10    (On record at 1:10 p.m.)
11    CAPTAIN BARNUM:  .....Hydrographic Services Review Panel 
12   meeting here in beautiful Anchorage, Alaska.  I'd like to 
13   welcome everybody.  For the public that has arrived, please be 
14   sure you sign in.  There is also handouts back at the back 
15   table.  I'd ask you also for any folks that have cell phones, we 
16   had some concerns with cell phones and the interaction with the 
17   PA system, if you'd please secure those please.
18    Next I'd like to remind everyone the purpose of the 
19   (indiscernible).  So just to remind the panel members as well as 
20   the members of the public, this mission goals of the 
21   Hydrographic Services Review Panel.  The HSRP, or Hydrographic 
22   Services Review Panel, is governed by the Federal Advisory 
23   Committee Act and was established by the Hydrographic Services 
24   Improvement Act amendment of 2002.  This panel is charged with 
25   advising the NOAA Administrator on matters specified in the 
0134
 1   Hydrographic Services Improvement Act specifically related to 
 2   hydrographic services.  In a nutshell hydrographic services are 
 3   those services provided by three program offices within NOAA.  
 4   That's the National Geodetic Survey, the Center for Operation 
 5   Oceanographic Products and Services and the Office of Coast 
 6   Survey.  The panel membership consists of 15 voting members.  
 7   These are non-government employees appointed based on their 
 8   particular expertise.  Members of the panel do not represent the 
 9   organizations or the entities that they are employed by, but 
10   again they are on the panel by the mere fact of their particular 
11   expertise.  The terms of the members, one-third were initially 
12   appointed to two year terms, one-third were appointed to three 
13   year terms and one-third were appointed to a four year term.  
14   All subsequent appointees will be for a four year term.  There 
15   are three non-voting members consisting of government employees, 
16   one being Andy Armstrong, the Co-Director of the Joint 
17   Hydrographic Center, and there are provisions for two additional 
18   government employees.  These are currently the Director of the 
19   National Geodetic Survey, Dave Zilkoski, and the Director of CO-
20   OPS, Mike Szabados.  Our meetings are required to be held 
21   minimally twice a year, although this panel has established a 
22   pattern of approximately four meetings per year.  With that I'm 
23   going to turn the agenda over, the microphone to our Chairman, 
24   Scott Rainey.
25    MR. RAINEY:  Thanks, Steve.  Again, I'd like to welcome 
0135
 1   the public for joining us and I'm very honored to be able to 
 2   introduce our speaker, John Rayfield.  John is currently the 
 3   Staff Director of the Coast Guard Maritime Transportation 
 4   Subcommittee of the House of Representatives and we had asked if 
 5   John could come and address us.  It was a timely chance to check 
 6   in with him because John's former position with the Resources 
 7   Committee and was primarily involved in drafting the 
 8   Hydrographic Service Improvement Act which stood up and 
 9   chartered this committee and John has a particular knowledge of 
10   NOAA's programs and now with his perspective with the Coast 
11   Guard, Marine Transportation System and many of the things that 
12   we've been talking about with the Committee on Marine 
13   Transportation System and others coupled with John's work with 
14   Alaskan issues over the years it was particularly appropriate 
15   and very happy that we could have John come and talk to us about 
16   many of the issues that we've been working with as we look 
17   forward to some of these events coming online.  So I'll just 
18   quickly kind of turn it over to John and we'll go ahead and open 
19   up our afternoon session.  Thanks.
20    MR. RAYFIELD:  Welcome to Alaska.  (Indiscernible - away 
21   from microphone).
22    THE REPORTER:  (Indiscernible).
23    MR. RAYFIELD:  Okay?
24    THE REPORTER:  Yes, go ahead.
25    MR. RAYFIELD:  All right.  Well, on behalf of Chairman 
0136
 1   Young appreciate you all coming to Alaska and he regrets he 
 2   couldn't make it today but sends his regards.  He's the only 
 3   licensed merchant mariner in Congress so this is an issue of 
 4   some considerable importance to him.  And 60 percent of the 
 5   critical survey areas that have been identified are in Alaska, 
 6   so -- and you couldn't pick a better place than the Captain 
 7   Cook, the original Pacific navigator, and if you get a chance 
 8   you should go down and see the Captain Cook statue that sits 
 9   right at the head of Cook Inlet.  It's a good -- also a good 
10   view of the inlet if the weather clears up before you guys 
11   leave.  
12    Scott's pretty much told you who I am and why I'm here.  I 
13   would just note that Chairman Young introduced both the 
14   Hydroservices Improvement Act and the 2000 reauthorization when 
15   he was Chairman of Resources and I was working for him there.  
16   Ten years ago -- started reviewing this program, had some 
17   background hearings, meeting with the industry groups and the 
18   agency.  Coast Survey was in pretty bad shape.  They had three 
19   hydrographic survey vessels still running, that was down from 11 
20   when the agency was created in 1973.  They were still using 
21   state of the art 1938 single beam technology.  There was no 
22   hydrographic survey plan and the digital revolution was moving 
23   forward without the Coast Survey really participating in it.
24    So there is a lot of good news so we'll start with the 
25   good news.  You do have the Hydrographic Services Survey 
0137
 1   Priority Plan now.  It's published, there's public input and 
 2   it's updated periodically.  That took a huge amount of work on 
 3   the part of a lot of people at NOAA and it has been a major 
 4   accomplishment and it allows us to establish some quantifiable 
 5   way of looking at the program's success.  Now to full bottom 
 6   surveys, chart updates are now all digitized.  I remember the 
 7   first time I went to Coast Survey they were still drawing lines 
 8   on Mylar overlays to do their map changes.  And we're making 
 9   progress, not as rapid as some people would like, but progress 
10   on getting a full suite of electronic navigation charts.  And 
11   we've added additional survey capacity both by the replacement 
12   of one NOAA vessel with a much newer more modern vessel, the 
13   reactivation of one survey vessel that had been mothballed for 
14   over a decade, and through the use of contractors.  To 
15   accomplish those changes in the last 10 years agreements were 
16   made between Congress and the administration that most of the 
17   program growth would come through contractors.  The Hydro 
18   Services Improvement Act essentially blessed that agreement and 
19   the Appropriations Committee at that point established a new 
20   funding line that if everything goes well will be roughly $30 
21   million for contract surveys in fiscal '07.  While there were a 
22   lot of other factors that were involved in moving the program 
23   forward that certainly was one of the key agreements.  And I 
24   know that there are still some proponents of an all federal 
25   program and there are some proponents of an all contract 
0138
 1   program.  All I can say is the results pretty much speak for 
 2   themselves.  NOAA's now building electronic charts based on the 
 3   newly acquired full bottom surveys, they're getting updated tide 
 4   and current data and they're delineating shorelines that haven't 
 5   been looked at in decades.  So I think we have to see all of 
 6   that as success.  
 7    That doesn't mean there aren't still a lot of things to 
 8   do.  When we started looking at this in '95 and '96 NOAA 
 9   identified about 43,000 square miles that's critical for 
10   navigation that needed to be surveyed.  Had we fully funded the 
11   authorization levels in the Hydrographic Services Act we figured 
12   it would have taken about 10 years to survey that area.  As it 
13   is at the end of 10 years we probably will have about half that 
14   area surveyed, which is still progress because the original 
15   estimate was it would have taken 44 years just to finish that 
16   area.  And then I understand there's about a 10 percent increase 
17   in the critical area that's been added as the public has 
18   reviewed that plan and looked at it.  I would not even calculate 
19   how long it would take to survey the 500,000 square nautical 
20   miles that are considered navigationally significant.  I'll just 
21   say we should all live that long.  
22    As you know next year is the 200th anniversary of the 
23   Coast Survey Thomas Jefferson established in 1807, it's 12 years 
24   before he founded the University of Virginia, which is 
25   irrelevant except that I'm a UVA grad.  So I hope the panel will 
0139
 1   undertake a bicentennial review of the program and make 
 2   recommendations to assure its future for the next not 200 years, 
 3   at least maybe 10 or 20 years out in the future.  I propose a 
 4   couple of five year goals.  First, try to get sufficient funding 
 5   increases for contractors to do the surveys, the tide and 
 6   current measurements and the shoreline delineations so that we 
 7   could complete the critical area surveys in five years rather 
 8   than 10.  Number two, complete the suite of electronic charts.  
 9   And number three, and the contractors won't be happy about this, 
10   but modernize NOAA's hydrographic fleet to keep that in house 
11   expertise which is necessary if NOAA is going to continue to 
12   maintain the liability for the charts.  You've already got the 
13   Jefferson online.  Looks like there will be money to finish the 
14   SWATH vessel to replace the Rudy.  So I would argue, and of 
15   course I work for an Alaskan, that the next thing you need to 
16   look at is replacing the Rainier and the Fairweather.  They came 
17   online in 1968.  By comparison my father bought his Ford Galaxy 
18   500 in 1968.  He put 260,000 miles on it and he sold it 18 years 
19   ago.  These vessels are still in relatively good shape but 
20   they're not going to last forever and the deferred maintenance 
21   on them is significant.  And rather than addressing that 
22   deferred maintenance looking at new vessels is probably the way 
23   to go.
24    So, to achieve that first goal, Hydrographic Services 
25   Improvement Act needs to be reauthorized at its current levels 
0140
 1   and the administration needs to make budget requests consistent 
 2   with those levels.  Jack's not going to look at me on that.  
 3   Second, I would argue that the easiest way to replace the 
 4   Rainier and the Fairweather would be to build a fifth ship in a 
 5   line of ships that NOAA's already building.  They're fisheries 
 6   survey vessels, they requested funding for the fourth one in 
 7   fiscal '07.  It would be a great way to celebrate the 200th 
 8   anniversary of the Coast Survey if in fiscal '08 they ask for a 
 9   fifth FSV that was modified to be a hydro vessel.  That's not 
10   perfect, they won't carry as many launches as the Rainier and 
11   the Fairweather.  It would be wonderful to have a custom 
12   designed high latitude survey vessel, however the difference is 
13   the FSV is a real vessel and the custom designed high latitude 
14   survey vessel is an imaginary vessel that we aren't going to see 
15   anytime soon, so those would be my arguments there.
16    On bigger issues, the long term things I would hope the 
17   panel will be looking at.  First, how to integrate the 
18   hydrographic data that we're amassing with all of NOAA's other 
19   coastal and ocean observation databases.  Really the 
20   authorization for those programs now exists in the 1947 Act, the 
21   same Act that established the Coast Survey.  While it was 
22   clearly looking at nautical charting and commercial activities 
23   it did envision some broader scientific research activities.  To 
24   the extent that it's possible all of that data should be 
25   available to the public and to coastal managers and to 
0141
 1   researchers and anybody else who wants to look at it.  At the 
 2   same time I would also encourage the Coast Survey to look at all 
 3   of NOAA's other coastal and ocean assets to see if there's data 
 4   that they're collecting that would be useful to the Coast Survey 
 5   that we would not have to then spend the money to buy 
 6   separately.
 7    Second, improve the coordination between NOAA, the Corps 
 8   and the USGS on establishing integrating mapping procedures.  
 9   Having three different incompatible mapping sets just does not 
10   make any sense for the taxpayer's money.  I don't really know 
11   how to do that.  Since the Chairman isn't here I'm going to tell 
12   at least one funny Alaska hunting story, I will tell you my 
13   funny Alaska interagency cooperation story.  I've been working 
14   on a cleanup project on some islands that NOAA owns and is going 
15   to transfer to the natives who live there, for many years at 
16   this point.  And they produced a list of 97 projects that had to 
17   be carried out before the land could be transferred.  Most of 
18   them were fairly routine, there was a little asbestos, there 
19   were a lot of car bodies, old batteries, most of it is diesel 
20   fuel contamination.  But as I'm reading down the list I get to 
21   the bulldozer in Little Polavena (ph) pond.  So I thought okay, 
22   that merits a phone call.  Why is the bulldozer in Little 
23   Polavena (ph) pond.  Well, turns out it was a Fisheries Service 
24   bulldozer and it didn't work.  The Coast Guard had a diesel 
25   mechanic so the Coast Guard took the bulldozer, fixed it and 
0142
 1   then the Fisheries Service said, well, that's works, that's our 
 2   bulldozer.  So Coast Guard said no, we fixed it, we're keeping 
 3   it.  So in the dark of night a fisheries biologist snuck across 
 4   the island, hotwired the bulldozer, proceeded to drive it back 
 5   across to the Fisheries Service property and unfortunately 
 6   halfway across Little Polavena (ph) pond spring arrived, which 
 7   lasts about two weeks in the Pribilof Islands, and the ice broke 
 8   and there sat the bulldozer for 20 years.  So, we have now 
 9   removed the bulldozer and it is in a landfill somewhere in 
10   Seattle I believe.  So I don't want to minimize how difficult it 
11   is to get federal agencies to cooperate on anything.  But I 
12   think that really should be a priority.  Having more than one 
13   coastline if you try to explain that to the public they look at 
14   you like you're insane.  But yes, it's true, different federal 
15   agencies have different coastlines.  
16    And finally, I hope that you will look at the constantly 
17   evolving technology to see the ways in which we can make the -- 
18   both the data acquisition and the chart creation and production 
19   processes more efficient, keep them up to date and ships and 
20   planes are expensive.  To the extent that we can reduce ship and 
21   plane hours that will save us some money and let us get these 
22   critical areas done sooner, so.  
23    Those are my thoughts.  Again, appreciate your coming to 
24   Alaska and -- you doing questions or.....
25    MR. RAINEY:  Thanks, John.  I would -- I think the panel 
0143
 1   would really appreciate a chance to, you know, just have some 
 2   time to have a dialogue with you.  So let me go ahead and open 
 3   up the floor.  Bill, did you have a comment or.....
 4    MR. GRAY:  Thank you very much for a very clear talk.  I'm 
 5   a little curious that you did not mention anything about the 
 6   port system.  Because the post system is to commercial mariners 
 7   I would say easily the most desirable piece of information that 
 8   they could have but don't have because even though that 
 9   technology was developed some years ago and a number of ports 
10   systems were installed, I don't know, 10, 12, 14, whatever it is 
11   now, each harbor has to go around with a begging bowl simply to 
12   pay whatever it is for the maintenance and I think it's an 
13   absolute disgrace.  I happened to, just to back up on this, do a 
14   study called Intertankers U.S. Port and Terminal Safety study in 
15   1995, '96, which I think led pretty directly to the MTS study 
16   that came out in 1999.  And in doing that work back in '95, '96 
17   in I would say all the conversations that I had with 
18   professional mariners, commercial mariners, in this country and 
19   I include in that the pilots and so forth, they said our biggest 
20   need it to have accurate data and especially accurate real time 
21   data.  Why is it that we have this discretional situation that 
22   even for the port systems that we've got each harbor has to pass 
23   the begging bowl to make the damn thing work.  
24    MR. RAYFIELD:  My boss has requested full federal funding 
25   for ports every year since 1996 probably.  The appropriators 
0144
 1   unfortunately have made the determination that this is a private 
 2   sector issue, that it's important to industry and that industry 
 3   should be paying for it.  Sadly there are no appropriators here 
 4   to have to defend that to you in person.
 5    MR. GRAY:  Okay.  If I could.....
 6    MR. RAYFIELD:  But Mr. Young totally agrees with you.
 7    MR. GRAY:  Okay.  I just add to this, we did say.....
 8    MR. RAYFIELD:  It is important and I did actually consider 
 9   putting that in here but.....
10    MR. GRAY:  Okay.
11    MR. RAYFIELD:  .....I know the uphill battle we have with 
12   the appropriators and I considered putting streamlining the 
13   contracting process in here but you all are only human and I 
14   think the contracting process is beyond human.....
15    MR. GRAY:  Just one follow on to that if I could because 
16   in that same Port and Terminal Safety Study we said why is it 
17   that.  We have something called the harbor maintenance trust 
18   fund, we also have the house bill liability trust fund.  Monies 
19   are gathered from marine users, and contrary to what happens in 
20   aviation and highway systems marine gets almost none of that 
21   money.....
22    MR. RAYFIELD:  Right.
23    MR. GRAY:  .....that was collected from them.  So when 
24   somebody in the Congress says that's the industry's job to do, 
25   the industry is being taxed without representation or result on 
0145
 1   that.
 2    MR. RAYFIELD:  Right.  And I do not know why NOAA did not 
 3   get any funds out of the harbor maintenance trust fund.  I've 
 4   asked people who were involved in writing that back in '86 and 
 5   they just -- I've never quite gotten a clear answer.  My guess 
 6   is NOAA just wasn't at the table when they divvied up the funds.
 7    MR. RAINEY:  John, could I ask you maybe a -- from your 
 8   vantage point now and you talked about the -- I guess it's 
 9   picking up on the interagency or the -- you know, the 
10   collaboration.  That's been a big theme in a lot of the recent 
11   efforts.  And as we look ahead to the reauthorization of the 
12   HSIA and others I'm wondering if you had any views or thoughts 
13   about -- I don't know whether we call it the -- or just are 
14   there issues that you see from your work on resources with NOAA 
15   and now on Coast Guard when we look at the array of just the 
16   jurisdictions and budget authorities and things and we -- 
17   perhaps we're hoping, we all are hoping we got an opportunity 
18   here with the new CMTS.  But as far as the legislator or 
19   congressional vantage point are there particular issues or 
20   concerns that you're sensing with the NOAA programs either in 
21   the -- do you think that the -- there's an understanding of 
22   these programs and the value and it's just other hard choices, 
23   political choices are being made or do you see an effort to work 
24   across, you know, Congressional jurisdictions authorize as 
25   appropriators, science versus resources, that sort of thing.  
0146
 1   We've got a lot of players and I'm just wondering if there's -- 
 2   I know the administration is taking some steps, I'm wondering if 
 3   you're seeing any improvement maybe legislatively across the 
 4   jurisdictional boundaries there.
 5    MR. RAYFIELD:  Well, in terms of appropriations you're in 
 6   the same boat that we're always in.  The Senate has come in with 
 7   much higher numbers for NOAA than the House has come in with and 
 8   they'll all be conference issues.  The good news is for most of 
 9   your programs didn't get -- I didn't bring my chart with me but 
10   as I remember most of the programs did not get cut too badly in 
11   the House bill for nav services.  But, yeah, it's the same 
12   situation.  On the reauthorization, if you can keep extraneous 
13   matters out of it that bill just goes to one committee in the 
14   House and one committee in the Senate.  Now there are other 
15   extraneous issues, some dealing with the NOAA CORS that, you 
16   know, might be ripe for consideration there but that will be up 
17   to those authorizing committees to determine.  I will encourage 
18   them to look at something that works with the Corps of Engineers 
19   and NOAA to try to get that full bottom coverage issue 
20   addressed.
21    MR. RAINEY:  Okay.  I just wondered if you're sensing, you 
22   know, maybe an opportunity to do some of those cross 
23   jurisdictional things and that one, that particular issue, is 
24   something we're.....
25    MR. RAYFIELD:  Yeah.
0147
 1    MR. RAINEY:  .....I think going to try to comment on as 
 2   strongly as.....
 3    MR. RAYFIELD:  Right.
 4    MR. RAINEY:  .....we can because that's a difficult 
 5   situation.....
 6    MR. RAYFIELD:  Yeah.
 7    MR. RAINEY:  .....where you've got that split division of 
 8   responsibility there.
 9    MR. RAYFIELD:  The two committees of jurisdiction there 
10   generally work very well together, so that's the good news.  At 
11   least on the House side.
12    MR. RAINEY:  Andy.
13    CAPTAIN ARMSTRONG:  Andy Armstrong.  John, if we should be 
14   successful in getting the critical backlog on a five year 
15   schedule, and even if not if it's on a 10 year schedule.  This 
16   morning we were listening to a presentation on the NOAA planning 
17   process which has us already out to 2013.  Do you see continued 
18   support on the Hill for hydrographic surveys past the point of 
19   completing the critical survey areas or are we going to be faced 
20   with a crisis in five years or 10 years in terms of justifying 
21   the need for additional survey work.
22    MR. RAYFIELD:  Well, I think that is one of the primary 
23   motivating reasons for the Coast Survey to start working with 
24   the other parts of NOAA and be seen as part of the effort to 
25   gather the data that observes and explains the environment.  And 
0148
 1   I think that -- being seen that way as opposed to being seen 
 2   only as a group that produces nautical charts and nothing else, 
 3   I think that's where their future needs to be as part of that 
 4   whole integrated system of looking at the coasts and oceans and 
 5   what's happening out there.  You know, will we ever map the 
 6   whole EEZ with full bottom coverage the way we map important 
 7   navigation areas?  Probably not.  But even if you mapped it at a 
 8   much lower resolution there would still be reason for the Coast 
 9   Survey to be out there or the contractors to be out there.  So I 
10   don't know if that answers your question, but.....
