Senator makes clear [we] “cannot bury our heads in the sand while climate change and sea level rise put billions of dollars of infrastructure and millions of Americans at risk.”
[VIDEO]
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, spoke out on the Senate floor this evening to urge support for Senate Resolution 551, sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), which recognizes that sea levels are rising at accelerated rates and that human-caused climate change is driving measurable, real-world impacts across our communities and our economy.
Here are Sen. Cantwell’s remarks as delivered:
“Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak in support of the Senator from Rhode Island’s Resolution 551, and applaud him for recognizing that sea level risings are accelerating the rates that we are seeing and driving measurable impacts,” said Sen. Cantwell. “My colleague from the Midwest objecting to this is very disturbing, because even our colleague from Maine and I….Senator Collins, had gotten [GAO] to do two different reports over the last eight or nine years to say how much climate change is costing the federal government and federal taxpayers. The first study came back and said it’s costing us billions of dollars, and the most recent one said it [will] cost us a trillion dollars. So literally, you’re costing taxpayers a trillion dollars because you don’t want to adapt or mitigate those impacts.
“I can tell you that these are real world impacts, and certainly when 45 percent of the U.S. economy is happening in coastal areas. That means those coastal economies can be impacted by rising sea levels, and that means that our economic output can be impacted. So we’re trying to do something about that. I want to thank Senator Whitehouse for his leadership on this important issue.
“He is out here time and time again, talking about this, articulating the issues, actually, traveling his state, traveling the country, being an articulate voice on why rising levels of our ocean is important, why ocean acidification is important, why protecting fisheries is important, why helping shellfish growers…you know, we did some research, Senator Whitehouse, the University of Washington, it was only a few hundred thousand dollars. but we had five generations of shellfish growers about to go out of business because of the fact that ocean acidification had changed the [composition] in the water, and we could not figure out how to seed for those shellfish. And the science that was done at the University of Washington helped us come up with a new process and save the day.
“But what is the next challenge going to be? We need to strengthen our coastal resiliency in the face of this climate change. I really also applaud our colleague, Senator Markey, who is a member of the Commerce Committee, also from an ocean state — very dependent on an ocean economy for lots of different issues — wants to make sure that we are applying the best science to protecting these economies.
“As I mentioned, a non-partisan Government Accountability Office report found that climate change will cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion by 2039, so I know the presiding officer knows all about what happens when FEMA and disasters happen, and we need to help states. But just imagine that that bill is now going to be $1 trillion by 2039, and rising sea levels are going to be part of that cost.
“Washington, my state, is already seeing real world impacts from this, particularly [from] sea level rise. Puget Sound levels are projected to rise 1.6 feet by 2050 and as much as 10 feet by 2100, and statewide, we’re expecting to see one to three feet by the end of the century. So that does have an impact, and the kind of changes that we’re talking about can have impacts, specifically to infrastructure.
“Sea level rise will worsen coastal flooding. It will impact storm surge. Just for example — what does that mean? We have a highway system that runs right up and down our Puget Sound area that can be impacted at times. We’ve had a lot of erosion lately. It’s now twice right outside of Bellingham, the I-5 has been closed. Okay, why is I-5 closing? Because we’ve had so much rain and we have so much impact [from] a changing environment that we basically have had to have I-5 shut twice just to clean up from the mudslide.
“Our Amtrak service that runs all the way from California up to British Columbia, [has] also been impacted by huge slides after rain and after these swollen rivers. And the increased likelihood of ground instability during earthquakes also magnify the devastating events in threatened critical [infrastructure] like roads, bridges, fiber optic cables.
“[Areas of] Greater Seattle could…be under water as early as [2050]. So we just had a massive flood out in the Northwest in December, and that impact was just unbelievable — one of the biggest. Thank God we had the information from NOAA. And thank God — what did we do in King, Pierce and Snohomish County? We basically, over the last decade, planned for mitigation and adaptation. We built a canal system. We built a system that allowed us to take some of that water and create a flow of the massive amount of water that happened during that flood, and were able to literally — we lost one individual — that was it. We were so proud that we had made it through most of that until one individual drove into the flooded area and unfortunately lost their lives. We’re very, very sorry for them and their family.
“But when we planned and did adaptation and mitigation, when we looked at culverts, when we looked at diking systems, when we looked at relieving the pressure, we were able to lessen the impact. It’s not unlikely that any of these floods or any of these rising water issues impact a major transportation system in our state, whether it’s I-5, I-90, or Highway 2, or some of these other facilities. We pay a lot of attention to this, because we got a lot of product going to the Pacific right through our state, and so if any of these infrastructure resources are closed, it’s literally millions and millions and millions of dollars a day.
