S.Amdt. 412

SA 412. Ms. LANDRIEU submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by her to the bill H.R. 1268, making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2005, to establish and rapidly implement regulations for State driver's license and identification document security standards, to prevent terrorists from abusing the asylum laws of the United States, to unify terrorism-related grounds for inadmissibility and removal, to ensure expeditious construction of the San Diego border fence, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

On page 231, between lines 3 and 4, and insert the following:

sense of congress on a study of the role of natural barriers

(a) Congress makes the following findings:

(1) The tsunami that struck in the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004 not only killed approximately 250,000 people, it also obliterated the natural coastal barriers in the region affected by the tsunami.

(2) More than 3,000 miles of coastline were affected by the tsunami, a distance that is equal to the distance of the United States shoreline from Galveston, Texas to Bangor, Maine.

(3) The United Nations Environmental Program estimates that the damage to the environment could total $675,000,000 in loss of natural habitats and important ecosystem function.

(4) Without the barriers that act as nature's own line of defense against flooding, storm surge, hurricanes, and even tsunamis, human lives are at greater risk.

(5) Restoring the reefs, barrier islands, and shorelines of these areas will help in long-term disaster risk reduction.

(6) While the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts are at some risk for a tsunami, the major threat each year comes from hurricanes. In 2004, multiple hurricanes in rapid succession decimated the people and natural barriers of Florida, the southeast Atlantic seaboard, and most of the Gulf south. These annual extremes of mother nature make critical the need to reinvest in the natural barriers of the United States.

(b) It is the sense of Congress that the head of the United States Geological Survey should study the role of natural barriers in the coastal areas of the United States to assess the vulnerabilities of such areas to extreme conditions, the possible effects such conditions could have on coastal populations, and the means, mechanisms, and feasibility of restoring already deteriorated natural barriers along the coast lines of the United States.