11    CAPTAIN ARMSTRONG:  Thank you.
12    MR. RAYFIELD:  Okay.  Thank you.  
13    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Okay.  Thanks very much.
14    CAPTAIN BARNUM:  Thank you, John.  The next agenda item is 
15   an update on NOAA navigation services.  I'll be tag teaming this 
16   with Director of NGS and CO-OPS respectively.
17    Next slide please.  FY '07 navigation services summary.  
18   The Senate and House marks are both available in your package.  
19   The Senate matches the President's requests by and large with 
20   major earmarks for EEZ service surveys for the UN law of the sea 
21   claim.  NGS GIS mapping, height mod elevations, Great Lakes 
22   NWLON and Alaska tide and current data.  The House, as was 
23   mentioned earlier, is well below the President's request.  
24   Impacts current levels on all fronts.
25    Next slide please.  This slide shows in a table format the 
0149
 1   FY '06 enacted, the 2000 President's budget request, the House 
 2   mark and the Senate mark.  As you can see from the House mark we 
 3   are zeroed for ENC's, we've basically stopped production of 
 4   ENC's.  Shoreline mapping zeroed and the joint hydrographic 
 5   center zeroed.  Significant shortfalls there. 
 6    Next slide.  Hydrographic survey developments accomplished 
 7   in 2006, implemented new processing procedures, implementing the 
 8   Q process (ph).  And planned for '07, continue evaluation of 
 9   AUV's and interferometric side scan sonars to enhance survey 
10   capabilities, develop operating procedures for transition and 
11   also implement TCARI.  It's an enhanced method of applying tide 
12   correctors to survey data.  For hydrodynamic modeling, in '06 
13   completed the transition of the Great Lakes model to operational 
14   status and established model environmental -- environment in 
15   Delaware Bay for community testing of models.  Planned for 2007, 
16   Columbia River will be offered experimentally and to continue 
17   collaborative NOAA project to evaluate real time storm surge 
18   models coupled to an ocean model.  Vdatum, Strait of Juan de 
19   Fuca North Carolina completed in 2006.  Planned for 2007, the 
20   complete Chesapeake Bay and Mobile Bay to St. Josephs Bay, so 
21   doing height modernization.  I'm sorry, doing the Vdatum on a 
22   more regional basis.  
23    Next slide.  ENC's, 550 completed to date.  Maintain for 
24   critical notice to mariners, top 40 U.S. ports covered.  No 
25   growth in number of ENC's available after FY '06 enacted and FY 
0150
 1   '07 request not enacted, be no growth.  ENC distributorship 
 2   program is operational.  To date six applications have been 
 3   received, four were accepted and two are pending.  
 4    Next slide.  RNC's, significant downloads, almost two 
 5   million RNC's downloaded since December 2005.  Regional RNC 
 6   distributorship program is operational.  Forty applications 
 7   received, 35 approved, five pending and download statistics from 
 8   distributors not yet available.  The NOAA RNC trademark 
 9   registration is pending, July of 2006 still hasn't come through.  
10   Hydrographic Products Quality Assurance and Certification 
11   Program still has no applicants.
12    Hydrographic survey vessel time charter, FY '06 
13   appropriation earmark funds for a new time charter of two and a 
14   half million dollars.  NOAA plans to contract with a 
15   hydrographic services provider specifying use of a dedicated 
16   vessel to complete a large survey area in Alaska.  All five 
17   firms of our omnibus IDIQ contract have received a request for 
18   proposal.  The most qualified firm with the best technical 
19   approach will be awarded the task order and that's eminent.  
20   Award in FY '06 for fieldwork to be -- start this fall and next 
21   year.
22    So -- next slide.  Contracts, has a breakdown of the 
23   various dollars for FY '06 to the various contracts.  In 
24   addition there was $20 million for emergency supplemental of the 
25   marine debris mapping.  Those survey areas have been assigned to 
0151
 1   our IDIQ omnibus contract.  Contractors, we're in negotiations 
 2   with those right now and expect award in '06 for work to begin 
 3   in '07 -- begin this fall.  In addition there was $2 million in 
 4   tsunami supplemental and that was provided to -- awarded to 
 5   Tenix for a project up at Puerto Rico.
 6    Next slide.  Showing a breakdown of the projects along the 
 7   Alaska coast and the U.S. Coast.  Next slide.  SWATH vessel 
 8   mentioned earlier by John, critical design review held in March 
 9   of 2006.  Initial reports that the sea keeping prediction did 
10   not meet requirements.  Vessel construction costs increased with 
11   the increased cost after Katrina, Rita, shortfall of $5.6 
12   million to program.  Additional model tests and numerical 
13   analysis done subsequently and final report due was done July 
14   31st.  The report is that they -- it is technically feasible to 
15   build this vessel.  Detail price negotiations in August 2006, 
16   must obligate $15.7 million in '06 funds this year so the clock 
17   is ticking.
18    Next slide.  NOAA leadership briefed on programs cost 
19   shortfalls, commitments sought for relief from FY '07 to make 
20   program whole.  Decision briefed to NOAA Deputy Undersecretary 
21   in September 2006.  The Deputy Undersecretary determines go, no 
22   go on SWATH construction.  Scheduled delivery now estimated for 
23   April 2008.  
24    Next slide.  Navigation Response Teams.  Certainly 
25   laudable hurricane season performance were Hurricane Katrina, 
0152
 1   Rita.  Partnership with DOD technologies support working group 
 2   to develop a NRT that could be used for harbor surveys.  Also 
 3   working with the technical support working group of DOD as a AUV 
 4   for homeland security, countermine measures.  NRT technically 
 5   not operational, unfunded, sitting in a shed.  Planned for the 
 6   mid-Atlantic region and awaiting '07 appropriations decision.  
 7    Next slide.  Certainly the issue along the coast still 
 8   exists.  Next slide.  NRT coverage for the U.S., talked about 
 9   the additional NRT.  This is as it stands now, there are six 
10   NRT's, two on the west coast, one in the Great Lakes, two on the 
11   east coast and one in the Gulf.  
12    Next slide.  Planned coverage is to add two additional 
13   NRT's, NRT seven the summer of 2007 to cover the area of the 
14   Atlantic Coast and then in spring 2008 an additional NRT to 
15   split the Gulf in half, cover the Gulf.  
16    Next slide.  Mentioned earlier the marine debris mapping.  
17   Three major marine debris mapping projects, one is the Calcasieu 
18   Lake, that was a internal NOAA grant.  The Mississippi sound 
19   pilot project was FEMA funding for a half million dollars for 
20   four test areas off the coast of Mississippi.  Those were 
21   contracted out to C and C, the Mississippi Sound hurricane 
22   supplemental which I just talked about.  The Navigation Services 
23   Division of Coast Survey spearheaded the coordination with the 
24   states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama with public 
25   awareness.  So out of this coordination with the local states 
0153
 1   fisheries resources we identified the areas to be surveyed and 
 2   that's shown at the bottom of the slide.  
 3    Next, NOAA is celebrating its 200th anniversary February 
 4   of 2007, 200 years of science, service and stewardship.  NOAA is 
 5   looking to make this a high level visibility event to have a 
 6   major event almost every month during the year of 2007.  Some of 
 7   the projects that include a documentary, film documentary, some 
 8   -- certainly some public awareness campaigns and the 
 9   transportation public service announcements in the Washington, 
10   D.C. metro.  There's a website that's being developed and 
11   there's many, many other things that will be forthcoming.
12    Next slide.  Example of the website.  Next slide.  And 
13   I'll turn it over to Dave Zilkoski for National Geodetic Survey.
14    MR. ZILKOSKI:  Okay.  Go ahead, the next one.  This is 
15   geodesy budget and just for inside geodesy the shoreline mapping 
16   is also part of the National Geodetic survey but it's separated 
17   out and it was already mentioned by Steve so it's not part of 
18   this but it's another -- makes about $6 million.  But you can 
19   see the geodesy base for '06 when you add it all up, there's 
20   about $20 million there and then the Senate mark and the House 
21   is still about the same but the bottom line coverage, from the 
22   enacted it goes from $32 million up to $22 million for the House 
23   mark and the Senate is -- you can see the one thing on there but 
24   I can't read it.  The final number for the -- total of 43,560, I 
25   couldn't see the five because I didn't have it in my copy.  But 
0154
 1   point being there that is there is a significant amount that 
 2   deal with the specific earmarks which tailor to the height 
 3   modernization and leveling aspect.
 4    Next slide.  Now I'm going to go through this fairly 
 5   quickly but I'm going to talk about four major aspects of the 
 6   program, shoreline mapping, height modernization which you saw a 
 7   big increase there, some deals with our CORS, Continuous 
 8   Operating Reference Station, which are GPS, and some of our user 
 9   services that a lot of people aren't familiar with.
10    Next slide please.  The shoreline mapping, 11 of the 40 
11   project ports will be evaluated this fiscal year and we'll have 
12   up to 4,000 miles of shoreline updated and we do this process 
13   with some in house as well as contracting out for the imagery 
14   processing as well and as the compilation.
15    Next slide please.  In addition to our regular activities 
16   that we do we have been involved with FEMA dealing with the -- 
17   after the coastal -- the storms.  We've been part of the process 
18   of providing them imagery and we're ready and stand ready to 
19   work with them if some hurricane comes up through this year.  
20   That's part of our emergency response effort that obviously 
21   takes over and replaces some of the activities that may or may 
22   not do if some major storm hits.
23    Next slide please.  This is the height modernization 
24   program.  As I saw -- as you saw in -- from the difference 
25   between what's enacted and what's in the President's budget and 
0155
 1   what ends up being in -- from the Senate and the House, we 
 2   actually received $9.9 million to do height modernization and 
 3   this diagram gives you a little schematic of where they are and 
 4   as you can see a majority of them are on the coast or up in the 
 5   Great Lakes.  There's a lot of interest for dealing with 
 6   accurate heights along the coast and in the round waterways 
 7   where most of the people live.  So this is where the activity 
 8   and the priorities are being produced by -- in the country.  And 
 9   it's not just using GPS to do it, it is -- some of it is 
10   modernizing and some of the new leveling as well as using 
11   enhanced remote sensing technology to be able to give better 
12   digital elevation models which ultimately is resulting in a 
13   height.  
14    Next slide please.  This is our schedule where we've gone 
15   out and talked to groups about height modernization to help find 
16   out what their requirements are, what they needed from us, what 
17   we needed from them.  It's a partnership program.  We work 
18   together on this, the money does come into our budget but it 
19   goes right back out to the community who actually implements the 
20   program.  We have the national program of interest of trying to 
21   link all of it together but it actually is implemented locally.
22    Next slide please.  Our GPS CORS, Continuous Operating 
23   Reference Stations.  This is a partnership program which is, 
24   once again, funded by the locals.  We bring the infrastructure 
25   in place where we provide the quality assurance, quality 
0156
 1   control, data storage and the actual access to the data through 
 2   our web process that the user out here puts their own equipment 
 3   in, pays their own O and M fees, does everything themselves, all 
 4   they do to us is they guarantee that it's going to be up and 
 5   running, send the information to us, we QC it and then we put it 
 6   out on our web and they can -- anybody can use it.  And you can 
 7   see it's grown up to 928 stations and they say that by the end 
 8   of this fiscal -- or the end of the year we're liable to be up 
 9   to about 1,000 stations.  And once again, this is not -- most of 
10   this is funded by the outside community, not by us.  The other 
11   important part about the CORS is that it supports not only the 
12   navigation and surveyors from positioning but it also supports 
13   the weather community, it helps with water vapor in the 
14   atmosphere and it helps with space, environment and it helps 
15   with the free electrons is the hydrosphere and with marine and 
16   aviation weather instruments.
17    Next slide please.  We -- our program has been fairly 
18   successful in we have been -- had a lot of interest on the 
19   outside of trying to help people implement what we're doing 
20   inside the United States.  And in Iraq the U.S. military came to 
21   us and asked us to set up a system for them and they are 
22   currently using our system and actually process their data on 
23   our servers for being able to get positions.  They installed the 
24   receivers themselves based on our requirements, put them in, the 
25   data gets sent to us as they obtain it.  But they are now 
0157
 1   establishing coordinates in an Iraqi system obviously but -- 
 2   relative to them but it's part of our process.  The Mexican 
 3   government also has a significant amount of CORS, not up and 
 4   running as much as ours, but have worked with them and we help 
 5   them in the process of their infrastructure maintenance because 
 6   it's -- a lot of the data that happens on both sides of the 
 7   border we want and we try to work with them on that.  And South 
 8   America is another example of countries that are very interested 
 9   in helping trying to get our expertise so we've been working 
10   trying to help them.
11    Next slide please.  Geodesy is a fairly small program, 
12   there's 225 employees and we cover the -- not just the coast, we 
13   cover from coast to coast.  And we have what's called geodetic 
14   advisors and coordinators and they provide advice, that's what 
15   they're there for.  They -- most of them, once again, is -- are 
16   along the coast but they are also inland, we have -- currently 
17   we have 29 advisors and we have what we call state Geodetic 
18   coordinator advisors, and actually Lapine is part of that 
19   program, that they provide a relationship between the two that 
20   we give advice in how to do that and the technical guidance and 
21   they do the implementation.  So they bring to the table half of 
22   the resources to accomplish something and we bring to the table 
23   our expertise and guidance on how to do that.
24    Next slide please.  We have a program now trying to find 
25   out what the users' needs are.  Geodesy has been a partnership 
0158
 1   program from the beginning.  We produce a very, very highly 
 2   accurate reference frame that other people use.  So for the most 
 3   part everybody uses our products, we're the framework, the 
 4   foundation for what everybody else uses and starts and builds 
 5   from.  So we're always asking our users what do you need, what 
 6   products and services do you want from us and then what we have 
 7   is county by county we're trying to evaluate are we providing 
 8   enough models and tools and resources so that that county is -- 
 9   enable themselves to be positioning and able.  Are they able to 
10   do their work using our system, do we need to do more workshops, 
11   do we need to have more models and tools, how do we do that.  
12   And so this county scorecard is that for every county in the 
13   United States we are going to them and getting them to tell us 
14   what their requirements are.  
15    Next slide please.  We also went out and got a contractor 
16   to look at our website and this a user service website and we've 
17   -- looking on there you can see that there's a government wide 
18   standard -- or government wide measure right now, there's what's 
19   a foresee company wide so that they see and then you got the NGS 
20   NOAA.  So they evaluate you on content, functionality, look and 
21   feel, navigation, you can read the rest of them.  But the point 
22   being here is we actually went out, got a contractor to ask 
23   these questions and it's still going on now, collecting 
24   information.  So they were able to see where do we need to 
25   improve.  We're actually not doing too bad which was a little 
0159
 1   bit of a surprise to me because I'm not real pleased with my own 
 2   website and how I get some of the stuff off so I was -- but it 
 3   must mean that the rest of the world out there is pretty bad.  
 4   So we're still looking at trying to improve our process and what 
 5   we're doing and every time we go and do workshops with the 
 6   county we're trying to get more specific about what do you like, 
 7   what do you want from us and how we can help the process and 
 8   move forward.  
 9    Next is Mike.
10    MR. SZABADOS:  Basically just go over this chart real 
11   quick.  In 2006 we had increased the National Water Level 
12   Program of roughly $2.5 million.  That was to update the water 
13   level systems to real time.  That's underway and I'll get into 
14   that a little.  The PORTS Program which was unfortunately cut 
15   from $3 to about $1.5 million.  In the 2007 the President's 
16   request of $24.9 includes the $3 million for PORTS as well as 
17   look at the House and the Senate mark and I can go into that a 
18   little bit later when I talk about the PORTS Program.  But 
19   basically overall though the House is roughly $2.9 million lower 
20   than the House -- that the President's request.  And in the 
21   Senate mark there's $2 million for Great Lakes water level 
22   enhancements as well as tide and current surveys in Alaska for 
23   $3 million.
24    Next slide.  Updating the National Water Level Program.  
25   As I indicated that we had some additional increase in our 
0160
 1   budget to update real time to the stations.  We did 58 of those 
 2   in 2006.  We also installed nine new tsunami stations, one in 
 3   Washington State, four Alaska, two Puerto Rico and two Virgin 
 4   Islands.  And as well we had enhancements for four additional 
 5   stations, two in New Orleans, one in Lake Pontchartrain and one 
 6   is underway and planned for Lake Bourne before the end of the 
 7   year as well as Chesapeake Bay and Atchafalaya Bay in Louisiana. 
 8    Next.  In the funding for the Alaska -- Alaskan funding 
 9   list this year, we're installing 12 Alaskan short term water 
10   level stations in some critical areas where we don't have 
11   sufficient information on tidal dynamics.  As well as we got 
12   funding as part of a supplemental to enhance and improve the 
13   damage -- nine Gulf stations that occurred during Katrina and 
14   Rita.
15    Next please.  As part of the National Current Program, as 
16   you see here we installed 70 tidal stations, locations in 
17   Southeast Alaska, Penobscot Bay and Hudson River.  We also are 
18   undergoing a new program in the Great Lakes.  Traditionally our 
19   Current Program was in the salt water where there's tidal 
20   currents.  And -- but there was identified a need for current 
21   information in the Great Lakes.  This is the -- actually to the 
22   right the Tiahoga (ph) in Cleveland.  As you can see the 
23   currents there can be extremely strong and the navigational 
24   challenges of going through what I would call a thread and 
25   needle.  It's not just the water level for the draft and the 
0161
 1   height of the bridge but also managing and -- the vessel under 
 2   strong currents whether it's with you or you're going into the 
 3   currents.  But we have a pilot program in the Great Lakes, two 
 4   of them, and that's being funded through the Great Lakes earmark 
 5   funding.
 6    Next.  As far as our traditional updated tidal current 
 7   tables, we have a major enhancement to that after -- doing a 
 8   current survey actually here in Cook Inlet for the past four 
 9   years.  We're updating the tables for the Cook Inlet.  On the 
10   table out there there's a special publication of what's going to 
11   be coming out in 2007 in our publication.  But I want to 
12   highlight that the three reference stations is a great 
13   improvement, especially for Cook Inlet.  The original reference 
14   station was Wrangell Narrows Pass which is over 600 miles away.  
15   It's like doing your tidal current predictions in New York 
16   Harbor based on Maine, that's the equivalent.  And there's a lot 
17   more work to be done and we're looking forward to doing more 
18   work in Alaska.  But 30 stations, new stations or reoccupied 
19   stations are in there, seven subordinate stations for Southeast 
20   Alaska as well.
21    Next one please.  In the area of modeling, as Steve 
22   mentioned we transitioned three more Great Lakes models.  These 
23   models include not just the water levels but currents and now we 
24   have a total of nine operational forecast models for tides and 
25   currents.
0162
 1    Next one please.  Okay, the PORTS Program.  As I mentioned 
 2   earlier, the PORTS funding in 2006 was significantly cut in half 
 3   but on a positive note in 2006 with funds -- supplemental 
 4   funding with Katrina they've identified four ports to be 
 5   implemented with PORTS -- with the supplemental funding, that's 
 6   Mobile, Pascagoula Gulf port in New Orleans.  We're under right 
 7   now a process of working with the local partners to establish 
 8   their requirements, matching their requirements with the 
 9   resources available.  Installation of those ports will start 
10   probably February, March of next year based on procurement of 
11   equipment and basically getting the requirements and the 
12   agreements in place.  There are two additional new ports 
13   identified, one for Cherry Point in Washington state and Port 
14   Arthur.  These are locally funded port systems.
15    Next one please.  One thing I do want to highlight, 
16   there's a lot of accomplishments but one of the highlights and 
17   actually this is a -- was a cooperative program with NGS and CO-
18   OPS working with the Army Corps after Katrina trying to do an 
19   evaluation of the performance of the levees and -- one of the 
20   things that came out and is a positive thing is that there has 
21   become a recommendation in the study that the standards for 
22   geodetic and tidal data to meet NOAA standards, that the Army 
23   Corps use those in the levee redesign.  And actually last week 
24   Army Corps from Mobile District as well as New Orleans was in 
25   Silver Spring working with both our offices on those standards 
0163
 1   and training.  