“Rising wastewater is also an issue. So treatment facilities around Puget Sound and Elliot Bay are increasingly vulnerable to flooding and overflow, threatening the release of bacteria, toxic chemicals and other pollutants into our waterways and our drinking water. Those risks and costs only grow as water rises. In the state of Washington alone, two million people live in areas susceptible to flooding with $86 billion worth of infrastructure at risk, and that number continues to grow as sea levels rise. Nationally, 34 million Americans live in low-elevation areas at risk to sea level [rising]. That’s literally one in ten Americans. So why ignore it? All my colleague was trying to do is to say we should recognize this threat and start to work towards solutions.
“Sea level rise endangers one of the cornerstones of our state’s heritage and economy, and that’s salmon. We all in the Northwest want to make sure that rising sea levels do not impact our estuaries and our wetlands. But that’s exactly what these rising sea levels are supposed to do –significantly reduce estuaries and wetlands by 2100. These areas are critical for juvenile salmon as they migrate to the ocean, as well as birds and important wildlife.
“Just this week, Isabella Breda at the Seattle Times wrote a piece about how the Chinook salmon — I think I got to get this for the senator from Rhode Island, because it’s a great story. It’s on the front page of the Seattle Times, but it is literally about monitors in the river, because you’re trying to monitor these storms. Because when we have — this is the area where, several years ago…we had a massive mudslide in Oso, which killed dozens and dozens of people, unfortunately. And so we know we can have major events, and we need to do better.
“So basically, it is about how Chinook salmon in the Stillaguamish River are vulnerable to the flooding that disrupts the riverbed sediments needed for spawning. So we’re trying to understand this because it’s kind of like the massive amount of flooding can just wash away the salmon beds. And in this river alone, Chinook populations are down to roughly 10 percent of their historic levels. So this is really important to us as a state. We want salmon. We want to understand rising sea levels. We want to understand what flooding is going to do to create damage. When are those spawning grounds going to be lost, and when are Chinook survival rates going to continue to drop? We want to know.
“Many of the 29 federally recognized tribes in my state have already been seeing the impacts of climate change and are actively preparing for the worst. And I know some people may not know the geography of our country, but we’re talking — okay, let’s just say that we’re talking way out on the Pacific coast. Tribes like the Hoh Indian Tribe, the Quinault Indian Tribe, the Quileute Tribe, the Shoalwater Bay Tribe, are all located along the Pacific coast, and the threat of sea level rise has forced them to take aggressive, unprecedented actions to move parts of their reservation to higher land. Some have had to plan for full-scale relocation of coastal villages to mitigate the increasingly dire threat of floods due to sea level.
“Trust me, the Army Corps of Engineers is out there, practically on a monthly basis, trying to come up with a plan to mitigate the impacts of the Pacific on the Shoalwater Tribe. Others are working tirelessly to mitigate the cumulative effects of coastal erosion, including inland flooding and extreme weather events. For some of our coastal tribes, the situation is incredibly dire. Not long ago, when I was visiting the Shoalwater in Tokeland, Washington, many of the homes and government buildings that were there on the beach and the shoreline you could just tell were quickly eroding.
“And so this is about whether we give them a Resolution. This Resolution that we were talking about makes clear that you cannot bury our heads in the sand while climate change and sea level rise put billions of dollars of infrastructure and millions of Americans at risk. If we want to protect our economy and these communities, we need the data and the science to understand the problem. We need to take the necessary steps to protect our communities and our infrastructure and our economy.
“I urge my colleagues to reconsider. I hope that we will have Senate Resolution 551 before us again. I hope that some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that represent coastal states will talk to our colleague from Wisconsin and encourage him to instead support this legislation.
“We have to do better planning. We have to do better adaptation and mitigation. We have to use better science, and we have to recognize that the impacts of rising sea levels in our oceans really, really do affect our economy.
“I’m so proud of our fishing economy in the Northwest. I think we sometimes, [the] Senator from Massachusetts and I…basically debate back and forth about best seafood and best aquaculture. And I know the senator from Rhode Island…also has a lot to brag about, but that number, 45 percent of the economy being in coastal regions of the United States of America, and us doing nothing to think about what is the adaptation and mitigation that we need to do is just wrong-headed. I don’t even know if the senator has got any data on this, but I would assume he’s thought about this from a military perspective. I got a lot of military bases in our state, and they’re very close to water, and what are they going to do when sea level rises? What do we have to do to mitigate and adapt so those bases continue to be successful, particularly at a moment when the Pacific is becoming even more interesting.
“So again, I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for helping lead this charge every night, but particularly tonight.”
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