nutrients not as clear cut exactly and the the changes we're seeing at least now in ph are fairly subtle so it may become an issue down the road we certainly should look at that but for now the immediate issue is nutrients and not your gender phosphorus real it can be both in marine systems it tends to be more nitrogen but phosphorus could be involved in the freshwater situations it tends to be more phosphorous that kick up these large blue green algae blooms and freshwater and it also connects with another important issue in have a chance sequence of events where the excess nutrients pouring into these water bodies create an overabundance of algae algae eventually die decomposed settle to the bottom and the decomposition process they use up the oxygen leading to fish kills and loss of habitat and that that's one of the reasons why you've heard so much about predictions here we try to put all this complex science together in an models and in a way that managers can make decisions you know if we can just wave our arm and say nutrient pollution is a problem we need to be specific and say you know if you reduce that x percentage this is how it's going to affect the the algal blooms that where the do g p s and farming certainly the farmers have an incentive increasingly an incentive to be sparing with their fertilizers so with the new g p s systems where you're literally putting just the fertilizer and you need is that has that become pretty effective at knocking it down from where it was ten or twenty years ago well it's certainly helping but we've still got a huge issue there and actually no i have been  talking recently with u s d a to try to work with them and address this nutrient problem as well as with e p a and other state and federal agencies that can influence a situation when you come out on the change i mean if you take for instance clean air i'm from st louis area if you take a look at the air that i was breathing as a high school student which i thought was pretty good air i didn't have much other alternative but to breathe it but if you take a look at that air by today's standards i mean it's orders of magnitude cleaner than it was when i was in high school we have the same kinds of improvements because this is a problem it's been around for a long time i would say we have comparable improvements on what we call the point sources of nutrient pollution such as wastewater treatment plant in industries we've done yeoman's work there just here in the in the potomac river some of those images that we saw earlier the green paint type covering of the water used to be here right here in the potomac in the in the sixty's and seventy's and due to the wastewater treatment blue plains and other big treatment plants that's made a remarkable recover comparable to the the heir to the air issues where we're still struggling is what we call the non point sources which are primarily agriculture runoff from urban areas it's much more difficult it's much more pervasive it's not a an engineering fix at a particular pipe so we need to continue to to be vigilant there and work with new technologies and and methodology is to help reduce that problem mr chairman i know that my time is expired efforts are most helpful to you in dealing with the impacts of harmful algal bloom but could this program provide that would be more helpful in the management decision making process recently completed nearly completed it will have funded study of  the movement of sudan if she has a plankton species that causes the problems most significant in the washington post has provided a lot of detail about how that happens and has given us much better insight into how those plankton species move and when we might expect problems with the shellfish that we're managing along the washington i mean that as dr anderson pointed out earlier continued data collecting is so important to that and the federal funding has ended to this specific research we have an understanding of how that works but still continued visits to the area offshore the offshore sampling of the state does not have the capability of funding needs to occur in some way and dr anderson talked about ocean observing systems being a possible way of doing that whether it's opportunistic ride right along as i know of and bloom and then eventually perhaps move on to the wash and coast we also are affected by blooms that come from the south part of our coast and that also affect the oregon coast widespread areas and there was an eco have proposal that was identified for funding dr mcginn pointed out earlier there wasn't enough funding to actually allow that to go forward at least during this fiscal year and hopefully it'll happen in the future additional work like that eco have large studies over these large ocean areas that it can identify not only the oceanography but but the specifics of what's happening and how these plankton species move onshore or be very helpful to managers like myself in washington oregon and down into california we're talking wide areas and you know we have a  boundary area as well where a lot of these blooms are coming out of the canadian waters and acting canadian waters the same as they do in the u s so continue cooperation with researchers in canada certainly important as well we do a lot of work with canadians a lot of issues because of that trans boundary issue in washington state so the continued collection of just primary data and then the larger scale projects like eco have can fund is very important to managers like myself especially the pacific northwest  managers perspective as the