 2    That's it.  The -- basically I would also like to 
 3   highlight is that also on the table out front is a publication 
 4   on a contribution that the CO-OPS did to NOAA's effort on the 
 5   hurricane response, the hurricane season response.  It's a 
 6   publication based on interviews of individuals.  We put a lot of 
 7   technical reports out on what the storm surge was or how it 
 8   benefited the Weather Service in its forecast.  But the 
 9   publication out back is the story of the people who contributed, 
10   who went in there, it's their personal stories and it's sort of 
11   a different perspective than we normally do and might be -- have 
12   some value, get a better understanding of the program and how we 
13   operate.  Thank you.
14    MR. RAINEY:  Thanks.  Thanks very much.  If I could maybe 
15   jump in and ask one question and then open it up.  But thanks 
16   Steve and Mike and Dave.  One of the things I'm most interested 
17   in from just trying to see how we can interact or what -- help.  
18   But just if I could point to a couple of examples and my 
19   fundamental question is, you know, what are the ramifications of 
20   the budget mark things and the two examples I have question 
21   about is the ENC database and the NRT's.  And I don't know if 
22   they're similar situations, you know Mike's talking about the 
23   PORTS funding cut in half.  But it seems -- I mean what's the 
24   next -- how does this play out?  In other words we got zero 
25   funding on the -- I realize there's a difference in the House 
0164
 1   and Senate mark and that's kind of a usual occurrence, but it 
 2   doesn't seem like it's a satisfactory or a possible answer that 
 3   we can now just stop at 550 ENC's, I mean just -- we just can't 
 4   end there.  I mean it seems like we've made a policy decision 
 5   and direction that will -- we're going to build out the official 
 6   ENC database and, you know, this is going to be the way forward.  
 7   In fact Congress has mandated the Coast Guard to promulgate, you 
 8   know, regulations for electronic charting systems, carriage 
 9   requirements, there's a lot of things going on that all seem to 
10   point toward the ENC as -- you know, there seems to be a wide 
11   consensus that this is the way forward and yet we get a budget 
12   mark like that.  It seems completely sort of inconsistent with 
13   the national policy here of what's trying to be accomplished.  
14   Similarly with the NRT's what we heard in Houston after Katrina, 
15   these are trailable boats and the expenses of these things are 
16   not overwhelming and yet we've got one sitting in a shed because 
17   of lack of funding or something.  I'm just wondering what kind 
18   of -- can you talk me through on the program or the NOAA level 
19   on how these -- I understand you don't want to rob Peter to pay 
20   Paul and all that but how does this -- we seem to have a -- you 
21   know, these stated kind of national priorities but it sure seems 
22   like we're taking the hard way to get there.  You know, how do 
23   you -- what does -- what can NOAA do or what can we do in our 
24   advice in NOAA to kind of highlight to me what seemed to be very 
25   inconsistent implementation of our, you know, direction on a lot 
0165
 1   of these programs.  I mean do you have any comment on that, 
 2   Steve?  I mean I -- I understand that if you don't get the 
 3   funding there that, you know, you can't keep building new ENC's 
 4   because then you have to maintain them and everything.  But it's 
 5   just an astounding conflict to me in that, you know, we're going 
 6   to have this as a carriage requirement, this is our official 
 7   national database and yet, you know, the funding is just not 
 8   there.  I don't understand that inconsistency and how to resolve 
 9   that so this doesn't just keep happening to us year after year 
10   after year.
11    MR. ZILKOSKI:  Scott, I don't have any information on why 
12   those particular line items were cut.  I can tell you that the  
13   -- certainly the reduction in our base and with the elimination 
14   of the money for ENC's that's going to pretty much put a stop to 
15   the production of ENC's.  Which doesn't make much sense since 
16   the Coast Guard is getting ready to promulgate regulations for 
17   the carriage of electronic charts.  So it could be just an 
18   oversight.  Certainly buried also in the production of ENC's is 
19   contract support so it's not just an in house effort.  So those 
20   resources are, you know, on the table on what we decide to do 
21   and trying to maintain our production.  One thing we don't have 
22   is RIF authority.
23    MR. RAINEY:  Andrew.
24    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  Andrew McGovern.  I have a couple of 
25   questions on the different presentations.  I guess one's for 
0166
 1   you, Steve.  I'm getting a lot of feedback on the website to 
 2   update the ENC's and the fact that it doesn't work very well.  
 3   Is there -- are you still working, is that a work in progress 
 4   or.....
 5    CAPTAIN BARNUM:  That is still a work in progress.  We're 
 6   continuing, we have the update service on the web for updating 
 7   the ENC's.  We're, you know, trying to adhere to the 
 8   international standards but it's a technical issue in progress.  
 9   So we continue to work on that problem to make it smoother.
10    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  Okay, thanks.  And I got one other 
11   question.  On these CORS sites, it seems like there are GPS 
12   reference stations similar -- how real time are they, the data 
13   that comes.....
14    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Well, there's a couple of ans -- 
15   couple different aspects of that.  The data depending on the 
16   partner it can be made near real time, you know, nanosecond type 
17   stuff.  But most partners don't want to invest in that 
18   technology so they send it where we collect it on the hour.  So 
19   say someone collects their data, they -- every hour we go out 
20   and get it.  But it can be set up such that it is real time.  
21   All the Coast Guard sites and the NDGPS sites that we get, the 
22   federal sites, they are real time, that data stream as it's 
23   streamed to the ships that are positioning it's actually 
24   streamed to us and we have it and can turn around and give it 
25   back out again.  We are pursuing the method of taking all data 
0167
 1   that is given to us in the real time and turning around and 
 2   giving that back to anybody that wants it in real time.  So it 
 3   varies depending on the partner.
 4    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  All right.  Because I was thinking, I 
 5   mean, you know, yeah, the Coast Guard runs their differential 
 6   stations and the FAA runs their WAA (ph) stations and then we've 
 7   got NOAA -- well, not running CORS stations but then we got 
 8   these CORS stations and when we talk about this duplicitous 
 9   efforts but this really isn't a duplicitous effort.....
10    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  No.
11    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  .....this is basically -- you're using 
12   those same stations, they're part of your CORS......
13    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  We manage it.  It's the data that they 
14   do.  In other words the FAA and the Coast Guard has put the 
15   stations in but it's actually -- we manage it, we back it up, 
16   it's our data, it comes to us.  Once -- they send the correctors 
17   out because it's in real time but the data comes to us so, you 
18   know, it's not -- it's done working jointly together to do it.  
19   So we all have our roles and responsibilities on it so there is 
20   no duplication.
21    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  Excellent.  Okay, thank you.  That was 
22   all I had, thanks.
23    MR. RAINEY:  Adam.
24    MR. MCBRIDE:  Adam McBride.  Mike, I noticed that the 
25   supplemental funding included funds for port systems at 
0168
 1   Pascagoula, Mobile, New Orleans and Gulf port.  Can you tell me 
 2   how those four ports, what were the criteria that were used in 
 3   selecting them or did you make the selection or were they 
 4   earmarked in?
 5    MR. SZABADOS:  They were identified in the language of the 
 6   supplemental.
 7    MR. MCBRIDE:  So they were earmarked in there.
 8    MR. SZABADOS:  Correct.
 9    MR. MCBRIDE:  And does the supplemental funding provide 
10   for the installation and operation of those sites?
11    MR. SZABADOS:  The installation and operation for one 
12   year.
13    MR. MCBRIDE:  And then after that one year some other 
14   mechanism (indiscernible).
15    MR. SZABADOS:  They'll address -- that's one thing we're 
16   addressing with the local partners that, you know, in the light 
17   of that no additional federal funding that the partner has a 
18   responsibility to fund their operation.
19    MR. MCBRIDE:  Okay.  So then there are port sites then in 
20   Tampa, Mobile, Pascagoula, Gulf Port and New Orleans, I realize 
21   those are not in yet, and Houston.  Is there one is Corpus?  Is 
22   there one in Corpus?
23    MR. SZABADOS:  No.
24    MR. MCBRIDE:  No.  So there's getting to be pretty good 
25   coverage in the Gulf area although there's not -- all the major 
0169
 1   ports are not done yet.  It's somewhat disappointing that the 
 2   supplemental -- I realize you didn't write the supplemental, but 
 3   it's somewhat disappointing that only some of the ports affected 
 4   by the hurricane season last year received this kind of 
 5   attention and it's unfortunate that it took this kind of 
 6   attention to bring legislators to do this type of thing which 
 7   they should be doing at major ports nationwide in any case.  
 8   Thank you.
 9    MR. RAINEY:  Bill Gray.
10    MR. GRAY:  I'm not sure it's the right time now, but 
11   Andrew had asked a question about the complaints on electronic 
12   navigational charts.  I've seen several articles in 
13   (indiscernible) recently which are kind of waving a red flag 
14   about these things where they're saying we're getting in front 
15   of ourselves and that people do not know how to operate these, 
16   well the integrated systems are different, people aren't 
17   adequately trained and so forth.  And in one of these statements 
18   it said, and I don't know whether this is true about the 
19   electronic navigation chart.  All too often in the past the IMO 
20   has been acutely embarrassed by mandating new technology only to 
21   be confronted with missed deadlines, malfunctioning equipment 
22   and lack of training.  And there are two examples of that 
23   happening, it doesn't happen to be in the charting system, one 
24   of them is oily water separators which don't work the way 
25   they're supposed to and people are getting crucified for it.  
0170
 1   And the other one is the -- what's the ship called, the Cougar 
 2   Ace with the ballast water exchange situation.  And I know that 
 3   it's been one of NOAA's priorities to move towards an all 
 4   electronic chart system, I know IMO is going to take this up I 
 5   think next summer is the next time that they really come back to 
 6   it.  But I think there are people that are worried that there 
 7   are differences, that people don't understand them, that the 
 8   people are not correctly trained on them and so forth or set up 
 9   their own way of doing so and is this something that we should 
10   study more as -- and when you get the money to make more 
11   electronic charts.  I'm not very convinced that this is the 
12   right way to go.
13    CAPTAIN BARNUM:  The -- our goal in NOAA is to produce -- 
14   continue to produce paper charts, the raster nautical charts 
15   which are a image of the paper charts and these electronic 
16   navigational charts.  We are in concert with the -- through the 
17   IHO trying to produce a chart system.  As far as the suitability 
18   in the systems, that's a different standard that's developed and 
19   I agree, I think there's some issues there on the training and 
20   the education of the mariner on how to interpret and use the 
21   data effectively.
22    MR. WHITING:  Thank you, Captain.  Larry Whiting.  I was 
23   wondering about the planned coverage for the NRT's in Alaska and 
24   Hawaii.  No mission?
25    CAPTAIN BARNUM:  There's certainly a concern there that 
0171
 1   the -- a concern with Hawaii and Alaska.  We're talking about 
 2   huge areas and you can't really trailer the boat through those 
 3   areas.  It's a -- it's something that we've thought about and we 
 4   have not implemented yet.  It's not an easy solution.  Certainly 
 5   we've talked about having an NRT that could be put into a C-130 
 6   if need be.  Coast Guard is interested in that and we continue 
 7   to pursue that idea.
 8    MR. OSWALD:  I just wanted to make a comment.  These 
 9   natural disasters are pretty good for budgets.  December 26, 
10   2004 there was that earthquake in Aceh, Indonesia.  As a direct 
11   result of that there was supplemental last year that came down 
12   that was spread quite a few places in NOAA, I'm not sure how 
13   many places.  But National Weather Service and CO-OPS received 
14   money and as a result of that our NWLON System in Alaska in 19 -
15   - in 2004 was 17 sites, six sites were built with that money in 
16   one -- well, year and a half basically, a year and a half.  In 
17   addition six sites are op -- being built or one was previously 
18   built by the other part of NOAA, National Weather Service.  I 
19   would like to see those sites integrated.  It's all part of the 
20   -- you know, tearing down the stovepipe but they currently are 
21   only partially integrated.  The National Weather Service accepts 
22   CO-OPS data but the other way doesn't -- that part is broken in 
23   my view.  That's just a comment, but it was good, I mean we have 
24   more stations so that's good.
25    Another unrelated comment maybe directed to Steve is the 
0172
 1   contract -- I guess it's called survey backlog line item in the 
 2   budget came about about 1997 or '98 and Larry would remember, I 
 3   don't remember.  It started out at somewhere between $4 and $6 
 4   million, something in that range.  It's been built to in the 
 5   last few years $18 to $20 million, last year it was about $20.5.  
 6   And in the President's request in 2000 -- I always have to think 
 7   about this, 2006 and 2007 it was recommended, the President 
 8   which is the admin -- your request or your predecessor, $30 
 9   million.  So if it's $30 million it's a -- obviously a -- I 
10   guess is that defined then as base so would that go ahead as --
11   if it passed this year would it be base for 2008?  Or maybe -- I 
12   guess that can't be discussed here in this meeting but what is 
13   some of the rationale for going from $20 to $30 and where did 
14   that money come from?
15    MR. SZABADOS:  The rationale from going $20 to $30, you 
16   probably remember a couple years ago when they had the vessel 
17   time charter about $10 million and that had some implementation 
18   issues of its own on -- to effectively implement it.  And what 
19   we have asked is to have that money put in or combined with 
20   address survey backlog which gives us a flexibility of working 
21   with our IDIQ contractors to let them develop the best technical 
22   approach on providing survey contract data.  We feel it gives us 
23   much more flexibility in addressing the survey concerns of our 
24   coast.  So that's how it went from the $20 million to the $30, 
25   that jump.
0173
 1    MR. DASLER:  Jon, I'd like to comment on -- regarding the 
 2   tsunami stations.  Working with the National Weather Service, 
 3   NOS is working with the Weather Service on national -- with 
 4   National Data Buoy Center who has some (indiscernible) gauges to 
 5   establish standards and we are trying to work with them to -- 
 6   for us to utilize that information it has to have certain 
 7   metadata and certain other information.  And as far as the 
 8   tsunami stations we are looking forward to working and getting 
 9   those standards.  But again, we need to have those certain 
10   metadata to incorporate it.
11    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Yeah, I think it's not only the 
12   tsunami stations, I know the Columbia River too there's a lot of 
13   co-located sites where CO-OPS has stations co-located with the 
14   Weather Service and if a lot of that could be -- if that could 
15   be coordinated you could overcome the metadata issue.  I mean 
16   that could be another use of using the data -- you know, collect 
17   it once, you know, use it for a lot of other resources.
18    MR. DASLER:  Columbia River is another area actually we're 
19   working very closely and looking forward to getting that 
20   information so we can include it.  We actually have a port 
21   system in the Columbia River and we're looking to integrate 
22   those water level stations as part of ports.  Once we get that 
23   metadata and those standards we can do that.
24    MR. ZILKOSKI:  On a -- Dave Zilkoski, on a bigger scale 
25   that we're looking across all of NOAA for the -- this is part of 
0174
 1   the Integrated Ocean Observing System process of integration, 
 2   interoperability.  So what Mike's talking about is all this 
 3   information needs to be in certain formats and specifics so that 
 4   we can share the data back and forth.  So we're looking at this 
 5   as not just site by site but overall change the way the process 
 6   works program by program so that we don't say the Columbia 
 7   River, we don't say Alaska, it's this is how you do business and 
 8   at the end of the fiscal year where are you in your process of 
 9   making these interoperable so that Weather Service, CO-OPS are 
10   interop -- just an example, interoperable so that we're changing 
11   the way we do business.  
12    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  (Indiscernible - away from microphone) 
13   second just to address John's question.  A lot of programs in 
14   NOAA, more specifically in NOS and to some extent in OAR are -- 
15   start out as Congressionally earmarked programs and once they 
16   essentially become operational programs after two or three years 
17   NOAA generally makes a good faith effort and sometimes, as in 
18   the case of the address survey backlog line item is actually 
19   successful in convincing OMB to make that a base program.  And 
20   unfortunately in other programs like PORTS that just doesn't 
21   work but that's how Congress started that line item and after 
22   several years of trying NOAA was successful in getting that 
23   incorporated in.  And I think everyone looked at that time 
24   charter as essentially part of that contractor line item.  So.
25    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  In the Hydrographic Service 
0175
 1   Improvement Act for 2007 I think they have it at $50 million for 
 2   that contract, for the survey backlog.  Just to clarify.
 3    MR. RAINEY:  I know Lou wanted to get in, probably need to 
 4   move to the next session. 
 5    DR. LAPINE:  Okay.  Just a quick thing, follow up to what 
 6   Andy said about CORS sites.  Seven of our sites in South 
 7   Carolina feed the data hourly to NGS but they also run real 
 8   time.  If you have a cellular phone that's capable of 
 9   transmitting digital data you can get the data in real time from 
10   our servers and with a survey grade receiver that means 
11   centimeter accuracy in real time.  It's worked so well our DOT 
12   is going to help us put in 40 more sites, Dave, all real time 
13   which will mean anywhere in the state 24, seven you'll have 
14   centimeter level accuracy.  SC DOT is going to automate road 
15   construction, the antenna will be on the blade of the bulldozer, 
16   be driven by a geographic information system in the cab, think 
17   about ships now, and they'll actually be able to do everything 
18   but the blue stone level grading fully automatic off of this 
19   network.  So I'm thinking ships coming into Charleston Harbor 
20   are coming up the Savannah River, how we can use this same 
21   system.
22    MR. RAINEY:  Thanks.  All right, Tom, you got the last 
23   word on this.
24    MR. SKINNER:  Well -- this is Tom Skinner, this is not the 
25   last word in that sense.  This is actually something, just a 
0176
 1   random question that I was thinking of.  And Mike or Dave, I 
 2   assume a lot of the stations are connected to either bridges or 
 3   -- is that accurate?  I mean on the pil -- on -- what's -- how 
 4   do they physically -- on the port system how do they 
 5   physically.....
 6    MR. SZABADOS:  Depending on the type of sensor.  It could 
 7   be on a buoy, it could be bottom mounted -- you're talking about 
 8   water levels or currents or air gap?  Different type of sensors, 
 9   so.
10    MR. SKINNER:  Just generally.  I guess I was getting to 
11   the funding shortfall and at least in Massachusetts when there's 
12   any kind of a project there's always some -- like a highway 
13   bridge project there's always some sort of mitigation.  I was 
14   just thinking should we be thinking along the lines of -- and 
15   maybe there's a way to help trying to fund the program whenever 
16   there's a bridge reconstruction type of project.  Dave and I 
17   were talking about the importance of a partnership, if you can 
18   get the infrastructure paid for then it's a lot easier to try 
19   and theoretically anyway find some local and state partners to 
20   actually fund an expanded system.
21    MR. SZABADOS:  Actually that is some of the strategy used 
22   by the local partner.  Tampa Bay, for example, goes to the 
23   county, to the different counties for certain parts of -- and 
24   get that support for different parts of the program in -- for 
25   different purposes and the end result is the port system though.  
0177
 1   So that is a strategy being used.
 2    MR. SKINNER:  Okay.  Great, thank you.
 3    MR. RAINEY:  All right.  Well, I'd like to then have 
 4   Captain Barnum go ahead and continue and just talk about some of 
 5   the -- just sort of a follow up feedback on our -- some of our 
 6   previous recommendations then we can keep going with some of the 
 7   discussions, how they relate back to the program.
 8    CAPTAIN BARNUM:  Okay, I'm going to give a update on some 
 9   of the Hydrographic Surveys' reviews, recommendations.  First is 
10   the NOS mapping and charting contracting policy expansion 
11   strategy.  This is a question in '05.  The HS Hydrographic 
12   Surveys Review Panel was part of this process and the intent was 
13   the port was for NOS to work with the private mapping community 
14   to develop a strategy for expanding contracting with private 
15   entities to minimize duplication and take maximum advantage of 
16   private sector capabilities.
17    The Coast Survey issued a Federal Register Notice for 
18   Comments on the existing 1996 contracting policy for surveying 
19   and mapping services.  Comments were received generally 
20   supportive of the existing policy and NOAA's implementation of 
21   it with some suggestions for improvement.  The Coast Survey 
22   consulted at meetings again, such as the HSRP, factoring both 
23   panel recommendations and public comments.  The draft policy was 
24   submitted again for a second time in the Federal Register and 
25   then the -- and responses incorporated and finally published in 
0178
 1   the final policy.
