NOAA’s proposed move raises questions about its role

The fact that NOAA’s $4.9 billion budget is about 60 percent of Commerce’s overall funding provides it with clout within the department, according to its advocates. Some fear the agency could lose that in a larger department. “NOAA will be less prominent as one small part of Interior than it is in Commerce,” David Goldston of the Natural Resources Defense Council wrote in a recent blog post, adding that “having NOAA as a separate agency also brings more of a federal focus and voice to ocean issues, which are critically important to health, the economy and the environment yet are all too easy to overlook.”

Administration officials say they will move NOAA in its entirety to Interior but have not decided how it will be integrated. Officials at both NOAA and Interior referred all questions to the White House.

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Several environmentalists, along with some lawmakers and NOAA employees, have begun to question whether the agency would be better off staying put. NOAA manages costly weather satellites, the nation’s commercial and recreational fisheries, and a range of coastal, ocean and atmospheric programs. Some predict these functions could lose clout if they were divvied up in Interior.

“NOAA’s core functions — managing fish and forecasting the weather — are vitally important to Alaska,” Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) wrote in an e-mail. “I am concerned whether these responsibilities would get the attention they deserve after being folded into a huge department with a much different focus. Right now I’m most troubled that the administration hasn’t figured out how the merger will work even before they announced it.”

Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents employees in several NOAA divisions, said the administration has failed to grasp the connection between the agency’s weather division and commerce and the fact the division could be hampered by reshuffling.

“Why take that risk when you have something that works?” Sobien asked.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), who is scrutinizing the issue as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has raised similar questions.

“Our main worry is that shifting NOAA into somebody else’s office could hurt their ability to carry out their mission,” said Rockefeller spokesman Vince Morris. “Does it really make sense to put an agency that tracks weather down the hall from the agency that issues oil drilling permits? That’s what we’re looking it.”

The environmental community appears to be split on the proposal. Michael Conathan, ocean policy director for the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, noted that many fail to appreciate the agency despite the fact that the oceans and atmosphere “are fundamental to virtually every industry in this country.”

Interior could benefit from absorbing a department with a strong record of scientific research and regulatory oversight such as NOAA, Conathan added.

But Emily Woglom, Ocean Conservancy’s director of government relations, noted that NOAA has sometimes clashed with Interior over how best to regulate offshore drilling, and these concerns might not become public under a combined agency. “Having an independent voice for the ocean and ocean science is most important,” she said.

Andrew Rosenberg, who served as deputy director of NOAA’s fisheries division under President Bill Clinton, said the biggest question is not where the agency ends up but whether people start giving NOAA its due.

“I really worry in these discussions that people aren’t really thinking about, ‘What does NOAA do for us?’ ” said Rosenberg, now Conservation International’s chief scientist. “Would it be disaster to put it in Interior? If it’s done right, no. If it’s done badly? Of course.”