Debris soils Bush vow to protect Hawaii islands

Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said that while Bush was making the area a national monument, his administration had "decided to reduce its level of commitment to removing marine debris and only address new accumulations."

"The administration is not keeping pace, and this is disappointing," the senator said.

Inouye had had concerns about the area becoming a monument because of fishing restrictions and no public participation in the process. In 2006 he pushed a bill through Congress authorizing up to $15 million each year to tackle marine debris nationwide.

But that law and a separate initiative announced last November by first lady Laura Bush have not stemmed the trash tide.

The combination of currents, remote location and a plethora of endangered species make marine debris in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands arguably the worst ocean trash problem in the world. Circular currents funnel trash from all over the Pacific Ocean to the islands as if they were a drain in a gigantic sink.

Garbage collection began on a haphazard basis in 1996. It wasn't until 2002 that the federal government got involved and began dedicating significant resources to the cleanup of debris in the area. To date, more than $12 million has been spent and 646 tons of marine debris have been removed.

Most of the work is done in the water, where specially trained divers carefully collect fishing nets and other junk tangled on the shallow reefs, raise it to the surface with lift bags and haul it to shore by boat. The nets are burned for energy, the plastic is recycled.

A NOAA ship with a crew of 16, including researchers from the University of Hawaii, and a couple of Coast Guard cutters each undertake one or two cleanup operations a year, lasting from 15 to 30 days. Before the funding cutbacks, contracted vessels and crews were also deployed in cleanups lasting up to 90 days.

The administration's lack of follow-through hasn't stopped environmentalists from lobbying the president to designate more monuments before leaving office, a step the White House is considering. Declaring an area a national marine monument effectively stops commercial fishing and oil drilling.

NOAA via AP Marine debris of all types and sources wash ashore on Laysan Island in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in 2005.

Bush's latest budget seems to recognize that more is necessary. The administration has requested $4.6 million for marine debris efforts nationwide next year, acknowledging the "additional cleanup and prevention resources are needed to protect this Marine National Monument."

Drafts of regulations that will guide the monument's management also recognize a need for more funding but say elimination of debris is virtually impossible.

Barry Christensen, who as manager of the wildlife refuge on Midway Atoll is one of the monument's few human inhabitants, says the added protections could do some good — by raising the level of awareness about the problem and helping to change people's habits.

"It's asking a lot for a monument proclamation to do that, but you have to start some place," he said in an interview from Hawaii. "We can pick up plastic off the beach from now until the end of time, but unless people stop putting it in the ocean our problem will never go away."

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