 2    Next slide.  These recommendations of NOAA continued use 
 3   and mix of in house resources -- of in house resources and 
 4   contract resources for hydrographic services.  NOAA should 
 5   continue to work collaboratively with private sector and NOAA 
 6   should maintain its necessary core operational expertise.  These 
 7   are all worked into the contract policy.  And we will continue 
 8   to closely monitor costs and performance.
 9    Next slide.  Mapping and charting, again on the contract 
10   policy.  These recommendations are still a work in progress.  
11   That NOAA should use its operational expertise to define and 
12   defend resources, NOAA should complete its NOAA fleet analysis 
13   of alternatives and NOAA should determine the optimal resource 
14   allocation between in house and contracting resources.  One 
15   hydrographic program, managing NOAA's collection of hydro data 
16   using in house and the contract assets has been tagged as a NOAA 
17   major project.  So within the NOAA the NOAA hydro -- major hydro 
18   project is one of the 13 major projects which are being overseen 
19   by NOAA's senior leadership.  This entails developing a strong 
20   justification for total required program, the 100 percent 
21   requirement and the requirements PPBES process, the lingo, with 
22   the current program monthly reporting on cost schedule and 
23   performance data.  The designation as a major project requires 
24   management approval at key decision points which for the major 
25   hydro project means following a chain of steps to identify 
0179
 1   resources needed for core capability and optimal resource 
 2   allocation to get NOAA buy in on the end result.  The management 
 3   team working on the project is using a goal of 10,000 square 
 4   nautical miles each year as a desired end state.  Right now we 
 5   do about 3,000 square nautical miles.  This puts the 500 square 
 6   nautical miles of the U.S. EEZ on a 50 year resurvey cycle.  
 7    Next slide.  On the HSRP recommendation that core 
 8   hydrographic services capability should include, but is not 
 9   limited to, the technical staff with the highest level of 
10   expertise to perform and advise NOAA's in house of hydrographic, 
11   services a national system of geodetic control, water level and 
12   current monitoring stations for real time physical and 
13   oceanographic information, a National Integrated Ocean Observing 
14   System, coordinated research and development and legal and 
15   contracting staff experienced in contracting hydrographic 
16   services.  We concur with this recommendation.  It is broader 
17   than the major hydro project that I just discussed but covers 
18   all our navigation services components.  It's also important to 
19   note that the suite of observations is and will be part of the 
20   National Integrated Ocean Observation System.  
21    Next slide.  NOAA should seek additional funding for 
22   contractual services to reduce the backlog of critical and high 
23   priority hydrographic surveying needs.  From our program 
24   perspective we definitely concur with this recommendation.  Our 
25   out year budgets do include additional funding for contracts, 
0180
 1   but as you understand from this morning's discussion on PPBES 
 2   what ends up on our final budget request each year is likely not 
 3   NOAA's preferred budget.  There's several hurdles that NOAA has 
 4   to through before the final budget arrives at the Congress.  We 
 5   will continue to put our energy in increasing funds for 
 6   surveying and related activities to narrow the gap.
 7    Next slide.  Hydrographic survey cost analysis.  
 8   Insufficient funds, staffing to conduct the cost analysis as 
 9   proposed in May 2005.  The new proposal to conduct abbreviated 
10   annual cost analysis beginning in '05.  Basically the work -- 
11   the recommendation from the HSRP from 2005 was to define a 
12   detailed analysis going back to 1998, over 500 surveys to be 
13   looked at.  It turned out to be a lot bigger job than we could  
14   -- and required much more information than we could capture to 
15   come up with a comparison.  So what we are offering is to go 
16   back, we want to collect from day forward from '05 and '06 and 
17   day forward to describe 10 geographic regions, collect for data 
18   acquisition only and capture the fully loaded cost of which we 
19   can then compare and make the decision of what's the most 
20   efficient mix of in house and outsource resources.  
21    We were -- the purporting units will cost per square 
22   nautical mile and per linear mile of hydrography and will again 
23   include all direct and indirect costs.  The cost for in house 
24   surveys will include salaries and benefits including retirement 
25   for all personnel, travel, repairs, contract supplies and 
0181
 1   equipment.  Survey techniques used to conduct the survey will be 
 2   included in the data as well as general descriptions of the 
 3   project area.
 4    So we're proposing that we look at 10 different area that 
 5   capture 10 different levels of complexity that range from the 
 6   Atlantic Coast, which is generally over the north of Long 
 7   Island, generally rocky rugged; Atlantic Coast south of Long 
 8   Island, generally sandy; Gulf of Mexico, sandy sloping sea 
 9   floor; west coast, Alaska which has a variety of challenges 
10   which range from generally steep deep seafloor with somewhat 
11   protective waters to generally rocky coast and seafloor shallow 
12   areas; Cook Inlet, such as here in Alaska which is relatively 
13   shallow muddy bottom with high currents.  So looking at 10 
14   different areas around the country that can better capture the 
15   various scales and level of complexity of hydrographic surveys 
16   of which we can then compare the cost analysis.
17    Next slide.  And I'll turn it over to Dave for the IOOS.
18    MR. ZILKOSKI:  (Indiscernible - away from microphone).  
19   That's better, sorry.  There's some recommendations made about 
20   IOOS and so I'd just summarize the top -- further development, 
21   expansion of observing programs and other uses for IOOS.  But on 
22   your handout it has -- the bottom part gives the full 
23   description of it.  But NOAA supports the expansion of the 
24   relative programs and you've been hearing with Steve and Mike 
25   and myself talk about that already.  NOAA also will work with 
0182
 1   other agencies through what's called the Interagency Working 
 2   Group on Ocean Observations, better known as IWGOO.  But to 
 3   address the navigation needs there's a lot of other agencies on 
 4   there so we're trying to lead the way and work with him.  And 
 5   we'll work with Ocean.US, the National Federal of Regional 
 6   Associations as well as the individual regional associations to 
 7   augment mechanisms to obtain specific regional requirements.  
 8   There's a lot of Integrated Ocean Observing System going on and 
 9   we're trying to work with the agencies, both federal, state and 
10   local, to be able to optimize how it's used in the navigation 
11   community.
12    Next slide please.  There was another recommendation for 
13   providing sufficient funding for IOOS to support navigational 
14   needs and -- mention water levels and wind, direct speed, 
15   vertical clearances, et cetera.  We're developing a life cycle 
16   estimate for IOOS that will address the maritime operations.  
17   It's all of the societal goals, it's not just maritime but we 
18   can't look at it individually but we are looking at the entire 
19   IOOS conceptual design.  We have two contractors that we have 
20   hired to give us recommendations and -- which are due at the end 
21   of this month so the end of next month we will have a plan ahead 
22   of how we're -- and what that means in terms of the actual cost 
23   and how we would work through it.  We're also coordinating with 
24   Ocean.US and the integrated working group, ocean obs agencies 
25   also because they are part of this process.  Because IOOS is not 
0183
 1   just NOAA, IOOS is the Interagency Working Group, our 
 2   interagency set of -- group.  NOAA's IOOS plans will continue to 
 3   support the funding for critical navigation services as they 
 4   have in the past and they are mentioned and they are highlighted 
 5   whenever we get together with Ocean.US as well as the agencies.  
 6    Next slide please.  The third recommendation dealt with 
 7   development of a national IOOS development plan and supporting 
 8   NOAA as the lead agency.  NOAA has been named the lead of the 
 9   Interagency Working Group on Ocean Obs, IWGOO, so we will take 
10   that role very seriously.  We provided input into the IOOS 
11   development plan and every year or every two years that's 
12   updated so we are always working with the other agencies and the 
13   outside world to be able to get NOAA's mission through to -- 
14   needs and requirements to those which includes a lot of the 
15   navigation obviously.  Through the Interagency Working Group we 
16   will continue to coordinate with the other agencies and the fact 
17   that we have been named the lead of that group is helpful 
18   because it will allow us to be able to chair the meeting with 
19   bringing them the group -- help them with the agenda but working 
20   and moving things forward, trying to still get consensus but 
21   we're able to be able to move it forward.  That's a good thing.
22    The Senate mark, as you saw, requests -- of the programs 
23   requests some IOOS strategic plan.  That's something that once 
24   it goes to conference we're not sure where we'll stand because 
25   the House didn't say much about IOOS at all.  But we will -- 
0184
 1   inside NOAA we'll be looking for trying to do these type of 
 2   actions that the Senate's asked us to do regardless if it's 
 3   officially documented that we have to do it or not.  We're 
 4   pursuing that road anyways assuming that we're going to have to 
 5   do it but we'll -- we need to work and built a strategic plan 
 6   and implementation plan so we can move forward.
 7    And NOAA supports the funding for the IOOS systems through 
 8   our NOAA goals and program structure.  And I think you've heard 
 9   a lot from Steve on that, you've seen some stuff that Mike has 
10   put up about the programs and myself.  So we're part of the goal 
11   structure as well as part of the program structure.  All of 
12   these programs are listed and pushed through that.  And IOOS 
13   tries to highlight those issues when asked.  And in our process 
14   we will have this opportunity in the near future to discuss this 
15   with the program planning integration staff of what are -- what 
16   do we think are important in terms of IOOS.  I think that's it.  
17   Yeah.
18    MR. RAINEY:  Okay, thanks very much.  I really on -- you 
19   know, on behalf of the whole panel like to really thank you for 
20   putting that together.  I mean I think that's a wonderful chance 
21   to get feedback on our recommendations, you know, some of them 
22   as we pass them up and just to -- to know kind of how they're 
23   received and what your thoughts are regarding our advice.  Can I 
24   open it up then if folks have questions about that or if we -- 
25   any other questions or comments on that presentation?
0185
 1    Okay.  All right.  Well, let's -- what I'd like to do then 
 2   is propose we go ahead and take our break and I -- before we 
 3   break I'd like to -- we wanted to make sure we had time for 
 4   public comment and so we've scheduled several times.  If -- when 
 5   we come back if folks have some -- if anyone would like to make 
 6   some public comments we'd very much appreciate it.  We've got a 
 7   panel scheduled tomorrow and some time today.  So if you could 
 8   let me know or sign up and indicate when we reconvene then we'll 
 9   open it up if there's some public comments and then we'll keep 
10   proceeding with the meeting on some other presentations.  So 
11   let's take a -- say a 10 minute break.  Thanks.
12    (Off record at 2:37 p.m.)
13    (On record at 3:04 p.m.)
14    CAPTAIN BARNUM:  Welcome back everybody.  We're going to 
15   continue with our agenda.  Next on the list is public comment.  
16   This is the opportunity for the public to come and speak to the 
17   panel.  I ask the folks that come up to please state your name 
18   and the organization for the record.   We -- in an effort to 
19   reach out to all our constituencies we moved the location of the 
20   Hydrographic Services Review Panel to different physical or 
21   geographic locations around the country and this opportunity is 
22   for Alaska.  So, again, we're pleased to be here and look 
23   forward to hearing from -- the comments from the public.  So 
24   with that if we have any folks in the public who'd like to come 
25   forward do so at this time.
0186
 1    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  (Indiscernible - away from 
 2   microphone).
 3    CAPTAIN PAWLOWSKI:  Good day, I'm Captain Bob Pawlowski, 
 4   NOAA retired and a member of the Nautical Institute.  At this 
 5   time I'll -- today I'll be speaking on behalf of my position 
 6   with the University of Alaska, Anchorage as an adjunct professor 
 7   of hydrographic surveying and coastal measurement and analysis 
 8   in the School of Engineering.  And I would like to talk about 
 9   hydrographic surveying and the importance of having an Alaska 
10   based education program in training hands for going into the 
11   hydrographic surveying industry.
12    It was really nice to see John Rayfield make his comments.  
13   I was the navigation advisor up here in '96 to '99 during the 
14   time when the Hydrographic Services Improvement Act came 
15   through.  And one of the things John looked out as well as Don 
16   Young's special assistant, Bill Sharrow, and said and we are 
17   going to train Alaskans.  And to that end John Oswald and Tom 
18   Newman and Larry and myself and Orson Smith over at the 
19   University all got together and we created a one semester 
20   program to try to simply develop hands that we could put 
21   through.  It's a -- was a 490 level course, it's continued on.  
22   But what it -- it was also joined as I retired out and became 
23   the senior instructor or the professor of record, was also 
24   joined on by Doug Baird, Commander Baird, and by Jennifer 
25   Dowling in bringing in the continuation of what NOAA was doing 
0187
 1   both in the hydrographic side but also in the geodetic control 
 2   side.  It was also -- the last part was also joined in 
 3   throughout -- with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Andrew 
 4   Brewer, to bring in specifically the cost estimating side and 
 5   the understanding of what is in chapter 22 of the hydro 
 6   engineering manual, Brooks Act, IDIQ, all of these details that 
 7   are fundamental in training people to go and work in the 
 8   hydrographic field.  
 9    As the members of the panel can appreciate, the demands 
10   for hydrography and hydrographic surveying and hydrographic 
11   services in Alaska Range from coastal construction and erosion 
12   mitigation through navigation projects and nautical charting to 
13   surveying the seabed for marine habitat, habitat areas, 
14   particular concern marine protected areas, et cetera, lots of 
15   stuff in line.  What we try to do in this course is simply 
16   provide the students with an online, in class lectures and field 
17   opportunities so they really understand what the language is, 
18   the terminology, what the expectations are and, more 
19   importantly, what information is already available online so 
20   they can pre-plan a survey.  This is where a lot of advancements 
21   has come up with ENC's, putting digital datasets whether they're 
22   through the Corps of Engineers, whether they're through NOAA and 
23   NODC, local community as-built or digital ortho photoquads, road 
24   diagrams.  It enables them to bring it all together and pre-
25   assess what the area looks like as a survey and what the present 
0188
 1   condition of the survey is.  Modern geomantics tools and GIS 
 2   tools allow them to spin it, to do cross sections, et cetera.  
 3   But the important thing is it takes them on one side through 
 4   data mining so they understand a survey but on the other side it 
 5   takes them into actually knowing the terminology, the standards, 
 6   quality control and total propagated error.  
 7    I wanted to really follow on what John Rayfield said on 
 8   the importance of bringing the Corps of Engineers together with 
 9   NOAA, with IHO, trying to -- and USGS, trying to get one setup 
10   here.  A student taking a serious look at hydro is going to pull 
11   down about 350 megs of PDF's and manuals.  When -- this here I'm 
12   expanding it up to add the IHO manual 13 but when you take the 
13   Army Corps of Engineers hydro engineering manual, you want to go 
14   into special sides off of that you can add the coastal 
15   engineering manual, you take all of the stuff that is available 
16   and critical control and for GPS and controls stations comes in, 
17   when you bring in tides and all of the tide modeling and data, 
18   you bring in the practical chart, you start really putting into 
19   a lot of information out there.  When you teach the students you 
20   realize you take them from fresh water, seasonal levels through 
21   locks, very tight centimeter construction level surveying down 
22   into the coastal plus or minus five meters plus five percent, 
23   bring them throughout the different standards.  It's a whole 
24   progression that they have to learn how to quality control it.  
25   Any steps that can go to bring a consistency between the 
0189
 1   different agencies is going to help us who are training students 
 2   to try to bring them out in the field so when they go to NOAA to 
 3   do hydrography they understand NOAA, when they go to the Corps 
 4   of Engineers to do hydrography they understand there may be a 
 5   totally different set of standards, particularly in 
 6   construction.
 7    I asked the HSRP to actually look at opportunities to -- 
 8   for further collaboration between the University of Alaska and 
 9   its schools and the different schools teaching hydrography or 
10   having research projects available in hydrographic surveying and 
11   hydrographic services.  I presently work for a nonprofit 
12   foundation so I look at the NOAA grants in detail.  I can assure 
13   you that there was almost nothing available in preparing 
14   hydrographers to work in the field through training under the 
15   present grants program, something that would be very helpful and 
16   it's very difficult for a small university to start up a 
17   program, but is doing it.  We have -- because of affiliations 
18   with the industry we have a very good survey lab that Trimble 
19   has supported.  We branched in and have a photogrammetry lab 
20   that aerometric has supported.  We turn around and I'm asking to 
21   look and see what we can do to build up a hydrographic services 
22   lab that would be conjunction between the industry that's 
23   addressing the backlog up here and NOAA as an opportunity.
24    That's basically it for looking at the University.  I want 
25   to follow on, as a last part, I also serve as an advisor to the 
0190
 1   maritime and fishery program at the Alaska Vocational Technical 
 2   Center.  The program offers U.S. Coast Guard licensing and on 
 3   behalf of the Department of Labor.  In Seward they have a four 
 4   pilot house full mission marine simulator ranging from the 
 5   ability to have bridge resource management to multiple person 
 6   pilot house to single person pilot houses, various sizes.  This 
 7   kind of test bed is available to do the challenges and meet the 
 8   challenges that Bill Gray was talking about in working with 
 9   ENC's, working with ECDIS and bringing it together.  I think 
10   it's very important as we look at licensing mariners and being a 
11   master myself I really appreciate having the ability to put 
12   people using the modern technologies in a stressful situation 
13   and seeing how they react when they are in charge of a bridge 
14   watch, when they have the house to themselves, et cetera.  One 
15   pilot house will give you a very good simulation of how to work 
16   with the tools.  Four pilot houses interacting will give you a 
17   very good example of what is the confusing facts that are going 
18   on with the systems.  I share it because as a member of the 
19   Nautical Institute if you go through seaways you will see there 
20   is a constant question going on of how as a master can I insure 
21   that the people know what are these new tools and what are the 
22   positives about them and what are the negatives about them.
23    So with that I thank you for coming to Alaska.  I 
24   appreciate your efforts in understanding not just what we need 
25   in hydrographic services but also how we can -- what we really 
0191
 1   need in getting the hands into this field that up until a decade 
 2   ago was a very, very narrow field of job opportunities.  It's 
 3   greatly improved and it's greatly improved because of the 
 4   Hydrographic Services Act, it's greatly improved because of the 
 5   industry and the public represented here.  If I can answer any 
 6   questions.  Thank you.
 7    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Adam McBride.
 8    MR. MCBRIDE:  Thank you.  I just have a question 
 9   concerning -- and Andy, you probably know this as well, but 
10   where can students in the United States take a course in 
11   hydrographic services, where would one undertake that course of 
12   study?
13    CAPTAIN PAWLOWSKI:  You can take a full course of study 
14   down in the University of Southern Mississippi, I believe 
15   Florida Institute has.....
16    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Not a full course.
17    CAPTAIN PAWLOWSKI:  Not a full course.  I know of very few 
18   courses in it.  I have worked very hard to just try to pull it 
19   into a one semester which is welcome to a fire hose.  You know, 
20   but I mean that's just kind of part of it.  But they at least 
21   leave knowing where the technical manuals are and the questions 
22   they should be asking when they go into the field.  So.....
23    MR. MCBRIDE:  Well, then perhaps I could ask Larry.  I 
24   mean from the private sector point of view where do you find the 
25   folks that -- I mean is this all OJT that teaches you the job?
0192
 1    MR. WHITING:  I think that's probably where we all learned 
 2   it.  I used a lot of those students and I think that Tom and - 
 3   or TerraSond still use a lot of the students that are going 
 4   through this course.  There's -- probably the backbone of our 
 5   surveyors have gone through that course now.  And it helps but 
 6   it's only a start, they -- and it's OJT, you know, like he said.  
 7   And I don't know if the University of New Brunswick has a 
 8   complete course, I don't know.  Some of the gals -- one of the 
 9   gals that worked for us for awhile went on to England to get her 
10   masters degree in hydrography.  So it starts there but it sure 
11   doesn't end there.
12    MR. OSWALD:  I'll just -- a point of contact from -- point 
13   of reference from the private sector.  We've been hiring people 
14   out of the -- there's two universities in this town, private 
15   university APU.  I've had a very successful employee from there 
16   with a natural science, they've basically got the science part 
17   and they did the on the job training, got excited, he's headed 
18   to Andy's shop here this week to pursue a masters in ocean 
19   mapping.  I'm actually going to branch out instead of recruiting 
20   from surveying schools and the natural science, start looking at 
21   the broader picture, the oceanography institutes in this 
22   country.  So that's what -- there is no core, you don't get a 
23   hydrographic surveying undergraduate degree in this -- other 
24   countries you do.
25    CAPTAIN ARMSTRONG:  Yeah, Andy Armstrong.  I just -- just 
0193
 1   for a summary of the training that's available.  As Bob said, 
 2   the University of Southern Mississippi has a masters degree 
 3   program in hydrographic sciences.  University of New Hampshire 
 4   has a master program in ocean mapping which is essentially the 
 5   same thing, just different names.  Bob has the course in -- at 
 6   University of Alaska here, there are a couple courses at Florida 
 7   Institute of Technology and that's it in the United States.  The 
 8   University of New Brunswick in Canada and -- there's a -- 
 9   there's some vocational training in Quebec but there's very 
10   little and really none at the undergraduate level.  
