federal agencies and 140 laws. Whatmakes the job even harder is that“there is no one cause of currentdisruption,” Lubchenco notes. “It’smultiple causes, and it’s things thatare happening in or under the wa-ter, as well as on land.”

To tackle these problems, “Weneed a unifying statute that lays outthe basic principles for ocean man-agement in the same way we pro-tect our national forests, parks, andwilderness areas,” says ChristopherMann, policy director for the Cen-ter for SeaChange (www.seachangecenter.org), a nonprofit organiza-tion established last year to ad-vance the recommendations ofboth commissions.

The government-sponsored re-port (www.oceancommission.gov)offers nearly 200 recommenda-tions, which the commissionersestimate will cost $1.3 billion in thefirst year of implementation, $2.4billion the second year, and $3.2billion in ongoing costs thereafter.To pay for it, they would establish atrust fund from the $5 billion thegovernment receives annually fromoffshore oil and gas royalties thatcurrently flow into the general trea-sury. However, some environmen-talists worry that using such a fundwould create incentives to furtherexploit ocean resources.

The commission calls for a na-tional ocean council within theWhite House to coordinate the vari-ous related federal agencies. One ofthe council’s first tasks would be toreconfigure NOAA to consolidateoverlapping programs. Additionally,the report recommends establish-ing regional ocean councils to linkfederal, state, and local marine pro-tection efforts.

The commission also recom-mends at least doubling the currentannual federal ocean research bud-get of $650 million over the nextfive years, with additional invest-ments in technology developmentand ocean exploration. “We need tosignificantly increase our under-standing of oceans and our abilityto monitor the kinds of changesthat are happening to figure outhow we might do a better job ofmonitoring them,” says Paul Sandi-

fer, a senior scientist with the Na-tional Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration (NOAA) and one ofthe commissioners. As part of thisthrust, a national integrated oceanobserving system should be imple-mented and linked to an interna-tional observing system (Environ.Sci. Technol. 2004, 38, 198A–199A),the commissioners say.

Other key recommended chan-ges include creating measurablewater pollution reduction goals byamending the Coastal Zone Man-agement and Clean Water Acts tomore heavily target nonpointsources, such as agricultural andurban runoff, and reforming fish-eries management by requiringregional fishery management coun-cils to rely more on scientific datawhen setting fishing quotas.

Underlying all the recommenda-tions is a push toward ecosystem-based management. “Instead ofseparating fisheries from pollutionfrom coastal development, we needways of looking at the oceans on anecosystem basis and consideringmultiple activities affecting and dis-rupting the entire system,” Lub-chenco says.

Getting public support is anoth-er challenge. A survey by the Amer-ican Association for the Advance-ment of Science, which was re-leased in February, found that 80%of the public believes the oceansare in trouble and that humanactions are harming them, but onlyone-third believes that their indi-vidual actions are directly connect-ed with the oceans.

Most public concern and in-volvement has been focused re-gionally “on their own piece of thecoast, which doesn’t necessarilytranslate into collective concern atthe national scope,” notes DonaldBoesch, president of the Universityof Maryland’s Center for Environ-mental Science and a science advi-sor to both commissions. Withatmospheric deposition of mer-cury, for example, “you run upagainst limits in what you can do[in the Chesapeake Bay] because ofthe lack of a clear, strong nationalpolicy,” he adds.

In the same vein, Midwestern

Who owns the west?Metal mining in the United Statesaccounted for 46% of pollution re-ported by all industries in 2001, yetit comprised just 0.36% of the totalnumber of industrial operations,according to an online analysis ofgovernment data by thenonprofit EnvironmentalWorking Group (EWG). Thereport lists by country theowners of current claimsand patents to mine for gold, silver,and copper on federal lands in 12western states. It shows that theprices paid are surprisingly low,ranging from $0.84 to $5.00 peracre each year, with no royaltiespaid for the minerals mined. Thereport was released in May on theanniversary of the 1872 MiningLaw, which Congress passed tostimulate settlement of the westernstates. EWG is calling for an up-date to the law. To find Who OwnsThe West?, go to www.ewg.org.

Many shades of greenbuildingThe 10 projects being showcasedas notable examples of “green de-sign solutions that protect and en-hance the environment” by theAmerican Institute of Architects inMay and June make clear that ar-chitects consider renovations ofexisting structures to be greenbuildings. However, only two ofthese top green projects havebeen rated by the standards putforward by the Leadership in En-ergy and Environmental Design(LEED) green building rating sys-tem, in part because the systemdoes not yet rate such building“recycling”. The renovation of anexisting summer house on CapeCod, Mass., to create a laboratoryand office space for the WoodsHole Research Center was hon-ored. For more information andlinks to pictures, go to www.aia.org/media/releases/040422.asp.

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JULY 1, 2004 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ■ 243A