On Monday, Oregon Democratic U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski led a group of Democratic Senators to urge the National Science Foundation to stop its plans to dismantle a nearly $400 million ocean monitoring network. The Associated Press reported on the letter Sens. Merkley and Murkowski wrote to the NSF, which was signed by nine other U.S. Senators, including Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington. More than two dozen Democratic U.S. Representatives signed onto a separate letter, per the AP’s reporting, to warn against the “illegal decommissioning” of the Ocean Observatories Initiative.
The OOI is a network of 900 sensors anchored off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and in the North Atlantic. For more than a decade, the instruments have transmitted real-time data that has helped detect coastal flooding events, manage sustainable fisheries, track marine heat waves and more. A memo from the NSF posted last month said the “major descoping” is already underway for the array of instruments managed by Oregon State University, with the removal of most of the rest of the network expected to be completed next summer.
Sen. Merkley joins us to discuss his and other Democratic lawmakers’ efforts to protect the OOI, along with other federal issues affecting his Oregon constituents.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Geoff Norcross: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Geoff Norcross in for Dave Miller. This week, Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley and Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski led a group of Democratic senators in urging the National Science Foundation to stop its plans to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative. That’s a network of more than 900 sensors off the West Coast. They collect data about everything from ocean climate to marine ecosystems. It was expected to run for another 15 to 20 years, but the NSF is pulling support for the project in what it calls a de-scoping. Senator Jeff Merkley joins us now to talk about that and other issues that are affecting Oregonians right now. Senator, welcome back to the show.
Jeff Merkley: Oh, thanks so much, Geoff. Good to be with you.
Norcross: When you learned the National Science Foundation at the direction of the Trump administration was making this move, what did you think?
Merkley: I was just shocked. I’m like, what? You’re pulling out the sensors that are so important to understand what’s going on in our oceans? I mean, these sensors help determine temperature, the salinity, the acidity. They measure some of the chlorophyll and phytoplankton that’s the base of the food chain. They check out currents. This information is essential to managing our fisheries, but it’s also a lot of information that helps us understand the weather better, given that the temperature of the ocean in different places has a significant impact on the weather. So, very valuable stuff.
In fact, this data has been used in 500 scientific studies. Why would you pull out these arrays that we put millions, actually several hundred million dollars, into putting into the ocean and not even come to Congress and say, “Hey, we want to undo this array. Do you agree or will you hold a hearing on it or change what you have in your next appropriation bill?” There was no communication. By the way, today is the day that they start pulling out the sensors.
Norcross: Have you gotten a response to your letter?
Merkley: We have not gotten a response. And my hope is that there is an active debate on the executive branch saying, “Oh, wait a minute, there’s a lot of congressional pushback on this from the House of Representatives that also sent a letter from bipartisan senators over here and maybe we should rethink dismantling.” There is, in fact, a law in place that says any of the infrastructure that NSF – National Science Foundation – is in possession of will not be eliminated if it’s over $2.5 million in value without consultation and notification to Congress. So it also appears to be in violation of law.
Norcross: What can you do about that?
Merkley: Well, weighing in in a bipartisan fashion is probably the most immediate effect. But I’ve also prepared a bill that Senator Murkowski and I are preparing to take to the floor and ask unanimous consent for. That would be a bill that says stop. Stop until there’s been proper consultation and proper study to determine if this is in the best interest of our nation.
Norcross: Why do you think you’ll get bipartisan support for this aside from Senator Murkowski?
Merkley: Well, I can’t understand why anyone would think it’s smart to pull out these sensors without scientific consultation and understanding like why they’re going to be replaced by something better and why not leave it placed till then? There’s been no explanation at all, except what I heard informally was that because the sensors contribute to our understanding of climate change – Oops, oops! Did I say the word climate change – that that understanding, that issue is so toxic to this administration, they want to obliterate the ability to measure it. Unfortunately that’s a fairly believable story, but it’s just absolutely horrific to undo these sensors that contribute to our commercial fisheries, our recreational fisheries, our weather, our total understanding of the ecosystem of the oceans.
Norcross: One of the observing arrays is located off of Newport. It’s operated by Oregon State. Have you reached out to researchers there to hear from them about what removing this network would mean for scientific data collection there?
Merkley: My team has started to reach out to get feedback, and we’re going to continue. There are, in this system, five arrays around the world, and four of them would be pulled out under the plan the administration has put forward. So far, I haven’t found any scientists saying this makes sense. Even the statement from the National Science Foundation was just a statement that we’re doing this, no defense of it at all. It appears to be directed from above by somewhere deep inside the Office of Management and Budget or the president’s teams where they’re conducting this war on renewables and climate change. It seems to have come down from there somehow.
Norcross: The administration has made previous attempts to slash funding for the OOI before, only to have that money added back by Congress. Do you think that’ll happen again?
Merkley: Yes, I think so, but that is really probably why they’re trying to take the sensors out of the water, is it becomes much more expensive to reestablish them. Here’s something that’s very important. This is really a constitutional issue, because our Constitution assigns a responsibility, it’s called the power of the purse, to Congress, the folks elected as the people’s representatives to determine what the programs are and how they’re operated and how they’re funded. It’s the executive branches, the president’s branch responsibility to execute that vision laid out by Congress. So in this case, you have a program that is funded. It is authorized. It is highly valued in the scientific community, and the administration says, “You know what, we don’t like this program. We will just kill it by basically destroying these arrays.” To do so without Congress saying terminate the program is a constitutional violation. Violation of law, violation of the Constitution.