11    CAPTAIN HICKMAN:  (Indiscernible - away from microphone).
12    MR. PAWLOWSKI:  The simulator is down in Seward at the 
13   Alaska Vocational Technical Center.  And it's under the 
14   Department of Labor.
15    MR. DASLER:  Bob, I just -- I think it's great that you 
16   guys were able to get a program started up here.  I mean as -- I 
17   guess it's quite obvious that there's a real need in the United 
18   States for programs like this and getting an undergraduate 
19   program going.  And I think whatever the Hydrographic Services 
20   Review Panel can do to help support this.  I mean even NOAA too, 
21   I mean a lot of their people it's on the job training, get them 
22   out of the sciences programs and that kind of thing.  But 
23   there's a real need in the nation for programs like that and 
24   support of those kind of programs and I think we'll do what we 
25   can to offer the support to get a program like that running.  I 
0194
 1   think you're going to be hard pressed though to try to get all 
 2   of the agencies to agree on levels of accuracies and that kind 
 3   of thing and then they're probably going to have to keep 
 4   drinking from the hose.
 5    MR. PAWLOWSKI:  Well, but it's nice the agencies -- thank 
 6   you, Jon.  It's nice the agencies have stepped forward to at 
 7   least put all their standards online, all their technical 
 8   manuals online, it's very easy for -- to lead the students 
 9   through.  As for support, we really appreciated the opportunity 
10   to meet with Captain Barnum and Commander Glang and Jerry Mills 
11   on Friday in D.C. to specifically talk about what was going on 
12   and what were some of the softwares and other things that are 
13   needed to keep a successful course because this is a growing 
14   industry, we want to see hands go into it and we want to see 
15   hands come out of the course and go through Jon's work, to go to 
16   Andy's school and to see them go into Larry's shop to go out in 
17   the field, to come -- as TJ does to come back to my class to 
18   teach cerus.  These are all interactive things that are the 
19   ground breaking stuff.  Thank you very much.
20    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Thank you.  
21    MS. LAHAY (PH):  Hello, Jonna LaHay (ph) with Fugro 
22   Palagros (ph).  As we're speaking about education one thing that 
23   I did want to bring up is that the hydrographic -- I'm here 
24   representing myself and also the Hydrographic Society of 
25   America.  I'm the student outreach coordinator for that society 
0195
 1   and in 2003 we began an outreach to undergraduate students to 
 2   educate them about hydrography, the field.  We bring students to 
 3   the annual con -- well, biannual conference and what we do is we 
 4   set them up with a conference registration and we provide 
 5   housing for them.  The University of New Hampshire and 
 6   University of Southern Mississippi sponsor a student luncheon 
 7   where they learn about hydrography, the basics of hydrography, 
 8   just a general overview.  They learn about opportunities for 
 9   employment with NOAA, with the U.S. Corps -- Army Corps of 
10   Engineers and with NAVO and they also learn about -- they're 
11   able to interact with some corporate sponsors that we have.  And 
12   this is something that we've done -- we did it -- 2003 we had 
13   three students, we did it again in 2005 and had 10 students and 
14   we're planning on doing it again in 2007.  It's something that 
15   the Hydrographic Society of America has supported and it's 
16   something that we plan on continuing to pursue to involve 
17   students who are in geodetics and geomatics and surveying and 
18   engineering.  Because like they said, there aren't any 
19   hydrography education programs in the undergraduate level so 
20   we're trying to reach out to let students know that there are 
21   opportunities out there, this is a field that you can get a job 
22   in and it's a very exciting field.  And that's just basically 
23   what I wanted to say since we were discussing education.
24    MR. RAINEY:  Any questions?  
25    MS. LAHAY (PH):  Thank you.
0196
 1    MR. RAINEY:  Thanks for that.  We had a opportunity to 
 2   meet in San Diego, kind of a piggyback in conjunction with that, 
 3   and I -- and Jon, is that -- we had some discussions in San 
 4   Diego.  Aren't you working on -- is what you're involved with in 
 5   some of the certification and things, is that through HSOA 
 6   or.....
 7    MR. DASLER:  Yeah.  Well, ACSM has a program for 
 8   certifying.....
 9    MR. RAINEY:  Okay.
10    MR. DASLER:  .....hydrographers but it's still not an 
11   education process.  They have like some seminars and there's 
12   some education, some of the funding comes from the Hydrographic 
13   Society of America.  But the need for the education is -- I mean 
14   it's -- a lot of the people -- I mean we've hired people out of 
15   geomatics kind of the same -- like John was talking about, you 
16   have to get them out of geomatics programs or out of University 
17   of New Brunswick.  I mean it's just really hard to find anybody.  
18   And the ACSM program is really trying to -- is more just for 
19   certification and not education.  But there's just a really 
20   strong need for that in the U.S.
21    MR. RAINEY:  Okay, thanks.  
22    MR. VOSE:  Good afternoon, my name is Larry Vose, I'm with 
23   the Southeast Alaska Pilots Association, one of 41 pilots 
24   working down in Southeast.  And I just wanted to take a couple 
25   minutes, number one, to say how much we really appreciate the 
0197
 1   end products that are put out by all the folks that are involved 
 2   here.  Number one, we use them daily, we rely on them daily, we 
 3   don't take them for granted and -- so, number one, just to say 
 4   thank you for that.  Number two, I wanted to echo the sentiments 
 5   that were being discussed with regards to the ENC's, 
 6   particularly with the training issues and not getting too far 
 7   ahead of ourselves and rolling those things out.  I see it every 
 8   day with the technology on the ships and the lack of 
 9   understanding of how some of that technology works.  And 
10   inevitably the law of unattended consequences and how it leads 
11   to technology, assisted accidents and near misses and so forth.  
12   And so I just wanted to take this moment to really echo that -- 
13   the opinions that were expressed earlier.  The Southeast Alaska 
14   Pilots, we moved about 35 million gross tons of passenger 
15   shipping last year in Southeast over about 291,000 miles of 
16   southeast waterway in addition to the over a million gross tons 
17   of cargo and we -- our primary business is the cruise lines and 
18   increasingly we see a higher turnover of personnel in that 
19   industry and with that then comes an additional training 
20   requirement and there is a huge reliance on technology in -- not 
21   to pick on that industry, but increasingly with the shipping 
22   industry and these electronic charts are just one more aspect of 
23   that that I think we have to be careful about.  And if the Coast 
24   Guard is going to mandate carriage requirements I think maybe 
25   also we ought to look at requiring the Coast Guard to mandate 
0198
 1   requirements within the licensing process as well.  Having been 
 2   a former owner of a marine training and education business and 
 3   taught Coast Guard licensing I used to always say that if the 
 4   Coast Guard was regulating interstate trucking the first thing 
 5   they'd have you do is shoe a horse, you know, to get back to the 
 6   basics.  And it's progressed some but -- and I'm also retired 
 7   Coast Guard, so it's fair for me to say that, maybe.  But it is 
 8   important that we not let this get too far ahead of itself and I 
 9   guess that was my primary point that I've probably beaten to 
10   death.
11    Other than that we have some priorities in Southeast for 
12   current analysis and charting and so forth that we'll -- we will 
13   coordinate through Dave ZeZula up here in Anchorage and also 
14   with a waterway forum that we have in Southeast called the 
15   Marine Safety Taskforce of which NOAA is a participant and it 
16   works very well.  Other than that I won't be able to attend 
17   tomorrow because I'm flying down to Ketchikan for a 2:45 a.m. 
18   pilot boat to get on the Norwegian Wind.  So other than that, 
19   unless you have any questions.  Thank you.
20    MR. RAINEY:  Thank you.  Anyone else?  Okay.  There'll be 
21   an additional opportunity at 5:00 o'clock for public comment and 
22   than again tomorrow.  With that turn.....
23    CAPTAIN BARNUM:  Just -- also just so -- I think 
24   everybody's aware also but even before the meeting we got 
25   written comments submitted by Tenix and so -- just so 
0199
 1   everybody's aware of that and that's in our materials so I just 
 2   wanted to make -- acknowledge that, received that as well.
 3    MR. RAINEY:  Dave, if we can then we'll toss the baton to 
 4   you.
 5    MR. ZILKOSKI:  Okay.  Yeah, thanks.  What we'll do now is 
 6   I'll run through a series of -- give me the next slide, slides 
 7   to talk a little bit about what the National Geodetic Survey 
 8   does.  I think that around the table and the room that the 
 9   people have some idea about it but I think there's a lot of 
10   things that -- little things that may come out that may be 
11   helpful in your report finding and why the discussions earlier 
12   today I might say that I think geodesy plays a role as the 
13   foundation through a lot of the navigation community and maybe 
14   this will help this or at least will allow you to be able to ask 
15   me questions of what I mean maybe not today but down the road.  
16   Because I'm really trying to get the Review Panel to be able to 
17   help me move forward to show what geodesy should be doing as a 
18   program.  
19    I'm going to touch on precise positioning and then talk a 
20   little bit about timely height information and I distinguished 
21   the two of those and that's normally not really looked at 
22   positioning.  Height is a position but most people don't see it 
23   that way.  But it's a three dimensional -- when we talk about 
24   precise positioning today people don't associate the height with 
25   it.  So I'm going to talk a little bit about why that is.  
0200
 1    We talked about our shoreline which you probably are 
 2   familiar with and know very well.  Some emerging technologies 
 3   that we are pursuing and have pursued in the past and where I 
 4   don't see -- you know, there was -- we tried to get the 
 5   navigation community engaged in some of these new technologies 
 6   and we didn't receive any and I'm not sure it should be pursued 
 7   or not.  So some guidance that you may want to give down and 
 8   maybe some future challenges.
 9    Next one.  This is a little slide about a person with GPS 
10   in a car and there's a big -- in case you can't see it there's a 
11   big truck coming.  Says that the -- yep, got my cell phone, my 
12   pager, my internet link, my wireless fax and thanks to this 
13   nifty satellite navigating system I know precisely where I am at 
14   all times and he's about to get run over by a truck.  Geodesy is 
15   about knowing where you are but you have to know where other 
16   things are around you safely and efficiently.  That's how you 
17   come together so we provide that foundation.  And there was 
18   something else that Steve put in there originally, it says make 
19   appropriate decisions for safe, secure, efficient and 
20   environmentally sound transportation network.  And this is more 
21   than just shipping, it's about the land, air and sea.  But 
22   geodesy is about providing that framework so that you know where 
23   you are but also where other things are around you so you can 
24   relate them.
25    Next one please.  I talked a little bit about our CORS and 
0201
 1   you've already seen it earlier on and that we're up to the 900 
 2   and some CORS and the way Lou said, we're adding more, we'll be 
 3   up to 1,000 pretty shortly.  And this is a cooperative program 
 4   that it's critical to both land and ocean observing systems and 
 5   we -- it's a partnership program that I believe is a good model 
 6   for other people to look at for trying to obtain good partners, 
 7   good support in building a system that's not totally federally 
 8   owned or operated but it is managed by us and it's a partnership 
 9   and we give some service and then the local entities give some 
10   service and then the total between the two is greater than what 
11   we individually could have done.  So it's really building great 
12   synergies.  And it's more than just positioning, it does -- as I 
13   mentioned earlier, it's useful to the weather people about 
14   atmospheric water vapor and is improving the weather 
15   predictions.  We're talking about putting GPS CORS out on oil 
16   platforms in the Gulf so that they're able to get better 
17   information about the water vapor that goes on prior to 
18   hurricanes to help in their reporting of their track.  They know 
19   where the -- the hurricane's coming, they know the strength and 
20   they -- a lot of that stuff has to do with the water temperature 
21   and so forth.  But the actual track of it is they can improve 
22   the process and GPS is going to allow us to do that.  
23    Next one please.  We have listened to our partners, they  
24   -- we built the system of GPS CORS which we collect the data.  
25   We put it down -- out on the web and had people that could turn 
0202
 1   around and process the data and we had guidelines and procedures 
 2   and manuals and we've created a lot of them and I'm sure we're 
 3   part of what Bob was talking about of all those gigabytes of 
 4   standards.  And we have our unique set of high accuracy 
 5   standards.  But we also did something we called an online 
 6   positioning user service.  We had people that were using the 
 7   data and not really tying to our network the proper way, they 
 8   were producing coordinates that were inconsistent with the 
 9   surrounding coordinates because they didn't fully understand 
10   what it was about.  So they talked to us to say that, well, if 
11   we give you our data can you compute a coordinate.  So we 
12   automated the process and allowed them to go off and they 
13   collect the information, sit at a station, provide us some 
14   metadata, submit it through the internet and then they get back 
15   an e-mail with their values and it's consistent and if two 
16   people do it near each other they will at least be consistent.  
17   So that's we called our OPUS.  
18    Next one please.  Height information.  OPUS does give you 
19   a latitude and longitude and a height, it actually gives you a 
20   couple heights.  Gives you an ellipse side height and a 
21   orthometric height.  And most people when they talk about height 
22   information are talking about which way water will flow or the 
23   depths of it and they want the -- want everything, the systems 
24   in orthometric height.  Now we do and have in the past provided 
25   information about -- from a navigation air gap information, 
0203
 1   positioning of bridges, under keel clearance, actual accurate 
 2   docking charts such that you're able to as long as you're in the 
 3   same system dock a vehicle through -- a ship through the fog and 
 4   as long as you know where other things are around you and so 
 5   forth.  So these are some of the activities that we've brought 
 6   to -- talking about safe navigation and it's just part of our 
 7   process.
 8    Next one please.  The other aspect of that is just right 
 9   after the land you have coastal inundation and you've got 
10   evacuations and this is something that we were working in 
11   Louisiana.  And by the way, we were doing this prior to Katrina 
12   and Rita.  We actually -- we're in building our process several 
13   years prior to the hurricanes coming in so that when they did we 
14   actually had a framework in place and some evacuation routes 
15   already computed six months -- actually it started a year, but 
16   six months prior to the hurricane coming.  It wasn't complete in 
17   terms of the process of the education but we did have in place 
18   what the evacuation, what the subsidence rates, what was going 
19   on.  So anybody that was down in the southern part on the 
20   southeast of Louisiana knew exactly what -- when they started 
21   talking about those storm surge and the values, the locals knew 
22   that this was trouble and they knew that they were going to be 
23   inundated and they knew when to get out.  Now, Hurricane Katrina 
24   and Rita, when you have huge storm surge it doesn't really make 
25   much difference of a few centimeters or even a foot.  It was 
0204
 1   going to have this kind of activity going on anyways.  But the 
 2   key is in normal times even storms in places like southern 
 3   Louisiana and at the ports having very accurate elevation models 
 4   relative to the local bathometry as well as the topography.  
 5   Being able to bring that together is critical from both the 
 6   shipping industry but probably more important to the coastal 
 7   managers and I think that's where the bridge is.  You heard the 
 8   term Vdatum, that's a vertical datum transformation program 
 9   where we try to make it as simple for people to be able to take 
10   one set of data, put it into this program and out comes the 
11   other set of data in the format that they need it.  Once again, 
12   making sure that people were working consistently.  But geodesy 
13   besides bringing the height component to the shipping industry 
14   talks about flood plain mapping, subsidence, hazard mitigation, 
15   evacuation planning and if you co-locate GPS at tide gauges you 
16   can actually start measuring what sea level rise is really 
17   doing, measuring the effect.  It can't tell you why it's doing 
18   it.  It can tell you though based on those tide gauges if it's 
19   rising or settling.  And by the way, in Alaska because you have 
20   uplift you actually have the sea level going down in places 
21   here.  It is not rising in Alaska.  Now, does that mean the sea 
22   level is not -- the water level is not really rising in Alaska?  
23   I think if it's rising anywhere it's rising everywhere.  The 
24   question is though you got the land uplifting in Alaska so it 
25   looks like it's not rising.  It's uplifting faster than the 
0205
 1   water is rising.  The point is that what geodesy brings is a way 
 2   to measure that value.
 3    Next one.  Vdatum, this is where you really take, as it 
 4   says, disparate data and GIS and other applications and bring 
 5   them together.  You have a lot of people that deal with water 
 6   level information and they have that in -- all their data and 
 7   water level information.  You have other people that deal with 
 8   geodetic vertical datums, North American vertical datum of 1988.  
 9   This program allows you to in certain areas that when you build 
10   the models to be able to input NAVD88 heights and get water 
11   level information out and put water level information and 
12   NAVD88.  So as long as you know what your data are and how they 
13   are referenced you're able to translate it into some other 
14   reference.  Once again, consistencies, trying to keep people on 
15   the same page, making thing mesh together, integrating.  This is 
16   -- making things interoperable so that they can be truly 
17   integrated later on.  Geodesy brings that.
18    Next one please.  The shoreline, you've heard a lot about 
19   that in the past and you've seen some of it here in pictures and 
20   we did a lot in terms of the hurricane response and I talked 
21   about our status earlier.  But that is our mission and it is in 
22   NGS and Mike Aslaskan is in charge of it and he's back of the 
23   room, if you have some specific questions you can talk to Mike 
24   later on about this.  But we are -- we're looking at the 
25   changes.  The shoreline's constantly changing and ports and 
0206
 1   harbors are always changing.  You know that more than most 
 2   people.  So our program is trying to how can we efficiently and 
 3   effectively do that, trying to develop new tools, trying to be 
 4   able to keep up with what the rest of the hydrographic survey 
 5   community is doing.  You have a backlog survey that you're 
 6   funding and putting in and trying to really create in a very 
 7   timely manner.  Well, shoreline should be part of that and I 
 8   think that there's a -- the committee should be looking at how 
 9   do I really think when I think about separating shoreline and 
10   the hydrographic survey backlog.  In your backlog -- you got a 
11   shoreline imagery backlog too but it's never mentioned and it's 
12   hard to link them together.  So I think there may be something 
13   there that you may want to look at and try to pursue, the actual 
14   inequalities of trying to say, well, I'm just going to collect 
15   the hydrographic survey information.  Well, if you don't collect 
16   the rest of the information are you really got a good product.  
17   So you look at it from an end to end.  And I understand the 
18   backlog of -- the survey backlog is important and it has a lot 
19   of needs and the private sector is producing it but the 
20   shoreline aspect of it should also be considered.
21    Next one please.  Now there's a lot of -- this chart's 
22   hard to read but there's a lot of different values when you do 
23   the shoreline.  It was mentioned earlier that different federal 
24   agencies have different use of shorelines, I think John might 
25   have mentioned it.  There are reasons for everybody having their 
0207
 1   value of what they call a shoreline.  I think the Vdatum tool is 
 2   probably the answer to being able to relate those two -- those 
 3   datums and infor -- or not those datums but those relationships 
 4   between those different shorelines.  One is a national shore, 
 5   recognized.  Other ones like on the USGS chart which is the zero 
 6   line for either the vertical datum, the NGBD or the vertical -- 
 7   other vertical NAVD88, but there's a relationship between what 
 8   the USGS contour is that they call zero and our official 
 9   shoreline that comes out that's on the chart as well as when 
10   someone else does and use a chart.  There's a relationship and 
11   that's what Vdatum brings.  But each agency has their reason and 
12   their reference for what they were using it for.  And each state 
13   has their relationship to some of those, some of it's to the 
14   shoreline, maybe some of it's to the mean lower water, mean high 
15   water, they all have their reference.  And I think the thing we 
16   should focus on is how we make sure that they're related, are 
17   they interoperable, are they integrated and do you make the 
18   tool, like Vdatum, that allows you to be able to say I have this 
19   shoreline value for what it is and I want to get out this other 
20   value from it and you pump -- what you pump in you get out and 
21   you can ask that question.  If we can do that then these federal 
22   agencies have certain missions that they are responsible for and 
23   they can continue meeting their missions but then we can 
24   integrate their activities with ours.  And we have been, USGS 
25   before they would have ever put a value on their contour maps 
0208
 1   used our control to be able to relate them to them, as well as 
 2   using ours.  So we know the relationships, we just have to put 
 3   it into a system like Vdatum.
