(1)Offices and crew serve dual role as ship operators and hydrographers.

Q29. Provide a list of the projected replacement cost and date of replacement for each

NOAA vessel.

Answer:

This answer to be provided later.

See Part 3 for the answer.

Q30. Provide a detailed breakdown of current use of Marine Services account in FY 1996, FY 1997, and projections for FY 1998, including a listing of all employees paid by the account and their current job title.

(Please update the following tables which contain information provided in response to a similar question submitted by the Subcommittee to NOAA in 1996 with respect to NOAA's FY 1997 budget request.)

Answer:

This answer to be provided later.

See Part 3 for the answer.

Navigation Services: Transfer of Aeronautical Charting to the FAA

Q31. On page 38, of NOAA's FY 1998 Budget Request Summary document, it is stated: "The NOAA budget proposes to transfer $14.5 million to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to support the aeronautical charting program from NOS to the FAA. The transfer will take place in two stages. In FY 1998, the funds will be transferred but the program's employees will remain in NOAA and will receive reimbursable funds from the FAA to operate the program. In FY 1999, the employees will also be transferred and NOAA's involvement with the program will end."

How many NOAA employees (by number and by location) will be support the aeronautical charting program in FY 1998 and how many will be transferred to FAA in FY 1999 (by number and by location)?

Answer:

For both FY 1998 and FY 1999 the following FTEs will support the aeronautical program:

Navigation Services: Replacement of Defense Mapping Agency Funds

Q32. On page 38 of NOAA's FY 1998 Budget Request Summary document, it is stated: “An increase of $12.6 million is requested to replace funds that the aeronautical and nautical charting programs formerly received from the Defense Mapping Agency. Of this amount, $4.0 million, is included in the transfer of the aeronautical charting program to the FAA."

Why is the Defense Mapping Agency no longer providing such funding?

Answer:

In August, 1995 the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) informed NOAA that (1) they would be undertaking the production of Digital Nautical Charts of U.S. waters and would no longer require large quantities of NOAA's nautical charts after FY 1997, and (2) consistent with this action, they would be eliminating their direct contribution to NOAA's Compilation and Database Maintenance funding beginning in FY 1998. During the development of NOAA's FY 1998 budget, OMB concurred with DMA's decision and increased NOAA's FY 1998 budget request by the amount that DMA would have paid. The increase replaces the funding eliminated by DMA for both the nautical and aeronautical charting programs. The proposal's main advantage is that it places all of the funds needed to produce the Nation's nautical and aeronautical charts in one account and eliminates the uncertainty that previously existed over the annual level of support that NOAA could expect from DMA.

Navigation Services: Terminate funding for the National Coastal Data Center

Q33. On page 38 of NOAA's FY 1998 Budget Request Summary document, it is stated: “A proposed decrease of $1.5 million is the result of the decision to terminate funding for the National Coastal Data Center."

Where is the National Coastal Data Center located, and why does NOAA propose to terminate the Center's funding?

Answer:

NOAA is currently studying options for establishing the National Coastal Data Center by exploring how to best utilize already existing NOAA data center capabilities in conjunction with possible external partners such as Universities. A final site has not yet been determined. Language accompanying the $1.5 million earmark provided by the FY 1997 Appropriations bill directed that the funds were for a one time effort to establish a national coastal data center, therefore NOAA did not request continued funding for FY 1998.

Navigation Services: Reduce the number of GPS Continuously Reference Stations and Eliminate Funding for the South Carolina Demonstration Project to Modernize the National Height System

Q34. On page 38 of NOAA's FY 1998 Budget Request Summary document, it is stated: “A decrease of $1.0 million is proposed in the geodesy program to reduce the number of GPS Continuously Reference Stations and to eliminate funding for the South Carolina demonstration project to modernize the national height system."

Q34a. What is the function of the GPS Continuously Reference Stations, and why does NOAA propose to reduce the number of such stations? What is the amount of the reduction (in dollar amount and number of stations)?

Answer:

NOAA is modernizing the Nation's Spatial Reference System, which provides the foundation for horizontal and vertical positioning services for navigation and engineering purposes. By implementing a new system called Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS), NOAA continuously records fundamental Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements taken at each CORS site, performs quality control, and makes these measurements available to local users. CORS enables users to dramatically improve their GPS determined positioning measurements from the meter to submeter accuracy level. The CORS sites, along with other globally distributed tracking stations, are also used by NOAA in computing precise GPS orbits and atmospheric water vapor content critical for prediction of the Nation's weather. The $1.0 million Geodesy budget decrease will reduce funding for this effort by $0.5 million resulting in a reduction of planned new CORS systems from 25 to 10.

Q34b. What is the function of South Carolina demonstration project to modernize the national height system, and why does NOAA propose to eliminate funding? What is the amount of the reduction (in dollar amount)?

Answer:

NOAA's program with the South Carolina State Budget and Control Board has been a cooperative federal/state/county multipurpose mapping program for which $0.5 million was earmarked during FY 1997. Through cost-sharing arrangements with the counties, the State is enabling large scale mapping to implement spatial data standards and establish geographic information systems. NOAA proposes to eliminate its funding for this program as part of the $1.0 million Geodesy budget reduction for FY 1998.

Ocean Resources Conservation and Assessment: Administration's Clean Water Initiative under the Community-Right-to-Know Project on Toxic Contamination and Water Quality

Q35. On page 38 of NOAA's FY 1998 Budget Request Summary document, it is stated: “An increase of $3.9 million is requested for the Administration's Clean Water Initiative under the Community-Right-to-Know Project on toxic contamination and water quality. Within this increase, $2.9 million will be used to establish a national coastal watershed monitoring network of reference sites to measure, analyze, and report comprehensive information on environmental quality, especially toxic contamination, in estuarine and coastal waters. An additional $1.0 million will be used to conduct natural resource assessment and remediation activities to clean up hazardous waste sites that affect NOAA trust resources throughout the Nation."

Q35a. Please describe the Administration's Clean Water Initiative under the
Community-Right-to-Know Project on toxic contamination and water quality.
What is the current level of funding?

Answer:

The President's Clean Water Initiative is a national commitment to protect communities from toxic pollution by the year 2000 by accelerating clean-up of toxic contaminants, expanding citizens' rightto-know about toxic pollution, and getting tough on criminal polluters. In addition to NOAA, other federal agencies participating in this initiative include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). NOAA's role under the Community-Right-to-Know project is to expand the information on toxic contaminants in coastal waters available from federal agencies to local communities so that they can find the best ways to improve and protect the quality of water.

As part of this initiative, NOAA will improve and integrate its existing estuarine and coastal water quality monitoring projects, currently conducted under the National Status and Trends (NS&T) Program, with those conducted by the USGS, EPA, and other State and local agencies to establish a national network of coastal water quality reference sites. FY 1997 funding for the NS&T Program is approximately $3 million. At this level of funding, NOAA is able to maintain water quality monitoring programs in less than half of the Nation's estuaries, coastal marine waters, and Great Lakes.

The national network of reference sites will provide continuous measurement and reporting on a common suite of key environmental health indicators of pollution and toxic contamination. Regional monitoring projects, run by state/local partners, will address specific problems such as: nutrient over-enrichment from non-point source runoff or contamination from stormwater runoff and sewage overflows that result in chronic beach and shellfish closures. This program will build upon on-going NOAA efforts to catalog data on existing coastal monitoring programs, identify monitoring capabilities to address critical environmental and water quality issues, and identify gaps in the