Norcross: I would like to also talk to you about wildfire, Senator, because just today Oregon Governor Tina Kotek declared a state of emergency due to the threat of wildfire in the state. Do you have a sense of how cuts to The US Forest Service and other federal agencies might impact Oregon’s ability to respond to wildfires this summer?
Merkley: Well, I’ve been holding a lot of conversations with the Forest Service and with the Secretary of Agriculture about this. They do say that they have filled the positions for fighting for the fire season. I hope that’s right. One of the things I’ve been really trying to do is increase the amount of money for forest management, where you do thinning and prescribed fires and mowing to reduce the risk in advance. Over the last six years with my role on the Interior Spending Committee, we’ve gotten about a billion dollars a year for that work, which is about three times approximately what it was before. So that’s good cause we’ve treated a lot more forest land, but it’s still a small fraction of the total amount of forest land and Bureau of Land Management forests as well.
Second of all, I was really worried about the administration’s plan to move the firefighting from the Forest Service into the Bureau of Land Management. It’s like, wait a minute, the vast array of trained individuals are in the Forest Service. The vast amount of equipment, the larger number of acres of forest… Why would you move it without some type of study or analysis or conversation with Congress about where this is located and why?
So, working with Senator Murkowski, we did get a commitment to set aside that planned move for a time while a study is done to try to consult with stakeholders and say, “Does this really make sense?” So it’s a bit of a win in protecting our firefighting ability. I was also able to get a permanent fix to firefighter pay, which keeps more experienced firefighters coming back year after year. We do have a potential challenge with running out of money for fighting fires this summer. So I’m working with the Secretary of Agriculture to try to get another billion dollars in a supplemental to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Norcross: Earlier this year, the Secretary Brooke Rollins came out with a memo on wildfire readiness. Based on what you saw there, do you feel the agency understands the threat?
Merkley: I’d say I’m a little worried, but not as worried as I was a couple of months ago. It seems like they have taken our concerns about personnel seriously. I am worried if you’re looking down the road a little further about the reorganization of the Forest Service, which is another issue separate from the consolidation of the firefighters into BLM, that may do some damage, but that shouldn’t affect this particular firefighting season.
Norcross: That discussion about moving firefighting efforts away from the Forest Service and therefore the USDA into some agency in the Interior Department has been going on for decades, Senator, as I’m sure you know. Why do you look at that possible move with skepticism now?
Merkley: Well, certainly the transition during firefighting season where lines of communication get mixed up… who has control over which equipment, how do you move it out? Are all the personnel in the Forest Service actually automatically transferred over? Does it involve relocation? Does it mean that they leave their jobs because they don’t want to move their families? You do not want to disrupt the lines of communication during firefighting season, and I would like to see an analysis and debate in Congress over studies saying why this makes sense or doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen really no substantive debate on that issue or a plan laid out as to why it would improve our ability to fight fires.
Norcross: Let’s talk about voting. The US Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling any day now on a case regarding the counting of mail-in ballots. If the court rules that mail-in ballots cannot be counted after election day, what do you think Oregon should do?
Merkley: It’s a nightmare for everyone. I’m thinking about how in my election to the US Senate in 2008, the counting went on for three days through Thursday. You had a flood in Multnomah County’s voting center, so they were way slow, and the enormous turnout of ballots in Lane County slowed them way down. In Alaska, it took three weeks, and in Minnesota that same year, it took six months. I don’t see how you can argue that given the long tradition of counting ballots that you would end the counting at midnight.
There’s a separate question on, do the ballots have to be received on that day? There’s been a lot of discussion about, well, really, are we going to tell our military with the complex mail systems from overseas that when they do their vote by mail and the state law says, hey, we’re going to proceed to cut off counting ballots at midnight or ballots received by midnight, who are you disenfranchising?
It is part of a concern that’s rooted in our Constitution in that the Constitution says states set the time, place, and manner of voting. Fine. It also says that you can have legislation set the time, place, and manner, but there’s nothing in the Constitution that says an executive order can set a time, place, and manner. In this case, as I understand it – I’m not a lawyer and not a constitutional expert – but as I understand it, the question is, because there is a federal law setting a voting day or an election day, whether that indirectly implies you can’t count or maybe can’t count ballots received after midnight, that has never been understood to be that in any possible way before. Every state has counted ballots after midnight.
So, we’ll see what the Supreme Court has to say. But I’m a little worried about them adding to the disruption of this coming November election, because I’m already very worried about President Trump’s team disrupting the November election. They’ve talked about sending intimidators. They’ve talked about instructing the postal service not to forward ballots unless they have a specific special barcode on them. They’ve intimated that they might press Secretary of States not to certify elections where the President doesn’t like how they were conducted. There’s a lot of risk for our democracy in this coming fall.
Norcross: Senator Merkley, thank you so much for the time.
Merkley: Yeah, it’s so great to be with you. Thank you. Let’s save our republic.
Norcross: That’s Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley joining us from Washington.
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