 4    Next one please.  We put out what we call a shoreline data 
 5   explorer because there are many different accuracies of 
 6   shoreline, different values, different levels.  This data shore 
 7   explorer is trying to provide with metadata all of these 
 8   different shorelines that we have, where they are and how useful 
 9   they are.  In some places there's more up to date information 
10   that may not be as accurate but it is just as good because it's 
11   more up to date.  We're trying to put a web tool to be able to 
12   put out to the users so they're able to download the 
13   information, mix the information if they want to.  Some -- a 
14   tool probably most useful to a lot of the coastal managers that 
15   are out there trying to build a product so that's something else 
16   we were trying to put together.
17    Next one please.  You've already heard about this, we do 
18   meet with the top priority port areas and the ranking factors 
19   are the cargo tonnage, commercial fishing and military ports.  
20   It's based on what the Coast Survey and you heard about that 
21   earlier.  
22    Next one.  We use satellite information, we use many 
23   different tools to be able to -- to try to determine where do we 
24   need to do the change.  There is so much shoreline out there, 
25   there are so many places that need to be updated with so many 
0209
 1   limited resources that we try to utilize as much information as 
 2   we can and in some cases commercial satellite information will 
 3   permit us to update a chart without even going in there with 
 4   more detail and we do it.  Other times it tells us where we 
 5   really do need to focus and then we do a special mission with a 
 6   certain -- either with our own photography or with LIDAR to be 
 7   able to create the map.  But it allows us to look at these and 
 8   try to prioritize them in the most efficient manner that we can 
 9   because we do have limited resources.
10    Next one please.  This is just one example of using the 
11   high resolution from IKONOS to show in -- the changing things in 
12   Portland, Oregon and so forth, but just one of the ways we do 
13   it.
14    Next one.  This -- in December of 1996, and actually I was 
15   personally involved in this project.  We were trying to start 
16   with using the GPS for positioning in their height component and 
17   we worked with the Coast Guard on one of their buoy tenders in 
18   some of industry and we positioned this ship, we put GPS on the 
19   ship to -- proof of concept of showing that we could actually 
20   position a ship to better than 10 centimeters and that's to the 
21   keel.  We knew where that ship was relative to the bottom of the 
22   channel to about 10 centimeters.  As it pitched and rolled and 
23   moved we knew it, everything -- we could do that with the thing.  
24   Now that required not one receiver, it required -- we had put 
25   four on there, we didn't need four, we had redundancy.  But we 
0210
 1   did this test back in there just to be able to show that we 
 2   could do it, to learn from it, to try to prove the concept and 
 3   to work with other industry to find out what they would like us 
 4   to do.  We actually worked with some container ships to put 
 5   (indiscernible) container and from Long Beach up to Oakland 
 6   positioned a ship in and out of both of the harbors and showed 
 7   how it would work and that we could do this.  And then it was -- 
 8   did not get picked up and really be -- want to be pursued by 
 9   anybody so we have continued our kinematic positioning and so 
10   forth but more focused in the air and on land because the 
11   shipping industry was not as interested in it.
12    Next slide please.   At the same time that we were doing 
13   it from the positioning of the ship saying we could do this from 
14   the under keel clearance perspective as well as its location of 
15   knowing itself to 10 centimeters, we also showed that we could 
16   do docking charts to that same level so that they could be 
17   married together and that you could actually take a ship, come 
18   in and dock it to that 10 centimeter level that if you needed 
19   to, but more important that you would be able to gain some 
20   efficiencies about coming in and out of the harbor.  So we've 
21   demonstrated that.
22    Next one.  Vertical currencies and GPS, we positioned 
23   bridges and using GPS as long as -- as well as with air gap 
24   technology, working with CO-OPS, Mike's group, and did this, 
25   once again, several years ago, trying to show that you could use 
0211
 1   GPS to be able to accurately position some of these bridges.  
 2   And this bridge is -- was in South Carolina, the Cooper River 
 3   bridge, this was the newer bridge, we positioned the older one, 
 4   and it was a discussion about the bridge -- a ship hit the 
 5   bridge and they said that they thought that the -- it was marked 
 6   on the chart wrong and so they came in and wanted to make sure 
 7   that it was.  And so we showed that it wasn't but we also showed 
 8   how you could use new technology at a much faster, cheaper, 
 9   better and be able to bring it in.
10    Next one.  GPS on buoys.  We have been installing GPS on 
11   buoys for awhile and demonstration projects in San Francisco, we 
12   had it running for a long time measuring it with the water 
13   levels and integrating it into our system of working, once 
14   again, of trying to understand the needs and where and what 
15   people wanted.  Buoys get hit as you well know and so many times 
16   as a buoy gets hit and bounced around some of our equipment gets 
17   lost and we actually still have an antenna at the bottom of 
18   Chesapeake Bay but it's probably cheaper just to buy another one 
19   than to keep trying to figure out how to harden some of these 
20   things because they're relatively cheap.  But this is something 
21   that we're -- we believe has some merit and can be very useful 
22   in using it and we're trying to pursue it and looking for 
23   guidance on what people would think.  I was just recently -- I 
24   guess it was a week and a half ago now, I was at NOAA's NDBC 
25   shop at Stennis looking at a lot of their buoys and what they 
0212
 1   have and tsunami buoys as well as some of their other buoys they 
 2   have out in the Pacific and out on the equator and the tropics, 
 3   looking at, well, what -- how can we outfit and look at it from 
 4   a positioning standpoint and waves.  It's not just GPS you put 
 5   on these things, there are other instruments, tilt meters and so 
 6   forth, that you put on to be able to give you waves out there, 
 7   to give you information about -- potentially information about 
 8   surface currents.  If you integrate several buoys and they're 
 9   moving across your harbor and they're moving in different 
10   directions.  You can get information about what the currents 
11   happening -- coming in and out of a harbor.  Obviously they 
12   don't do much about the subsurface ways but first -- you could 
13   potentially incorporate the GPS buoy with some other devices on 
14   the bottom.
15    Next one please.  We did develop what we call a shallow 
16   water positioning system and been working with -- in Florida 
17   where we've done the same type of idea.  It's basically starting 
18   with a GPS buoy if you will, it's sitting on a floating platform 
19   and it now can be hooked up to a boat where it actually 
20   positions the bottom of wherever you're looking in the coral 
21   reefs and sea grass they're -- you're looking at -- and damage 
22   assessments, they're looking at being able to determine exactly 
23   what has happened in an area and we can do the same thing as 
24   positioning a ship and a keel to 10 centimeters, we're doing the 
25   same thing for people looking at the bottom of an estuary to 
0213
 1   really find out what's happening, how fast is this sea grass 
 2   growing.  Or if Carl -- if something happened, is it dying, we 
 3   can look at it, you can go back to the same place and be able to 
 4   determine it.  And if a ship does some damage are you able to go 
 5   back in and really from a standpoint of damage assessment you 
 6   determine what the damage was before and after.  So we've been 
 7   working with a lot of people dealing with the positioning and we 
 8   are trying to look at how do we actually do positioning 
 9   underwater where we're on the surface but being able to take and 
10   extrapolate down below the surface and we're looking at that.
11    As part of our shoreline analysis and trying to find out 
12   what elevations are relative to the land, sea interface, we 
13   developed a dune buggy equipped GPS to be able to work with our 
14   LIDAR system as well as satellites to be able to incorporate 
15   them much more quickly.  It's cheaper to run along a beach on a 
16   dune buggy than it is to do a full blown survey if you can -- 
17   you can then take the other data and bring them together and 
18   integrate them.
19    Next one.  Linking technology and leveraging the resources 
20   we mentioned.  I mentioned about co-locating CORS, GPS CORS with 
21   the water level stations helps with subsidence and does with sea 
22   level rise, gives us a better understanding of what's happening 
23   in the area let alone the positioning aspects of it from there.  
24   But that's something that we are pursuing.
25    Next one.  I mentioned it already, the subsidence.  It's a 
0214
 1   very small amount but along the coast if something's moving at 
 2   one or two millimeters a year it's very critical to a coastal 
 3   area that only has a few centimeters elevation prior to the 
 4   water coming in.  And measuring something to a millimeter to a 
 5   year is not that easy, it takes time, it's difficult, a very 
 6   small number.  So you have to use something that's very, very 
 7   accurate and you need to look at it from a long term 
 8   perspective.  It's not something you just go out and do today 
 9   and then come back a few years later and do it again.  It's 
10   something you commit to, put the infrastructure in, looking at 
11   saying that 10 years from now I'm going to be able to tell you 
12   what that sea will rise, ground subsidence is or that uplift 
13   relative to around the coast so that you can really tell what 
14   the water level is doing.  It's a long term looking at it and 
15   geodesy is one of the ways you can do that.
16    Next one please.  We have been shaping the way NGS does 
17   work for the last five or six years, about 2000 is when -- and 
18   actually this started -- I came in as the Deputy Director in the 
19   late 90's, officially in 2000 but I started in about 1998, '99.  
20   So working with Charlie Challstrom who was the Director at the 
21   time, he and I sat down and we looked and said where do we 
22   really want to be.  We did a lot with infrastructure, we built a 
23   lot with monuments, we have -- in our database today we have 
24   over 500,000 vertical control marks, 250,000 to 300,000 
25   horizontal control marks, over a million gravity monuments if 
0215
 1   you will.  Look at all these CORS.  We have a lot of 
 2   infrastructure.  We did all of the adjustments, we did most of 
 3   the first order of work.  That was our infrastructure, we did 
 4   all of that.  We did some models and tools and people depended 
 5   upon that, we've always partnered.  But we didn't build a lot of 
 6   outside capacity.  We did most of it ourselves, we did some 
 7   training and workshops.  But if you look at this diagram it's 
 8   saying we're shifting from being the infrastructure people to 
 9   doing the adjustments, doing everything ourselves, to building 
10   the right models and tools, providing them and building that 
11   outside local capacity with the appropriate tools and models so 
12   that they're able to do it themselves.  And that's what our CORS 
13   program's about by the way.  Out of all of those CORS pro -- 
14   CORS monument you can say that 1,000, NOAA themselves probably  
15   -- and actually that's counting the Weather Service and 
16   everything, there's only about 60 of them.  Okay?  So we're a 
17   very small percentage of that CORS.  That's part of what you 
18   would call our infrastructure and our O and M.  The outside 
19   capacity that we built is the rest of our partners and they're 
20   building -- they have those CORS, they're maintaining those 
21   CORS.  And one of their CORS goes down, they fix it.  They call 
22   us up and tell us our system's not working right, we're working 
23   on it, it's either going to be up or down for -- whenever it is.  
24   But they communicate with us, that's a partnership we have with 
25   that.  But we got to build that capacity.  We worked with them, 
0216
 1   we gave them the vision of where we wanted to be and if they 
 2   wanted to be part of that vision here's what they had to do and 
 3   we built standards and guidelines and procedures and processes 
 4   with them so that it was part of their system.  And that's what 
 5   we're ending up moving and we're trying to do that with our 
 6   height modernization program, our shoreline mapping program, our 
 7   FAA work that we do, our standards and guidelines.  Even our 
 8   standards and guidelines we worked with the community because I 
 9   wrote the vertical GPS guidelines and I drafted up what I had 
10   and then I sat down with the community, American Congress of 
11   Surveying and Mapping, ASCE, I sat down with them and I said 
12   here's our guidelines, what do you think and they worked with 
13   us, did pilot projects and we developed a final set of 
14   guidelines together.  Working as a community to try to make -- 
15   move those things forward.
16    Next one please.  And I think I've talked a lot about 
17   this, this meeting our partnerships.  We have been supporting 
18   the GIS community and at ESRI we just received recognition for 
19   doing that from trying to take all of our data to try to get 
20   people to use it through our OPUS application but we've -- also 
21   working with them to create a GIS web tool where they can go 
22   out, anybody that the RTIS software and other software will be 
23   able to go out and get our entire database through the web of 
24   control, our Getadig (ph) database, put it on a map.  And they 
25   actually demoed this for me San Diego last week where they 
0217
 1   actually went out on Galor (ph), the globe, picked the United 
 2   States, pulled it in, pulled in our entire database and then 
 3   kept going.  That's you like you ever see in -- all the time 
 4   where they just keep going down and down and down and went all 
 5   the way down into California and pulled up a control right there 
 6   on the spot in San Diego out of my database and it just came 
 7   from the web.  Then they turned around and pulled up some data 
 8   out of Riverside County that had it on -- the same stuff out on 
 9   the web.  That's the kind of thing that we're trying to build 
10   and that's the local capacity that we built and the metadata and 
11   how we're bringing it to the community, working with them 
12   because they're the ones that asked us to do that.
13    Next one please.  Now really what this leads up to is 
14   meeting future challenges.  You've seen a lot of the things that 
15   NGS is working on, has been working on.  We tried to pursue many 
16   of these different things with the community positioning of 
17   ships and buoys and bridges, docking charts.  A lot of these 
18   things are all -- they're all possible, we can do.  We're 
19   looking for guidance on what people think is important.  And 
20   when we sat down and worked with all the -- many of the port 
21   authorities and many of the shipping industries and tried to 
22   find out where and what they wanted they seem to be not leading 
23   in that direction at this time so we have not pursued 
24   positioning of ships, all that -- that's doable.  So I guess in 
25   some sense what I'm asking for is for you all to maybe think a 
0218
 1   little bit more about this, try to get a little better 
 2   understanding of what we do, but also think to the future and 
 3   tell us where do you think you want to be with positioning so it 
 4   helps me position myself of figuring out what do I need to do to 
 5   help meet your requirements.  Because in some of the sense when 
 6   I'm positioning ships and buoys and no one's picking it up and 
 7   really jumping up and down and saying it, although the buoys is 
 8   something that more people are interested in, then I don't keep 
 9   pursuing it and that's -- it's not something that people wanted.  
10   If they wanted it then they would pursue it and come back.  So I 
11   let it drop and go.  Now sometimes -- I don't have a problem 
12   with doing some things and having them not be picked up because 
13   many times people don't fully understand the benefits of what 
14   you can do so you do a demonstration.  So I guess what I'm 
15   looking for is more guidance on some of that and your thoughts 
16   from your perspective so that we're able to produce what you 
17   really want and not what I think you want.  I just need to 
18   produce what you want.  
19    Next one.  I think that's it.  Yeah, that's it.  Thanks.
20    MR. RAINEY:  Dave, thanks.  Let me just make a quick 
21   observation then I'll -- everybody jump in.  But it's -- it 
22   seems to me we're almost at a point where -- I mean it's just 
23   phenomenal.  I'm con -- you know, the more I learn and just this 
24   is another example of it, I mean the technological capabilities 
25   of things that NOAA does and is doing and can do, they're just 
0219
 1   phenomenal.  And the -- it seems to me we're quickly getting to 
 2   a point where, you know, it's almost overwhelming what we can do 
 3   but then the question becomes with the limited resources we have 
 4   how do we figure out what we're -- you know, how do we 
 5   prioritize them, all of this capability, with the -- you know, 
 6   where do we put our limited resources and things.  And one of 
 7   the things I'm hoping with the -- we talked this morning, we'll 
 8   jump back in on the special report.  But I'm hoping and looking 
 9   for ways, you know, for us to be able to engage as a -- you 
10   know, again, this is -- you know, we have a charter, if you look 
11   at hydrographic services broader than the MTS but also not as 
12   broad as everything NOAA is doing NOAA wide.  But to try to 
13   maybe provide some advice or insights on what we think are 
14   requirements.  But one just specific example just -- not to keep 
15   beating on the ENC, but for -- you know, we have a requirement 
16   there coming down the line with the -- you know, the IMO, the S-
17   57 standard and NOAA producing the database and I'm wondering 
18   how NOAA looks at across these -- you know, these what I would 
19   call hard requirements with the carriage requirement coming here 
20   shortly.  Is there a -- maybe it's implied in the whole PPBES 
21   process, but as you look at what NOAA's role is and NOAA's 
22   mission is on delivering these things if you have a hard 
23   requirement out there like a -- you know, the ENC, does the 
24   budget process take into account, okay, to get to an ENC, to 
25   develop that database that's going to drive all of these other 
0220
 1   products, you know, you have to have this much survey going on, 
 2   you have to have, you know, CO-OPS and NGS participation to get 
 3   the proper, you know, tides and currents and things.  I mean is 
 4   that kind of analysis, can you figure that out?  Because I -- 
 5   what I can't figure out is how you manage this when -- a 
 6   particular earmark, like, okay, the ENC earmark disappears and 
 7   now we say, you know, that's -- I mean it seems like there has 
 8   to be behind that a strategic look at how all of these different 
 9   technologies from the different shops integrate to produce a 
10   product that meets a requirement and I'm just wondering how do 
11   you manage that across the programs and NOAA.  Is it -- I mean 
12   if there's -- how that thinking goes.  Because when one 
13   particular line items falls out on the budget it seems to me it 
14   effects, you know, everything kind of across the board and I 
15   don't know how you strategically manage that.  And, you know, it 
16   -- in other words do you guys try to take a look at -- I mean 
17   what you went through, Dave, just there was just an incredible 
18   list of all the different capabilities that you have in NGS and 
19   I don't know how -- do you also take a look at and say, okay, 
20   we've got a NOAA mission, either, you know, service or product 
21   that we have a requirement for so we need this much effort in -- 
22   you know, consistent with -- you know, how do you rationalize 
23   that across.  You know, for hydro surveying you need this much 
24   effort but it seems to me and occurs to me that if you're going 
25   to get this much data surveyed, have an efficient process, you 
0221
 1   also need this much resource in marine charting to handle that, 
 2   take it out of the can and process it, clean it, whatever.  And 
 3   so these things just all to me are interrelated processes and I 
 4   don't know how you guys sort of manage that again with the......
 5    MR. ZILKOSKI:  I'll give you -- let me give you my 
 6   perspective, what I do, and then I think Steve if he wants to 
 7   can talk about it from a goal team.  Because there's two -- 
 8   several things that happen here in how this works.  I -- from a 
 9   geodesy I'm the geodesy program manager and Jack mentioned that 
10   in this PPBES process you have programs and you have goals.  Now 
11   the programs, like mine in geodesy, we go and we talk to the 
12   other programs about what you need and the requirements.  And 
13   from our shoreline, Mike, my Chief of the Remote Sensing 
14   Division, has meetings constantly and planning with the -- his 
15   counterparts that need us.  So inside NOS if you will and 
16   actually inside NOAA because it sometimes involves more than 
17   NOS, we're meeting constantly looking at what are your 
18   requirements, how can I do it and how can I meet you, so based 
19   on existing resources.  So if something gets cut through, 
20   because immediately you're talking about, well, what resource do 
21   we have and how do we bring that together, so we're doing that 
22   inside.  Now from a program manager standpoint because of the 
23   geodesy I'm always looking and going to the other program 
24   managers and MTS is a program.  But there's other ones outside, 
25   weather and water has some programs that we're looking at the 
0222
 1   CEO coast estuary oceans of we're -- some of my activities like 
 2   the height modernization also helps the coastal estuary people, 
 3   Paul Schultz out of Coast Services Center.  So we're talking 
 4   about how can we build and bring those things together.  Our 
 5   programming and planning process, which we're -- you know, we're 
 6   kind of babies in this thing, we're working it.  But our idea is 
 7   that we're starting to really start having one program manager 
 8   talk to another program and really truly integrate these 
 9   activities so that my geodesy height mod fits into that, my 
10   geodesy, you know, positioning would help in the shoreline 
11   aspects of it.  So we're dealing with a program thing.  The 
12   issue we have is that inside NOAA, as you know there's a lot of, 
13   well, you looked at the President's request and you looked at 
14   the House and then you look at the Senate and you got to look at 
15   what we get.  So we don't know what we're going to do until 
16   March of every year and we're already halfway through our year.  
17   So that's managing six months in arrears and you got to be 
18   going, which complicates the process.  I'm not making an excuse 
19   for the process, I'm just saying it complicates the process.  So 
20   from that standpoint that's how we work and we kind of work fast 
21   and furious that last one.  But the first six months we're doing 
22   things basically based on what we think we're going to get and 
23   how we're going to work.  I'm not sure if that addresses it but 
24   we're trying to get there.
25    MR. RAINEY:  A lot of people want to -- Jon, let me and 
0223
 1   then we'll (indiscernible).
 2    MR. DASLER:  Yeah, I thought that was a great 
 3   presentation, you guys definitely put out some great products 
 4   and do some good work in your shop.  I think parallel to the -- 
 5   just looking back at the cartoon though and I think the parallel 
 6   to that is from the vessel navigation standpoint I mean we can 
 7   have, you know, tight vertical positioning and horizontal 
 8   positioning, we can have electronic charts and we can have 
 9   ecosystems on ships but if we aren't getting the wrecks and 
10   obstructions on the chart you're back at the guy going down the 
11   road not knowing that the truck is there.  And it just seems at 
12   times the way it's going and the way funding is progressing, you 
13   know, we're still putting the shoes on the horse so to speak.  
