Making NOAA legal

A little more than a year after Ohio’s Cuyahoga River, heavily polluted with oil, burst into flame and became a smoking symbol of environmental neglect, President Richard Nixon signed an executive order creating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In his 1970 order, Nixon said the agency would provide a “better understanding of the total environment” and help protect against natural hazards.

In the ensuing 37 years, NOAA has grown into a multibillion-dollar organization within the US Department of Commerce charged with such critical tasks as monitoring hurricanes and predicting changes to Earth’s oceans. Yet NOAA’s existence still depends on Nixon’s executive order, and Representative Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) has introduced a bill that would “establish [NOAA] in law for the first time in the agency’s history.” NOAA was created out of a science organization that dates back to Thomas Jefferson.

The bill would clarify the functions and responsibilities of NOAA, Ehlers said, and “provide NOAA and its employees clear direction and the tools they require to perform critical missions and functions.” It would also strengthen science by creating a deputy assistant secretary for science and education in the Commerce Department.

California Democratic Rep. Sam Farr has included a similar NOAA provision in a more wide-ranging bill that would implement the major recommendations of the 2004 US Commission on Ocean Policy (http://www.oceancommission.gov ).