new plan that the research community has published the harness plan press the need priorities and help in the predict yes harness did a very good job of doing that and i think a very good job not only for a manager like myself in the pacific northwest but for manners all around the country and that's because i give no a lot of credit for bringing managers into that process and not only fishery managers but human health managers early on and so we had an opportunity provide a lot france funding is always a answer but one of the one of the ways to make that happen is partnerships among federal agencies and we could use the help of committees like this to forge some of those partnerships there are agencies there are many agencies that are that have mandates where harmful algal blooms are involved in some level and that are in fact a number them are not participating in this national program i can i could name a few of the part of agriculture for example you know that are e p a and some ways on them are in the marine side in particular so if we could form partnerships and get get some of these agencies to put their resources even limited them together we start to have the successes equal have is a success in large part because it is a partnership that has no n s f or for a while n s f e p a was in it for a while office of naval research and even nasa so it was a partnership of agencies that would all jointly fund projects so to me that would be one of the areas where we could get some help i'll ask questions for dr hood know what are some of the possible options for addressing the water hibbs research needed to understand freshwater have as much needed for the marine coastal habs issue my opinion i believe it's very likely that nutrients are an issue both for freshwater and marine had as we have heavy rainfalls nutrients run off the  point sources which are harder to control and they enter the freshwater and they flow to the coast and the water is all connected so you have first of all the nutrients starting halves in the freshwater they move salinity range and then i think it's likely that this issue about marine halves and nutrients i just believe that all organisms require nutrients and that if more nutrients are coming in it's going to  stimulate it and it may not cause the marine have to start but it may i believe feed them and make them worse the nutrient in put reduction is critical i believe for controlling have for addressing other water quality problems and we should make a better attempt to control the input into the fresh water where it all starts second of all in fresh water particularly we can circulate war where we know that it's too stagnant where there are dams built for example new reservoirs put in we're building lots of new reservoirs two thirds of our population now causing blooms to happen and if you look at a place like the klamath river that starts in oregon and moves through california down to recent years the problem there has just become phenomenal with species or genera microsystems called sign a bacteria called micro sistas and it often starts with some problems in the upper portions of the river but then when you get to the reservoirs where there have been dams built you start to see these massive blooms of sign of bacteria occurring there and because the water is so stagnant and there we have seen the highest cell count i've ever seen anywhere in the world in the highest toxin levels many thousands of times above the w h o guidelines level for what is a safe level very dangerous situation and what happens is that these dams will open up and let water out in the last year for the first time there were so many cells that enough survive that that they kept moving down the river and they would be in one reservoir move down be in the next reservoir and one of the slides i had flashing by showed him hitting the ocean and they were just all over the delta so it's a problem of both nutrients and fills moving down the water and best in my opinion the best thing we can do particularly in sensitive areas like shellfish beds is circulate water in estuaries and places where it is to stagnant and prevent the nutrients from getting there to feed those ha are more one hundred square miles we're now starting to work in late thai who and china which is the second largest lake i forget hundreds of square miles big and they have terrible microsystems blooms every year back last summer the town of woozy of several million people they had to shut down all the drinking water plants because there was so much toxin in the water so people survive off of bottled water for for weeks until the economics of that i take it not very good and that's why it's not mean then right now or are you know or can they be somewhat positive i've now there's not been research that near enough and there are no places to apply for research for that for funds for that kind of research i know of but it's solely we've recently begun to look at this issue and trying different approaches but what we're trying now is where you have this floating platform pumping up all this water to put a metal ring around the water where it's coming into the unit and run solar powered electric charges that pulse positive and negative off thing and what you can do is magnetized the phosphorus and is attracted to these bars and so if you can develop a system that will track the phosphorus in and then you can go and periodic lee exchanged rings you can take all the phosphorus off those metal ring to it and you know this is just a very small scale first attempt to do this but i think