14   And I think there's got to be a balance somewhere through that 
15   whole system.  But it -- from the Marine Transportation 
16   standpoint, I mean I think it provides a false sense of security 
17   when you have, you know, the electronic charts and the 
18   ecosystems and, you know, they're not aware that there's a lot 
19   of these critical areas that still need to be charted and I 
20   think all of that needs to be brought into the bigger picture.
21    MR. ZILKOSKI:  You know, I want to -- just if you don't 
22   mind a comment, because that's a great observation and I like 
23   your analogy of the -- with the ship and I might try to use 
24   that.  But I wanted to make my point about that this group is 
25   more about -- more than just water, but so I'll try to 
0224
 1   incorporate some dealing with water in it.  But the issue of the 
 2   trying to make, you know, how important it is and what's your -- 
 3   what's lacking is sometimes we don't paint that picture and the 
 4   hurricane did do that.  Like I said, Louisiana, for 25 years 
 5   we've been going down to Louisiana and telling them about the 
 6   subsidence, what's happened to the monuments and so forth and as 
 7   I said we were building that.  So we were ready when the 
 8   hurricane came, we didn't know when it was going to come but we 
 9   just knew something was going to come, we didn't know when, and 
10   it did occur.  And so that gave us the opportunity to be able to 
11   show people, hey, here's what you've got.  I used to have 1,000 
12   monuments down there that I'd publish and I was -- kept trying 
13   to tell people they're not accurate and I built the system.  
14   After the hurricane it was a whole lot easier for me to tell 
15   them I have 100 monuments that I know the elevations are and I'm 
16   standing behind them and I'm publishing them.  The other 900 are 
17   no longer being published.  You can get them but they're not 
18   being published, I'll give them to you.  That's the change that 
19   occurred and that's I think something similar that you have to 
20   do.  They don't understand the picture because people -- you 
21   keep publishing -- in some sense publishing information without 
22   -- pull them off, which I did in Louisiana and now I'm left with 
23   100.  And then they have to -- you have to build that system 
24   back up again but not build it to the point that you can't 
25   maintain it and that's where you're at, you have to get that.
0225
 1    MR. RAINEY:  Bill and then Andrew and then Lou.
 2    MR. GRAY:  Dave, you really got my attention when you 
 3   showed the Golden Gate Bridge there and the buoy tender of the 
 4   Coast Guard and so forth.  I guess you had a piece of your 
 5   equipment aboard the ship and you say you've got this 10 
 6   centimeter ability to measure vertical position, of course you 
 7   can do it the same horizontally and so forth, and when you said 
 8   that the shipping industry wasn't interested in it.  And I'd 
 9   really like to learn more about the capability that you've got 
10   and how you feel the shipping industry could make use of it if 
11   they'd pay more attention to it.  Because the thought that 
12   occurs to me, 10 centimeters, that's great, that's pretty small 
13   distance.  These big ships, haugerside (ph), I mean it can be 
14   several feet according to loading, whether the sun is shining, 
15   whether it isn't shining or something like that.  Ships squawk, 
16   ships list when they're maneuvered and so forth like that.  I 
17   don't know whether these are the things that turn the most.  
18   They don't care about plus minus 10 centimeters, they're really 
19   worried about a bigger number or something like that and a 
20   number that's changing.  And as you said, if anything -- because 
21   of speed, whatever, changes it.  But having that capability it 
22   would seem to me, I mean I can remember when we were putting 
23   TV's on the bow and stern of the ship to help in berthing them.  
24   They didn't do much good at all because it -- the depth 
25   perception was not what it should be.  Then we got these docking 
0226
 1   sonars.  They were very good.  We got rate of turn indicators, 
 2   they were -- they're excellent.  And for maneuvering of a ship 
 3   all those things help and with this ability to measure where you 
 4   are up, down, si -- this, everything else like that, that's a 
 5   very good -- that's a marvelous ability to have and I surely 
 6   agree with what was said but you got to know where the objects 
 7   are, the hazards are or something like that.  So I think it 
 8   would be good if sometime we learned a little bit more about 
 9   what you did do and how you think it should help the handling 
10   safely of large ships, or smaller ones for that matter.  Because 
11   you've got a capability to do something and I think you just 
12   have to find out is that of any use to me.  I think the answer 
13   is it must be somehow.
14    MR. ZILKOSKI:  Yeah, we can certainly do that and I'm more 
15   than happy to do that.  And Andy has -- well, Lloyd Huff who 
16   used to work for the government and now works up at the 
17   University was instrumental in working with the shipping 
18   industry in the squawk, the roll, the pit, everything that we 
19   did we had to account for.  And, you know, there are some parts 
20   of the shipping industry that were interested and they donated 
21   something, I mean they donated containers.  And I'll never 
22   forget my geodetic group down in Fredericksburg when they had a 
23   con -- couple containers, like three containers, they were 
24   dropped off at their place and they kind of called up and said 
25   what in the world am I supposed to do with these three 
0227
 1   containers.  And that was Lloyd having them dropped off because 
 2   he was going to fix them with -- install GPS with batteries and 
 3   everything else.  So we -- I would like to pursue that and show 
 4   what it's about because it's -- the community wasn't ready at 
 5   the time most likely to try to do it and so time wise we may be 
 6   able to push it now.  And the system itself was probably not as 
 7   reliable as they would have really liked and so they weren't 
 8   willing to invest in it.  But yeah, we can do that and we will.
 9    MR. GRAY:  Because a lot of things I say have been 
10   developed in the time that I've been active in the industry to 
11   help the safe handling of vessels.  And some of them are 
12   terrific, some of them weren't any good at all.  And -- but when 
13   you say you got the shut -- they weren't interested I'm curious 
14   at that, I would think that somebody would be interested even if 
15   they didn't understand how it was going to help them.
16    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  Andrew McGovern.   A couple of things.  
17   I worked a little bit with Lloyd on that, the H-10 panel, the 
18   Navy did that and they actually even could see the twisting of 
19   the ship.  It was pretty incredible.  One thing I'd like to 
20   clarify because I've heard it a few times here and it's in the 
21   report.  The -- Congress is not mandating the carriage of ENC's.  
22   All right, just -- but it's in the report.  We have to.....
23    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Yeah, it's a electronic charting 
24   system, I didn't say ENC.
25    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  Yeah, we have that.  We have to change 
0228
 1   that.  You know, they -- it would be a raster chart, it could be 
 2   -- actually it was so unclear it's dangerous but that's another 
 3   issue that, you know.  The other instance....
 4    MR. RAINEY:  On that, Andrew, though could I just -- I 
 5   mean is it not the policy and the whole place we're going with 
 6   this ENC development is that will become the one single official 
 7   database that then -- the idea is that you can -- Bill, you can 
 8   print out a raster chart from that, you can print, you know, all 
 9   sorts of things.  So the -- my understanding of where NOAA's 
10   trying to go with this database is not just simply to make an 
11   ictus, you know, vector chart, this would also be the official 
12   HO database that you'd pull all your -- we wouldn't have the 
13   parallel raster process in other words and the ENC is my 
14   understanding of where we're trying to go.
15    CAPTAIN BARNUM:  If I can just add onto that.  Yes, 
16   Congress is not mandating ENC's, they're mandating promulgating 
17   regulations for carriage of electronic charts, that's to be 
18   defined, what an electronic chart is.  What Scott mentioned 
19   about ENC, currently we are maintaining two production systems, 
20   one for the production of the paper and raster chart and one for 
21   the production of the ENC.  So anytime you have two of anything 
22   there's always a question of maintaining them in sync.  And so 
23   it's a very time and dif -- very difficult process.  So our goal 
24   is to have one production system of which we can print paper 
25   charts, produce the raster charts and produce the ENC from one 
0229
 1   single database.
 2    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  Yeah, correct.  I just want to make 
 3   sure that when we do this report it's correct, somebody can't 
 4   say that and say, hey, you know, you're not -- you know, you're 
 5   going off in the wrong direction.  This other thing that 
 6   troubles me is the -- this docking -- this highly accurate 
 7   positioning for docking and basically -- and for maneuvering in, 
 8   you know, zero visibility for the efficiency of the port.  The 
 9   reason why that is not being pursued is because it's illegal 
10   both internationally and nationally.  You know, it's just 
11   something you can't -- you know, and until that changes and I 
12   kind of -- the hair went up on the back of my head when Lou 
13   mentioned before about his system down in South Carolina, what 
14   he can do with ships, you know, that you can automate all this.  
15   Well, that's great and it kind of goes with your cartoon there.  
16   You can automate this and put it there and it'll follow a track.  
17   The problem is -- you know, with airplanes is, you know, it's 
18   controlled airspace and there's nobody else in that track.  You 
19   get in a port like Charleston or like New York and it's like 
20   putting a bus in Manhattan and automating it and just letting it 
21   go down Broadway.  You know, assuming it's not going to hit 
22   anything that's going to get in its way because guess what, 
23   everything's going to get in its way and that's why, you know, 
24   we have people that do this.  And that's why -- so that's why 
25   some of these things while technically you can do them -- you 
0230
 1   know, I guess we're all at -- you know, we can do things but 
 2   should we do things, you know, and that's where we have to kind 
 3   of draw that line and that's why some of the stuff may 
 4   technically be feasible but it's just not practically or it's 
 5   not legal or it's not -- you know, there's a lot of reasons for 
 6   this.  It's great to have this technology.  I mean needless to 
 7   say if you get stuck in the fog it's great to have but you do 
 8   not use it to say I'm going to operate in the fog because of, 
 9   you know, I've got this stuff so I can go.  Because if something 
10   happens, you know, you're going to court and you're going to 
11   lose, guaranteed, you know, in every country in the world.  So 
12   that's where -- and I know there are ports that are looking at 
13   this but it's not really condoned by any of the -- you know, 
14   anyone who's going to have to actually operate it.  So that's 
15   one of the reasons, wanted to explain that.
16    MR. ZILKOSKI:  Yeah, I -- and I heard that reason -- I 
17   heard those before when we were doing it and part of when we 
18   were demonstrating it was to show that we -- you know, that it 
19   could be done just to make sure we could do it and what kind of 
20   -- what would it take to really do it so that if -- that when 
21   ultimately someone says, well, that's cheap enough for me not to 
22   use it for what you just said.  In other words if you're stuck 
23   in a fog and you got to do something you got it.  But it also I 
24   would think would improve and help with efficiency even when not 
25   in a fog and that's what we were looking at was just the 
0231
 1   efficiency of that.  As we all as being able from the under keel 
 2   clearance was probably more important to the docking chart.  So 
 3   being able to bring in more cargo so that you can be able to 
 4   know -- but also the -- highlight the importance of, you know, 
 5   if I can get your keel to 10 centimeters but you don't know the 
 6   bottom of that chart very accurate -- or the bottom of the 
 7   channel very accurate it doesn't do you any good.  And so from 
 8   that standpoint they go hand in hand of saying I need better 
 9   charts because I can position to 10 centimeters.  And the reason 
10   I want to position to 10 centimeters is because I can bring in 
11   more cargo.  So now I got an economic reason for bringing it in, 
12   I got the technology to allow me to bring it in so there's a 
13   reason for me to do better charts.  Okay?  But if you don't have 
14   that then you can't then you can't bring better charts.  That's 
15   sort of my -- that was my strategy behind saying I can do this 
16   for you but if you -- but it doesn't do you any good until you 
17   get better charts.  That was -- I was trying to help you.
18    DR. LAPINE:  I stand corrected, Andy.  I just want to make 
19   a public comment that when I was the Director of National 
20   Geodetic Survey I never realized how important the National 
21   Geodetic Survey database was.  And I use it every day, sometimes 
22   three and four times a day.  I get -- the public will call me a 
23   half a dozen times a day wanting knowledge about geodetic 
24   control.  I never thought that that was one of the more 
25   important things that the National Geodetic Survey does and they 
0232
 1   do it very, very well.  So I commend you on that.  I also 
 2   commend the National Geodetic Survey on technology development.  
 3   A lot of the things we're hearing about today started with a 
 4   receiver in a cargo box, neither of which were designed to do 
 5   what they did, but the National Geodetic Survey figured out how 
 6   to integrate these devices.  And we are coming of the age now, 
 7   Andy, we would never go without a pilot or a captain in the 
 8   pilot house but we could certainly automate some of the 
 9   functions.  I mean we have automatic pilots that -- automatic 
10   pilot systems that steer the ship for us right now.  We'd never 
11   do it in the blind, I -- sorry I left you with that impression.  
12   I think the big thing for National Geodetic Survey, for 
13   charting, for oceanography is this Vdatum issue.  We need to 
14   understand how sea level relates to orthometric heights, that's 
15   benchmarks, how it relates to the ellipsoid which is the surface 
16   that GPS works most accurately on.  Until we get to that point 
17   we're going to have trouble putting a system like I described on 
18   a ship safely so that you could take advantage of it.  It's 
19   extremely important that we pursue this Vdatum issue more fully.  
20   I'll turn the floor over.
21    CAPTAIN HICKMAN:  (Indiscernible).  When you say 10 
22   centimeters from the bottom or whatever, like are you going off 
23   of a charted bottom already?  Because like say in Houston, what 
24   -- how hard of a bottom are we talking?  Because once you have 
25   an emulsion there I might be driving through the mud as opposed 
0233
 1   to being 10 centimeters from some type of bottom that you're 
 2   talking about whereas Andrew's going to be in a much worse 
 3   situation than I would be if he was on the bottom.
 4    MR. ZILKOSKI:  Yeah, it has to -- once again, it goes back 
 5   to the chart.  It has to be chart so you have to be consistent.  
 6   And what we did do in this project in working with Lloyd, we 
 7   actually resurveyed the bottom, we resurveyed it prior to -- so 
 8   we were truly within 10 centimeters of the system because we did 
 9   it over ourselves for the channel that we were in so we could 
10   clearly say that.  And there were times that, yeah, they were at 
11   the bottom.  Okay?  And they knew they were at the bottom and 
12   our system confirmed that they were at the bottom but they 
13   didn't need our system to confirm that.  But they were and so it 
14   showed the whole system.  But no, it's only as -- it's -- I can 
15   only position to the keel relative to something that I already 
16   have.  I mean if you don't have good charts and they're not 
17   updated charts it doesn't do any good.  It's like our shoreline.  
18   You know, you can fly the shoreline, we can go into the harbors, 
19   we can put them, but if you take a pier out and you put another 
20   pier in and we didn't do another survey it's not there on your 
21   electronic chart.  So it's the same thing, you have to have good 
22   up to date surveys for these systems to work. 
23    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  (Indiscernible - away from 
24   microphone).
25    MR. ZILKOSKI:  Well, it's off bottom hills.
0234
 1    CAPTAIN ARMSTRONG:  I just want to clarify that -- I don't 
 2   think that 10 centimeters was within 10 centimeters of the 
 3   bottom, it was -- we know where we are plus or minus 10 
 4   centimeters using the bottom as a reference point.  So that was 
 5   the level of accuracy, not the actual distance from the bottom.
 6    MR. GRAY:  Yeah, just -- once again, don't forget, the 
 7   ships are very flexible and they're moving all the time and 
 8   we're sharing and doing this.  I mean what you've got with the 
 9   interactions or any of them, I mean ships needing the channels 
10   and everything like that.  But it does make me think that to 
11   pursue this point a little bit, and I don't know where it is 
12   now, Andrew, with H-10 but all that data that was taken three, 
13   four, five years ago, whatever, if that's ever been reduced to 
14   something that is really useful.  Because I know there was a 
15   money problem and I'm getting the data now it's just that 
16   (indiscernible) H-10 which is called controllability and they 
17   have been dealing with the maneuvering of ships, how they 
18   maneuver and so forth, for about 40 years now I guess.  And what 
19   they did some years ago in Houston was to measure some 30 some 
20   transits of the Houston ship channel and eight or 10 meeting 
21   incidents in the Houston ship channel, how the vessels behaved 
22   and how things went compared to how people thought they would.  
23   And I think that at a future meeting of this committee it would 
24   be worthwhile to have a session, a portion of a session devoted 
25   to what does that really tell you about what's going on when the 
0235
 1   ship's trying to get in or out of these tight places.  Not when 
 2   it's alongside the berth or not when it's in deep sea but that 
 3   was very valuable work that unfortunately has never been reduced 
 4   I don't think to a point of being able to be used yet.  But for 
 5   some of the things that were -- there's some pretty dramatic 
 6   findings in it.  They had done that preceding that, what, in the 
 7   Panama Canal it was I think where they first did it.  So we 
 8   might consider with Alex Landsburg or something like that to get 
 9   -- now Mike Morris is on that, isn't he?
10    MR. RAINEY:  Yeah, Mike was involved.  Alex I believe just 
11   recently retired and (indiscernible).
12    MR. GRAY:  Well, he did but I think he's still Chairman of 
13   the H-10, isn't he?
14    MR. RAINEY:  Yeah, so.
15    MR. GRAY:  Well, he's retired but he's still Chairman of 
16   the H-10 panel.  I think.
17    MR. RAINEY:  We can follow up on that.  Okay.  Jon Dasler.
18    MR. DASLER:  Just one last comment.  Again along the same 
19   lines John Oswald was talking about, Vdatum and the importance 
20   of Vdatum in updating nautical charts.  And, you know, the 
21   largest contributor, and I think I mentioned this in D.C. but 
22   the largest contributor of the total propagated error is water 
23   levels and, you know, just development of Vdatum and then 
24   extrapolating that across survey areas and doing the surveys and 
25   then eventually operating the ships is going to tremendously 
0236
 1   improve, you know, the vertical accuracies.  Because right now 
 2   water levels is, like I said, the largest contributor to the 
 3   total propagated error or the (indiscernible) chart.  And the 
 4   survey systems that are used and the sonar systems that are used 
 5   have very high resolution and that's one of the biggest problems 
 6   we're facing.
 7    MR. ZILKOSKI:  That's good to know.  And actually our 
 8   upper management, you heard the terms Maureen Wiley and Bonnie 
 9   Moorehouse and Mary Glackin, the three ladies that are part of 
10   this new PPBI system.  That's something that resonates with 
11   them, the Vdatum.  They understand that, they see what that is 
12   and they understand that (indiscernible) people do get that and 
13   they do appreciate that.  So whenever you have those 
14   opportunities you should try to talk to them about that or 
15   explain that.  And clearly, Sherri, they're down there on the 
16   21st, you should have some of those words that come out of here 
17   that say they're important.  Well, it does not hurt because 
18   they'll come back and they'll ask people, I heard this about 
19   Vdatum, what does it really mean and in some ca -- Maureen's not 
20   going to be there I guess but she's the one that understands.  
21   But clearly Bonnie and Mary hear these terms from us but don't 
22   really understand that our users really think they're important 
23   so it helps.
24    MR. OSWALD:  Yeah, I'd like to make one comment, John 
25   Oswald.  And one thing that NGS could do in my view to help what 
0237
 1   Mr. Rayfield said, sufficient funding -- well, not the funding 
 2   but to try to reduce this critical surveying backlog in five 
 3   years.  That's probably doable.  They just -- you know, they 
 4   just added $10 million to contract backlogs.  That's the hydro 
 5   part.  In my view shoreline mapping at NGS is under funded by 
 6   about -- I think it's $2.5 million or something in that range 
 7   or.....
 8    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  We get $2.5 million that we send back 
 9   out to contracts (indiscernible).
10    MR. OSWALD:  It should be probably in the range of 
11   somewhere between $6 and $10 million.  I don't think it 
12   adequately keeps up with the backlog myself and I am dismayed to 
13   know that I worked on a NOAA project this year and the shoreline 
14   is out of position, not by a little bit but by a lot, 1,000 
15   meters so that's like you can walk from here to Cook Inlet, 
16   you'll be in the water before 1,000 meters is up.  Three 
17   thousand feet and why is that in 2006.  It's not that it was 
18   surveyed erroneously, it was just that it was surveyed in 1874 
19   is the shoreline layer on our chart.  This island has not moved.  
