Homeland security mission to send Coast Guard into unfamiliar duties

WASHINGTON – This summer, the U.S. Coast Guard set sail through the perilous shoals of President Bush’s plan to overhaul the federal government and create a new department of homeland security, something that potentially could change the maritime agency.

Often thought of as being in the business of search and rescues, customs enforcement, running down drug smugglers and protecting the nation’s fisheries, the Coast Guard found itself navigating much more dangerous waters after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

That’s when the task of protecting the nation’s 361 major ports and 95,000 miles of coastlines from Portland, Maine, to Long Beach, Calif., took top priority.

The Coast Guard in northern Maine, known as Group Southwest Harbor, keeps watch over more than 5,000 square nautical miles of water from Port Clyde to the Canadian border.

“This summer alone, Group Southwest is expecting 60 cruise ships in its ports,” said Gabe Sonna, Group Southwest Harbor spokesman, who said that his group stepped up harbor patrols as well as escorts and boardings of tankers and other ships.

The alert of 36,000 active-duty Coast Guard personnel around the country sounded the longest-lasting alarm for port security since World War II. The $5 billion-a-year maritime service threw half of its total resources into the effort – something that left it stretched thin on other responsibilities

“Prior to September 11, port security made up 2 or 3 percent of the missions,” said Lt. Dean Jones, spokesman for Group Boston. “That number has risen to 23 or 24 percent and has had an impact on fisheries protection.”

How the Coast Guard’s responsibilities may shift has fostered waves of concern among lawmakers in Congress as Washington works to shove the maritime agency into the proposed Department of Homeland Security’s border and transportation security division, which also will take over the Customs Service, INS, Transportation Security Administration, and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

By combining these agencies under one department, the goal is to gain greater control and coordination over people and goods entering the country.

Currently part of the Department of Transportation, the Coast Guard’s role in maritime search and rescue and protection of U.S. fisheries and other natural resources is viewed as essential to Maine and other coastal states that rely heavily on commercial fishing as a source of revenue.

During the first hearing on the President Bush’s fast-track proposal to create the Department of Homeland Security before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, member Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, relayed those worries after private conversations with Coast Guard officials in Maine.

“I’ve talked to Coast Guard officials in my state who are expending enormous time, resources and energy to patrol harbors much more frequently, to check foreign vessels that are coming into the port in Portland,” Collins said. “They have expressed to me a great deal of concern about whether the reorganization and the movement of the Coast Guard into the new department, which on one level makes a great deal of sense, will undermine the more traditional mission of the Coast Guard.”

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, also pitched in on a similar vein, noting that the Coast Guard is responsible for patrolling 90,000 miles of coastline and 3.3 million square miles of ocean, the largest single-nation fishing territory in the world – a $24 billion industry.

Stevens warned that a potential vacuum could be created if the Coast Guard’s mission were changed.

“To abandon the concept of the Coast Guard in terms of maintaining the safety of the ships off our shore, and to remove the Coast Guard’s role of protecting our fisheries and ensuring the safety of our fishing fleets, would be wrong,” Stevens said.

Along with concerns over fisheries protection, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, worries that the Coast Guard’s ability to respond to oil spills is already hampered by a lack of funding.

“Although one of our nation’s five armed services, the Coast Guard has not had an authorization bill passed for four years,” she said. “As a result, the agency is plagued by numerous readiness and retention issues – and these have only been exacerbated by the events of September 11. Moreover, the Coast Guard is increasingly being asked to provide even more resources to respond to the fisheries management crises currently overwhelming the New England and Pacific Northwest groundfish fisheries.”

U.S. Rep. John Baldacci also expressed concerns about the future of the Coast Guard’s drug interdiction, search and rescue, and fisheries protection efforts. Without a serious boost in funding, it will be difficult for the Coast Guard to protect Maine’s coastline, Baldacci said.

In the wake of Sept. 11 and with the restructuring of the government, the Coast Guard “will need all hands on deck,” Baldacci said.

So far, the White House is ready to open the money spigot to the Coast Guard. In his proposed budget for next year, President Bush requested the largest funding increase the Coast Guard has ever received to build up the additional capacity for its expanded mission.

That gesture is already being put into action. Last month, the Coast Guard signed an $11 billion, 20-year contract with a joint team of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to begin replacing the Coast Guard’s aging fleet of ships and aircraft and command-and-control and logistics systems.

The deal will allow the Coast Guard to buy 91 ships and 145 airplanes and helicopters, and to upgrade 49 cutters and 93 helicopters, and although it has been in the works for some time, the events of Sept. 11 added new urgency to beefing up the fleet.

During the Senate hearing before the governmental affairs committee, director of homeland security Tom Ridge avoided any detailed outline about the future of the Coast Guard’s role in search and rescue and protection of natural resources.

But he did say that he is confident that a greater role in protecting the nation’s coasts would be handled well and efficiently, despite the Coast Guard’s current responsibilities.

“They can perform both well,” Ridge told Collins. “They’ve done it in the Department of Transportation and I think the president’s recognition that we need to build additional capacity because of the enhanced requirement with regard to homeland security goes a long way in addressing the concern, the legitimate concerns you have.”