Date: 2000-10-26
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. the gentleman from Wisconsin raised the issue of the coastal zone and the inadequate funding in this legislation so that those States on our coast will have the ability to put in place the programs that they have now developed over many. many years. expending a lot of money to protect the coastal zone and to make sure that that coastal zone. which is of great importance to 50 percent of the population in this Nation and to the jobs that are related to marine coastal zone. the commercial and recreational fishing activities that take place there. and the economy that is driven by the economy of that area can properly be protected. One of the major assaults on the coastal zone and on the economy and on the use of the coastal resources is nonpoint source pollution. This legislation just completely inadequately deals with that problem. Polluted runoff closes shellfish beds and increases harmful algae blooms and dead zones. it closes beaches and causes fish contamination advisories and much more that we now have to put up on a weekly and daily basis in the coastal zones on the East Coast and the Gulf Coast and on the West Coast of the United States. It is the single biggest problem dealing with water quality. whether it is in the Chesapeake Bay or whether it is in Puget Sound or San Francisco Bay or Santa Monica Bay. We now have dead zones that extend off of the Gulf of Mexico that are thousands and thousands of square miles that are creating dead zones in the area. killing off .the fish. killing off any kind of economic activity that can take place there. In my own State of California. officials in California closed beaches 3.273 times in the State of California. Certainly. last summers economic disaster in Huntington Beach. California. which was a direct result of beach closure due to water contamination from polluted runoff. underscores the kinds of problems that we were hoping that this legislation would. in. fact. deal with. the continued problems of runoff from logging areas from the interior parts of our States and other States throughout the coastal zone in California. We were poised to reauthorize the Coastal Zone Management Act and the Federal statute that regulates these activities and provides for the States to develop the plans. The States. many of them. have been fully qualified. as is the State of California. to now go forward with these plans. and yet this legislation is so meager on its resources for those activities that we will be unable to do so. This is a huge. huge segment of the environment of the United States. In just the State of California. we have over 1.600 miles of shoreline and 645.000 acres of estuaries. harbors. and bays. We have industries that are totally dependent upon this situation: the recreation. the tourism industry. We now have beaches that have been closed for 6 to 12 weeks and a number of beaches that have been closed permanently. This legislation is inadequate. It ought to be rejected. We ought to turn this legislation down and go back and get the kinds of funds that are necessary to protect the coastal zones of the United States of America.