August 16, 2012, 1:12 pm
Tsunami Debris Strains Budgets and Patience
The steady increase in marine debris arriving on Pacific shorelines as a result of the March 2011 tsunami in Japan is starting to tax state budgets as
well as deepen concerns over invasive species.
Soccer balls, a Harley-Davidson and a 188-ton dock have already made landfall. En route is an armada of flotsam, from rooftop shingles to capsized
fishing boats, spread across an area of ocean three times larger than the contiguous United States.
The tsunami towed an estimated five million tons of debris into the ocean. Thirty percent of that, or some 1.5 million tons, is said to remain afloat
and to be arcing north of Hawaii toward the Pacific coastline. Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii and British Columbia are bracing to
manage the debris, but strapped federal and state budgets could make that difficult.
The Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation, with a standard two-year beach debris response budget of $85,000, says it has spent more than $250,000
on beach cleanup in the past three months.
“This is a slow-rolling disaster,” said Julie Hasquet, a spokeswoman for the office of Senator Mark Begich of Alaska. The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration announced $250,000 in grants on July 17 for the five affected Pacific states, but this will serve only as a brief stopgap,
according to those involved in the cleanup.
“We’re of course grateful for the initial grant, but we believe the administration is underreacting,” Ms. Hasquet said. “This is a major disaster, and
it needs to be treated as one.” In May, Senator Begich, a Democrat, requested $45 million from the federal government for all five states over two
years.
NOAA is the federal agency charged with most marine debris management but “alone does not have the resources to launch a large-scale removal effort,”
its press office said in an e-mail.
Most of the Pacific shoreline, from the southern tip of California to the Aleutian arm of Alaska, is public land and therefore the responsibility of
government. While “we get trash all the time,” said Chris Havel, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of
Parks and Recreation, officials are worried about a rapid increase in volume.
“If we could plan for it, then we could write a check, but right now it’s as if we’ve been thrust into a dark room,” Mr. Havel said. “We can’t budget
that way.”
Alaska recently spent two weeks cleaning an estimated 40 tons of trash that appeared almost overnight on the shores of Montague Island in Prince
William Sound. In early July, Gov. Chris Gregoire of Washington released $500,000 from a state emergency fund to deal with incoming tsunami debris.
Quick diffusion of the debris made it invisible to commercial satellites six weeks after the tsunami, so NOAA has a relatively spare foundation of
data. The unexpected arrival last month of a 188-ton, 66-foot dock on the Oregon shore pointed up the limitations of computer projections of the
location and extent of the debris. “Suddenly everyone’s schedules changed,” said Mr. Havel.
The dock was encrusted with nearly two tons of biological matter, including a few species with “potential for really serious harm” to local
ecosystems, according to Jim Eckman, director of the California Sea Grant Program. “I don’t want to be alarmist, but we’ve got to be worried,” he
said.
Clinging to the dock in Oregon, for example, were northern Pacific seastars, which can decimate farmed or natural oyster and clam populations, and
wakame, a brownish seaweed that quickly fouls coastal environments and can ruin prime spawning habitats.
“The wakame was a sentinel of danger for us all,” Dr. Eckman said. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists wakame as one of the top
100 worst invasive species.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife reacted quickly when the dock washed up, sterilizing it with propane torches.
Estimates of annual damage from invasive species in the United States run as high as $138 billion.
In partnership with the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers, state agencies continue to look for large debris that may have once been moored
along coastal Japan – fishing boats, buoys or dock piles, for example.
“We’re not concerned about the loose pop can or cup that washes up,” said Rick Boatner, the invasive species wildlife integrity coordinator for the
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The vast majority of debris dragged off by the tsunami moved quickly from land to open ocean and therefore does not carry the type of estuarine
organisms that concern specialists. “Regardless, we have a lot of ocean and not many personnel,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to catch these
things before they boom.”
The Japanese government reported four docks missing after the tsunami. It was later able to lasso and retain one. Two others remain unaccounted for
somewhere in the Pacific.
While big debris like the dock draws the most public attention, Mr. Havel of the Oregon parks department predicts that the constant flow of small
trash will ultimately prove the backbreaker. “When we get to the end of this all, I think we will have spent far more time and money on the boring
trash collection, not the big stuff,” he said.
The work is expected to become more difficult as summer fades and networks of volunteer labor contract.
“Our biggest fear is the fear of the unknown,” he said. With waves of debris washing ashore, “it doesn’t take very long for the character of a beach
to change in irreparable ways.”
Federal and state agencies have dealt with similar challenges, for example, when hurricanes along the Gulf Coast washed debris into wetlands or swamp.
But those pulses of coastal pollution were singular, whereas trash from the tsunami could continue to wash ashore through 2016, officials said.
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