The head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said yesterday that debris from last year's tsunami in Japan poses a serious -- and expensive -- problem as it begins to wash up on the shores of the West Coast.

The current budget for her agency's debris cleanup program, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said, is "nowhere near what is likely to be needed to deal with this disaster." NOAA is part of an interagency group looking into the problem.

"This absolutely is a national issue. There are different agencies that have different responsibilities," Lubchenco told House appropriators. "This is unprecedented, and it's presenting new challenges for us, and we would like to not only have the discussion within the administration but with Congress about what kind of opportunities there are for us to collectively address [this]."

The issue came up at a hearing yesterday on the National Weather Service's reallocation of millions of dollars without required congressional approval (Greenwire, June 21). Washington Rep. Norm Dicks, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, steered the conversation onto the topic because of the threat such debris poses to his home state.

Money appears to be the main issue. States do not have enough emergency funds in their coffers to deal with removal, while President Obama's fiscal 2013 budget proposal sets aside $3.4 million for NOAA's Marine Debris Program -- more than 25 percent less than the budget before the tsunami in Japan.

Now, local and federal officials are facing an estimated 1.5 million tons of debris without a plan of how to fund its removal. The threat of invasive species is also a concern; a 66-foot dock that recently washed ashore in Oregon contained what Lubchenco described as "a lot of marine life."

Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) have already pressed Obama to dole out emergency funds to help researchers track and respond to the debris (E&ENews PM, March 30).

Yesterday, Dicks brought up concerns that no single agency is tasked with handling the debris. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, he said, sits on the interagency panel but may not intervene because the debris might not qualify as a disaster.

"This stuff will just come in randomly, and therefore FEMA may not have the ability or the legal authority to get in the middle of it," Dicks said. "They're kind of backing away for it. That's very disconcerting."

NOAA, for its part, is "in the process of working with other federal agencies to try and identify what assets exist in terms of resources, personnel, knowledge to tackle this problem," Lubchenco said. The agency is also providing educational information to local communities on how to handle debris, as well as modeling where the debris is most likely to go.

But as time goes by, the debris disperses, making it more difficult to predict where and when it will hit the United States, Lubchenco said.

"The problem is spread out in space, it's spread out in time and is a very significant issue on top of ... the existing marine debris problem, which was very significant and not as appreciated as it needs to be," she said.