Bill seeks NOAA center for Mobile
Friday, July 14, 2006
By SEAN REILLY
Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would receive $20 million to create a disaster response center in Mobile, while another $8.5 million would be targeted for land purchases on Dauphin Island and several ecologically valuable south Alabama tracts, under a spending bill passed Thursday by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The NOAA center would consolidate various programs at a central Mobile location "to better respond to disasters and ensure greater cooperation with other federal, state and local agencies," according to a news release from U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, the Tuscaloosa Republican who heads the subcommittee that crafted the spending bill.
The measure covers NOAA and its parent agency, the Commerce Department, as well as NASA and the Justice Department for the fiscal year beginning in October.
Although President Bush did not request money for the center, NOAA supports the concept, Steve Gallagher, the agency's budget director, said in a phone interview.
"What we learned in the (Hurricane) Katrina experience ... was that we have to beef up our efforts to respond to these types of disasters," he said.
The center would house teams on call to deal with such crises as an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Gallagher did not know how many people might work there or whether they would be drawn from other NOAA offices.
The legislation still needs approval from the full Senate, as well as the House. Its final fate will probably not be settled until sometime this fall.
In a tight budget climate, Shelby was recently forced to drop hundreds of millions of dollars in so-called "pork" spending during House/Senate negotiations over a separate emergency appropriations bill.
Shelby may have better luck with this measure, said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington, D.C., watchdog group. During the normal budget cycle, Williams said, lawmakers tend "to give everybody a little bit of something."
The Senate measure also includes $2.5 million for Mobile County to buy land on Dauphin Island. The intent is to preserve undeveloped land that could also provide limited public beach access and wildlife habitat on the barrier island, said Bill Melton, the Mobile County Commission's environmental director.
The commission had sought the funding before Hurricane Katrina struck with the idea of purchasing property on the island's west end, Melton said. Because of storm damage, however, the commission may have to look at other parts of the island if the money materializes.
Another $6 million in the bill would go to buy thousands of acres in the Red Hills area of Monroe County, together with land along the Escatawpa River in northwest Mobile and southwest Washington counties.
The Monroe County property is home to the Red Hills salamander, considered a threatened species by the federal government. The Escatawpa River lands contains beautiful long-leaf pine forests, said Greg Lein, assistant director of the state lands division at the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
"We would like to protect those forests from being converted to other uses," Lein said. Should Congress deliver the federal money, it would be matched with $6 million from the state's Forever Wild program, he said.
Among other earmarked appropriations, the bill furnishes:
$3 million for a Gulf of Mexico education and outreach program headed by the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.
$2.5 million for a Mobile Bay fisheries initiative involving the University of South Alabama.
$350,000 to add classrooms and a theater to the battleship USS Alabama.
$8 million for the "Wild American" shrimp marketing campaign.
http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/1152869057135760.xml&coll=3