that potentially technology will allow us to do very large scale things like this that water treatment plants for example and recapture that phosphorus and we really have no alternative in the future because the phosphorus is to be depleted and we cannot farm without phosphorous there's no synthetic alternative every living organism requires phosphorous but we're using up all the natural reservoirs of phosphorous that we now mind and like i said before production is predicted to peak in thirty years and the sources be depleted in fifth two hundred years so there are many reasons that this technology needs to research needs to invest in this type of technology to look at how to best or capture on a economical way these nutrients that we are going to need for use in the future and we need now to prevent from getting y know if i could just add to that i want to make sure that we have it clear that only some of the haves that we deal with both marine and fresh water are related to nutrient pollution certainly more so on the freshwater side but many of the problems around this country are if there's a nutrient impact it's it's sometimes subtle and so when we try to move forward with policies and programs we have to look beyond just saying the problem is nutrients i just need to make that that clear and so that there are other technologies that we need to help manage those problems whether it be predictions in detection systems and and maybe even some efforts for bloom suppression that that are not using nutrient as a preventative tool but in fact going after the cells themselves with chemicals or parasites or something else like that but i just want to make sure that the committee doesn't get the impression that the answer is nutrient  nutrient reduction for all of these halves what could be the other just to recap that the other possibilities are a natural phenomenon that's occurring is that right in perhaps some other variables would those be well again let's go to my region we've looked very hard we have not found a nutrient relation with the northeast paralytic shellfish poisoning problem so if you're trying to manage that problem or do something about it you're  not going to change the river outflows or the way the wind blows and the types of storms we get so the best you can do then is to be able to to understand the system to predicted to forecast it so the shell fishermen and the industries and s are aware of what's coming and you you develop better technologies to detect these cells so that you know exactly what you areas are should be closed and which should be open you can sense start having surgical closures of of harvesting instead of closing an entire coastline you close here and there but not not over there and so you have to live with the fact that these are natural phenomena and learn how to manage around them and that case that's plain management there's other areas though where we've  talked about the technologies that can be used to suppress the bloom or controllable and that's what everyone keeps asking if you can control mosquitoes why can't you control a red tide and it's a it's a complex answer to that but there are technologies there i mentioned the clay i've mentioned viruses parasites and so forth they all need more research they all need pilots studies and then some actual demonstration projects to show whether they will or will not work and then we can perhaps get society to start to accept them may i will just say the same thing imagine your ass you are the puget sound is about to be invaded by some major organism that's going to destroy who knows what salmon or something like that right now i don't think we have the knowledge or the mandate a government agency mandate to be able to go out and stop that invader and we have those same problems for habs and i think that something needs to change to help us fight that battle thank you thank you recognized that's mr chairman i would say that one of the reasons i particularly enjoy this committee is we get to address issues that are not political radar screen but actually very profound economic lee and from a health perspective i want to just ask clarification cation for myself the toxins that are produced from some of these halves my understanding is they're not it when we look at our normal water filtration and treatment systems my understanding is some of these toxins are not filtered out in other words if i were a hiker going to a lake that had a habit and i might get my usual filter out they go i've you know i'm thinking i'm going to get out you know g already or something like that but the toxins in cells could still be toxic even with normal filtration is that accurate  well i can speak directly to the freshwater side of bacterial toxins and that in fact is one of the things that worries me the very most there's a lot of data from florida for example that shows  repeatedly measure toxin levels in the raw source water and in the finnish drinking water many times you'll find the toxin levels to be higher in the finnish drinking water than the raw source water reason that occurs is because when you bring in water to the plant one of the first things you do is filter it and you filter it that license or break it's open the cells and then the sales release all their toxin into the water and normal drinking water processing is shown by the florida data just does not get these toxins out and i've looked a lot into this issue with one of my colleagues who specializes in this to the west rick and other people and what you different methods to try to deactivate break down get rid of that toxin you find some things work for a few analog some work for a few other analogs there's just no way that we can get all of these toxins out with any kind of affordable processing the only answer i can see is that we simply have to prevent these toxins from coming into the plant in the for and surely  you go out camping with your water filter and you see some green water i would hope you try to filter it and drink it not going to work i use that as an example because i think we just become accustomed to think oh we have water treatment centers that will protect us from this and the point is this is a different kind of entity that's that's our problem i want to go back to this issue of of nutrients you know a couple years ago that trailers and i were working on a bill relating to harmful blooms and i put in a provision to deal with the causes of it and it was interesting this provision got completely hung up for reasons unknown to us we could not understand it it was we had to put a lot of work in why is someone blocking it or not a staff member who was also on the ag committee didn't want to research looking at the causes of this lest we demonstrate scientifically that runoff from farms or agricultural operations feedlots whatsoever were this what are your thoughts and or your experience or yours or anyone else on the panel of of trying to reduce the upstream inputs that may contribute collectively to damage downstream well certainly the downstream economic impacts are big  and not even well quantified although in my written testimony you'll see there's a study that's about to be completed that will give us some insight in our specific incident in our case in washington state on the economic impacts of some of these fisheries and i agree with the puget sound region the strait of georgia some big population centers so it's not impossible to believe that that might be the case but i don't think the science has proven it to this point to be the case but certainly if there were some proof like that and there was some ability to reduce  the the impact these habs have on our coastline as a result of reducing some of the upstream effects that would be a good thing and i agree with that but i don't think the science yet in our case it washes state says that's the case in other places in the nation where that is the case certainly the cost benefit issues that you talked about earlier should be looked at and and balanced accordingly if i could i'd like to say that while there is some controversy about how much nutrients are involved in the red tides green halves there's really no controversy for the freshwater halves it's very clear that nutrients are the driving force nitrogen and phosphorus of the two most important  cells need three things they need carbon nitrogen phosphorus and then some trace metals but there's plenty of carbon you can do anything about that there are some nitrogen and there are species that can fix nitrogen they can take unusable forms out of the air or water and fix it in the forms that they can use for nutrients and then phosphorous is the only thing that's limiting for everything so it's important for fresh water to keep the phosphorous out and the ratio between  phosphorus that just determines which type of bacteria bloom or to get them all out but it is clear that with the fresh water issue reducing nutrients will reduce the births but it's very long time frame where you can reduce nutrients in an area that always has annually has had it will be a long time before you can get the nutrient level down to where you won't have them a couple reasons for that we've already dealt with the point sources by reducing nutrients coming out of the pipe as ben said it's much more difficult to deal with them on point sources and we need better  research and effort into best management pack practices to reduce the amount of nutrient we're putting on the plan to begin with and then to find better ways to contain the runoff and maybe recapture nutrients there before it finally gets into the had i was in a kind of in the middle of an confortable situation in florida related to this nutrient issue and you're talking about competing interests the last couple years i was invited to talk at a number of localities in florida because they were trying to really rush legislation that would say in our locality you cannot use certain types of fertilizer you have to limit the amount you put down they wanted to pass restrictions on fertiliser usage because you know they have grass up to the edge canals and all that fertilizer going in the water and in big balloons but on the other in you have the huge agricultural interest in the middle of the state who are doing lots of farming and doing using lots of fertilizer and they're coming down the rivers and getting alleys and so there was a situation where the state was trying to pass for lies a regulation that would say this is what we're going to do and localities cannot do anything beyond this so the localities are trying before the state pass there is to get their placeholders in place so that they wouldn't be blocked from passing legislation  lot so we really need some kind of national leadership to help the localities in the states see the best road to take to do the right thing thank you very much and thank all of you for your for your comments we appreciate you being here under the rules of this committee the record will be held open for two weeks for members to submit additional statements and any directional questions that they might have for the witnesses this hearing is now a