20   The Pribilof Islands, the same situation.  This is another 
21   island this year.  Why does this exist when we have free -- you 
22   know, we actually have free imagery that is geopositioned.  I 
23   think some assessment, maybe use some of this free imagery, 
24   articulate our dollars to do some change analy -- particularly 
25   in Alaska.  I don't know if -- this is probably not the case in 
0238
 1   the continental United States.  But I've come across it about 
 2   five times in my career of -- because of the method of the 
 3   surveys in 1874 an astronomic position, says it right on the 
 4   nautical chart.  Now our mean high water line is out of 
 5   position, the mean low water, the state federal boundary is out 
 6   and the international boundaries are out of position.  Those 
 7   will eventually have to be revised.  So I think that's one 
 8   program that NGS could do to support, you know, I think critical 
 9   MTS shoreline mapping.  Not very sexy or anything but it's just 
10   fundamental basic data that we need.  And with that we also have 
11   soundings on our charts in Alaska generated by Captain Cook on 
12   his third voyage that are published soundings.  Supposedly, I've 
13   heard from numerous NOAA authorities about that and why is that.  
14   They're probably good soundings, maybe they're good soundings.   
15   In this case it was just 1,000 meter, 1,000 meters, 3,000 feet.  
16    MS. DASLER:  Dave, just a quick question.  Is there 
17   critical shoreline mapping priorities that are set similar to 
18   what HSD sets on their areas and if not -- I mean it seems now 
19   that technology is coming to the era where you could take a lot 
20   of imagery that's readily available and a change of detection 
21   could be made and then you could prioritize or it seems like 
22   that would be pretty prudent to try to identify some of these 
23   areas that are really in need of the shoreline mapping effort.
24    MR. ZILKOSKI:  Yeah, as Jon said though, we're really 
25   under funded.  So what we do is, as I mentioned, we look at the 
0239
 1   priority ports and we talk to our -- the Coast Survey who sets 
 2   the priorities for these ports and we go back and we visit them 
 3   and we have shoreline based on their needs.  So we don't have 
 4   enough money to go out and really just go and do things that 
 5   aren't in the way of where is the Coast Survey going to be, 
 6   where are they going to be updating charts and we try to follow 
 7   along that manner.  But Mike Aslaskan is back there and I don't 
 8   -- Mike, if you want to say a few words on that you can.  Mike 
 9   is in charge of the Remote Sensing Division which is in charge 
10   of the coastal mapping and shoreline.
11    MR. ASLASKAN:  Yeah, thank you.  Again, our priorities 
12   are, Coast Survey is number one, again customer priorities, 
13   again trying to keep up with them as far as where they're going.  
14   The shoreline's critical for them planning for NOAA assets as 
15   well as contract assets, photogrammetric surveying.  They use 
16   that for estimating, they use that to keep actually the ships 
17   off the rocks and spending a lot of time doing shoreline 
18   verification.  Other than that we do have what is called a 
19   matrix life, we look at the age of a shoreline of areas and we 
20   try to update that when funds are available and dependent on the 
21   number of requests of shoreline discrepancies that come from 
22   Coast Survey.  For instance, recently we just did the entire 
23   coast of Georgia based on several years of requests and the 
24   shifting of those barrier islands.
25    MR. RAINEY:  Did we get to everybody as far as questions 
0240
 1   or comments?  Okay.  Dave, thanks very much and David asked if 
 2   we could run that and we've been trying to get NGS to give us a 
 3   presentation so we can better understand a lot of the things 
 4   that they're working on that we're also interested in.  What I'd 
 5   like to suggest here in the remaining time we have today is that 
 6   we take a look and reconnect with our discussions on the special 
 7   report that we're working on.  But insofar as to talk a little 
 8   bit about the production schedule and kind of try to set out --
 9   kind of just talk about our process rather than the actual -- 
10   trying to go through more content particularly.  But just let's 
11   try to get a common -- get on the same page as far as what our 
12   process and kind of production schedule.  So if I could since 
13   we're kind of pushing it late in the day let me ask if you need 
14   to take a break to do it kind of independently and let's press 
15   on a little bit and ask if Ann could rejoin us and we'll talk 
16   about some of the process here, how we're going to try to 
17   proceed and then we'll try to conclude on time and then see if 
18   we have any additional public comments and we'll be back on our 
19   agenda and we can take a look ahead to what we're talking about 
20   tomorrow.  Andrew.
21    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  Well, it seems like if you want to get 
22   this product out before the next Congress which is January you 
23   realistically have to have it ready for the printer I would 
24   think by the beginning of December and therefore ready -- last 
25   comments probably the beginning of November so that we get the 
0241
 1   final document, get it approved.  So I would think that would be 
 2   a good time table, like November for us to be done with it.
 3    MR. RAINEY:  Maybe -- Ann or Barbara, I mean as far as to 
 4   how the relationship goes there and the -- you know, your 
 5   process and -- can you advise us on that?  What we really want 
 6   to do, we want to look at when is it on the street and then just 
 7   sort of back into it and then I think that'll probably start 
 8   (indiscernible) in place.  But would that be a good way to 
 9   approach it as far as how you.....
10    MS. BOESE:  There's a.....
11    MR. RAINEY:  .....see the process?
12    MS. BOESE:  Well, there's a couple things.  You know, 
13   typically you decide when you want it to be issued and then you 
14   work backwards.  But one thing, and I don't know about how to go 
15   about changing this but I know that my contract period for this 
16   particular project runs through October 15.  So that.....
17    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  I would say then that's a day.
18    MS. BOESE:  So in other words I would turn over.....
19    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  Makes sense to me.
20    MS. BOESE:  .....I would turn the files over for printing 
21   at that date or before -- actually prior to that date.
22    MR. RAINEY:  So get me your comments by, what, noon on the 
23   14th, right?
24    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  There you go.
25    MS. BOESE:  You know, actually though I think maybe even 
0242
 1   though it may be pushing it, my personal experience is that we 
 2   take a breather from it after the meeting and we've got all the 
 3   comments, do the work, have a -- hopefully assemble a smaller 
 4   group to go through a review process once those changes are in 
 5   and then unless there's something that I don't know about get it 
 6   done.  Because when the momentum falls off the momentum falls 
 7   off.
 8    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  I guess my only question on that is we 
 9   don't have any -- we don't have the lawyer here, but under the 
10   FACA rules do we have to approve this document in a public 
11   forum, which could be a conference call but, you know, that 
12   would be -- I mean we -- you know, the final document would 
13   probably have to be approved under the FACA rules I would think.  
14   And then -- but we could do that by teleconference.  It would 
15   have to be in the Federal Register and such.
16    MR. RAINEY:  But I guess could you -- I mean maybe it's 
17   obvious but to me I don't think it is exactly.  The actual 
18   pieces of it because we did have a conference call and somebody 
19   had mentioned the GPO and that kind of -- is the idea that this 
20   will be put together and then it goes to the government printing 
21   office?  What is the process involved to -- what are the steps 
22   other than we've got to write the content and get that 
23   coordinated through NOAA.  But the actual mechanics of the 
24   public -- I mean if we want to have it on the street, you know, 
25   done by whoever actually publishes it what -- you know, is there 
0243
 1   a time thing -- GPO, that kind of scared me when I heard GPO was 
 2   involved.  Is there a big lead time in their production process 
 3   or how -- can you talk to that at all?  I'm just not familiar -- 
 4   I mean if we want to have this say out in December does that 
 5   mean that we got to have it to GPO by, you know, a certain date 
 6   or does anybody know how that works?
 7    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  I just asked Mike, I said how long did 
 8   it take you to get this published.  He said two days.
 9    MS. BOESE:  Oh.  See, in the commercial world it would be 
10   from final approval really like two, three weeks.  So whatever 
11   the -- if that's two days.  But we need to get a date and we 
12   need to connect -- I need to connect with a contact that says 
13   make sure that I have everything in the right format, blah, 
14   blah, blah, for that printing.  And then we do have a proofing 
15   process that we have to build in as well.  So really -- let's 
16   see.  If we're going by my date, October 15.
17    CAPTAIN MYRTIDIS:  Is that a little bit too soon, Scott, 
18   October 15?  I -- it sounded to me like December 1st was a very 
19   good day and give us the time to do what we want to do.  
20    MR. RAINEY:  What I'm hoping is that -- and again, we have 
21   tomorrow in our meeting and we have some presentations of course 
22   and some public input that we want to consider but we'll have 
23   time to talk about this more, you know, some -- content wise 
24   before we leave here.  I'm not -- this isn't our last time to 
25   talk about it.  But my hope is that we have identified when we 
0244
 1   leave here, you know, our deadline.  But to get the sense -- I 
 2   really want to have a consensus from the panel that we're in 
 3   agreement on the scope of it and we had some good discussions on 
 4   that this morning and then get from people if they have off the 
 5   top of their head some ideas of specific examples or -- you 
 6   know, we can try to get some comments on that.  And then leave 
 7   the meeting with everybody -- everybody's buy in, my hope anyway 
 8   is everybody has bought into this concept of this and then 
 9   hopefully we can have some -- in the areas we need to flush it 
10   out leave with some examples that we can incorporate in here and 
11   folks identified that can help build the rest of this report, 
12   get it together and then put it back out in a more finished form 
13   for everybody to -- when we start to refine it.  So I think that 
14   that's the process we're envisioning so that the question of 
15   timing is when do we want to have it out on the street and how 
16   much attention can the panel, you know, help focus on this to 
17   flush out the -- you know, the remainder of the report.  But 
18   would -- do you think it's unreason -- if we've got that October 
19   date that would give it -- I mean if we had a month as a panel, 
20   you know, like Ann said, obviously, you know, after the meeting 
21   you want to have -- you got to get back to regular things.  But 
22   if we had a month to come up with our rough comments and remarks 
23   on the draft and moving it forward, the building blocks that Ann 
24   talked about, would a month be reasonable for the amount of 
25   material that we're looking at and then that would give us yet 
0245
 1   another month to kind of refine that.  In other words if we 
 2   could finish the framing here in the first month then we can 
 3   start, you know, really refining the points.  Would that -- does 
 4   that.....
 5    MS. BOESE:  That's -- if I'm hearing you correctly that's 
 6   -- there's so many other things that, you know, we have to 
 7   actually -- get the artwork in, that we would have to have our 
 8   final copy much -- we wouldn't be able to have that much time I 
 9   don't think.  I mean if we were going to wait a month after 
10   tomorrow to get all that initial input that would be stretching 
11   it too far.  The only way to -- I mean I'm sure that I can 
12   probably extend that date, I just didn't -- have not done that.
13    MR. RAINEY:  Well.....
14    MS. BOESE:  I guess my question, is it realistic to think 
15   that we're going to have -- that we will -- will I be able to 
16   leave with some concrete examples and some things that we've 
17   talked about that we can start incorporating in?  To keep -- 
18   yeah.  Yeah.  I mean I've gotten some sharper focus for sure, 
19   that's definitely happened.  But -- and I've gotten a few 
20   examples.  But if anybody has -- I know there probably wasn't 
21   that much time to read the report but if I can -- the more hard 
22   information and more hard input I can get now the faster it gets 
23   in, the faster that second draft goes out and that should be the 
24   part where we really have something and this is basically what 
25   we're going to be doing and then you can -- then we can get some 
0246
 1   approval on that.
 2    MR. MYRTIDIS:  If you -- Ann, if you can extend your time, 
 3   like you say, why don't we establish right now December 1st as 
 4   the publishing date and work backwards and tell us when you want 
 5   everything to be ready.
 6    MS. BOESE:  Well, I said I thought I could probably extend 
 7   the time, I haven't actually asked that.  That was processed 
 8   through NOAA.  I don't.....
 9    MR. MYRTIDIS:  Right.  But October 15th doesn't make any 
10   sense because if October 15 expires that means we have to give 
11   you -- have it ready tomorrow basically.
12    MS. BOESE:  No, no.
13    MR. MYRTIDIS:  If you fix the.....
14    MS. BOESE:  I feel December 1st, that gives us too much 
15   time and people forget about it and kind of put it on the back 
16   burner, I feel.
17    MS. DICKINSON:  (Indiscernible - away from microphone).
18    MS. BOESE:  And I think if we try to stick to that 
19   timeline we're kind of forced into paying attention to it.
20    MR. RAINEY:  What if then for just the purpose of having 
21   something that we can look at if we -- and since that's the date 
22   that is there right now what if we took that and then just 
23   backed it up and then, you know, we could see what that looked 
24   like.
25    CAPTAIN HICKMAN:  Ann, what do you think you need?  The 
0247
 1   pictures and everything by -- like he obviously said, if we did 
 2   it for a month it wouldn't be enough time.  So.....
 3    MS. BOESE:  Well, I have a -- we have a lot of artwork 
 4   right now but we just haven't had -- we haven't placed it yet 
 5   and we can get artwork.  But the -- to me that's not going to be 
 6   the difficult part.  The difficult part is going to be moving 
 7   from where we are now to putting in some actual concrete 
 8   changes, refining it, work -- redoing the title and sending it 
 9   back out.  I -- you're asking me for the production schedule and 
10   I didn't think that there was a -- I didn't think there was an 
11   opportunity to go beyond the schedule that I was given.  I mean 
12   I was given deliverable dates.  So that's putting another factor 
13   in which I would have to find out if that's realistic.  But what 
14   I guess I'm -- I guess what I'm hearing is that people want to 
15   go back home and then send their reports back with individual 
16   comments and the only issue that I would have with that is that 
17   that doesn't necessarily mean that the entire panel agrees with 
18   these ideas.  That's why we were hoping to go kind of through 
19   chapter by chapter while we're here if that's a realistic 
20   expectation.  
21    MR. RAINEY:  Yeah, I know we want to do that as much as we 
22   can and get those specific examples and we'll definitely do.  We 
23   can talk more about it tonight and then tomorrow as well.  And 
24   it's just knowing when we need to get everything in and we'll 
25   just work with those dates that we have.  Bill, did you have 
0248
 1   something?
 2    MR. GRAY:  Yes.  To me there are three things that really 
 3   need to be reviewed and agreed for the committee as a whole.  
 4   And one of them is to zero in on what are most wanted issues.  
 5   You've got a good list and it's got everything that I would want 
 6   in it.  At least half of it I'm ready to throw out.  So that's 
 7   one point.  Another one is we've got two sheets here called a 
 8   vision for the future.  I have no idea what this is going to be.  
 9   And I think we ought to spend a little time tomorrow trying to 
10   get down -- what are you -- what are we trying to say in that 
11   vision?  I mean when I say budget, cor -- budget, that is enough 
12   money to get the five things that are on our most wanted list 
13   done within a few years, five years or something like that.  But 
14   I think we want to agree -- and the third thing, as Ann has 
15   said, is examples and that's where I think to give some real 
16   punch to the report graphically and otherwise here are examples 
17   of NOAA's capabilities in each of the important areas, that 
18   would be one thing, to really get -- so you don't -- if we use 
19   terms like geodesy we're going to lose everybody except the 
20   people who are Geodesists or whatever they are.  So we got to 
21   put it into words of one syllable or something like that.  The 
22   harder part's going to be to get examples of where do we say -- 
23   and this is where the system really has fallen apart completely.  
24   And that's where I say the Athos I, I keep coming back to that 
25   example because there is a totally obvious example where the 
0249
 1   whole governmental system of assuring that we have a nice safe 
 2   harbor in the Delaware River just completely fell apart.  And 
 3   it's cost the insurers and the owners $240 million so far.  I 
 4   don't know, I guess the pollution's gone away down there and so 
 5   forth.  And the only result we've gotten out of it is that 
 6   stupid Congress put -- passed immediately new bills by Delaware 
 7   and Pennsylvania to make the liability higher for owners of 
 8   single hull tankers.  Well, hell, it wasn't their fault, it was 
 9   the fault of the government because of the system we've got.  
10   And so I think we've got to get those three things, what are the 
11   most wanted, what is the vision for the future and what are the 
12   specific examples.  And we don't have to have a whole raft of 
13   them, it would be better to have not more than one or two for 
14   each of the major points we want to make.  And if we can get 
15   those things on the way to being at least thrown out there for 
16   these.  And from my point of view if you say if we leave here 
17   giving Ann something like that or Ann -- you and Ann and Steve 
18   can work it out, and if you get that stuff -- feed that stuff 
19   back to us in the next 10 days or something like that and say I 
20   got a week to look at it.  That's the kind -- let's set some 
21   fairly nearby goals to get this thing done so that maybe by the 
22   time we get to Labor Day now then we're doing the policies.
23    MS. BOESE:  Right, that's what I basically 
24   (indiscernible).
25    MR. GRAY:  That's the way I would do it.  And we can get 
0250
 1   Dick West and Rick Larrabee who -- I mean both, not -- because 
 2   Rick sent you a note too I think, said this is a good start.  
 3   And with the input that those two guys have I think that would 
 4   be very helpful.  
 5    MS. BOESE:  Well, should we tackle one and spend another 
 6   25 minutes on it, should we try one?  Or go with the most wanted 
 7   list maybe.  
 8    MR. RAINEY:  Yeah.  I think we can see what we can do.  
 9   Just -- Glenn, go ahead.  Or.....
10    MR. BOLEDOVICH:  As you folks know tomorrow I'm going to 
11   be presenting on a reauthorization of the HSIA, which is another 
12   kind of major project where we're looking for your input on in 
13   terms of where we're going to go with this reauthorization.  My 
14   first kind of thought is probably not the best thing to put that 
15   on your plate when they're trying to do this report.  My second 
16   thought is this report may actually provide me with a lot of the 
17   guidance that I'm seeking.  So, I could curtail my presentation 
18   of it tomorrow, I have two hours on the agenda, maybe we can get 
19   through that in an hour and you have an hour tomorrow morning 
20   you could pick this issue back up.  So I'm offering back an hour 
21   of my time tomorrow basically.
22    MR. RAINEY:  Well, Glenn, I appreciate that.  I mean part 
23   of what we're doing this whole meeting is exactly that, it's an 
24   attempt to balance across -- you know, hearing from the public 
25   stakeholders in Alaska as we talked about how much -- you know, 
0251
 1   how important these services are up here, getting, you know, the 
 2   presentations.  Glenn's on the HSIA and Dave's on NGS.  All of 
 3   this stuff and the earlier talk about some of budget issues, all 
 4   of this stuff I think feeds in and is relevant to the work we've 
 5   been doing and what we want to say and have a marker out there 
 6   hopefully and time for a lot of these events that are going to 
 7   be picking up, the 200 anniversary, the HSIA reauthorization, 
 8   all the things we're talking about.  So I think we're onto 
 9   something that's timely and appropriate.  And so definitely 
10   that's what we want to do tomorrow is to, you know, continue to 
11   work on this.  Yeah, did you have a comment?
12    MR. WHITING:  Yeah, this is Larry Whiting.  I think we 
13   ought to listen to his presentation on the HSIA and put this one 
14   off a little bit.  I'd rather listen to the whole presentation 
15   on the HSIA reauthorization.  But, you know, this is a good 
16   document, it's a start.  You have -- give us at least -- no more 
17   than a week to get our comments back in, that's what I think.  I 
18   don't pay attention to this thing a week after this is over 
19   with.  You know, the e-mails come in, I glance through them, I 
20   read them, but I don't pay much attention to it more than a week 
21   after and more than a week before.  And I'm retired.
22    MR. BOLEDOVICH:  Larry, I -- Glenn again.  I wasn't going 
23   to curtail the presentation itself, maybe just the discussion 
24   about it.  Because I think your priorities for these programs 
25   are going to dovetail very well into that.  But I'm certainly 
0252
 1   going to be looking for some feedback from you folks a little 
 2   bit.  Anyway, I thought -- I know you're kind of -- you're 
 3   scrunched for time and you've got this report on your plate, I 
 4   was just going to (indiscernible).
 5    CAPTAIN HICKMAN:  Scott, I think.....
 6    MR. RAINEY:  Yeah.
 7    CAPTAIN HICKMAN:  .....I think Ann's probably cringing 
 8   again about Larry wanting to go home and all of us send in our  
 9   15 different ideas again.  I think we need to take the time and 
10   go over this punch list tomorrow as a group, not 15 individual 
11   thoughts after the meeting here.
12    MR. RAINEY:  Well, absolutely.  And we're going to do that 
13   as far as we can.  As to what our.....
14    CAPTAIN HICKMAN:  Can I -- yeah, and I think maybe our 
15   individual thoughts, Larry, might be on typical what we were 
16   trying to show, the individual examples.....
17    MR. RAINEY:  Right, right.
18    CAPTAIN HICKMAN:  .....thank you, of what we  -- what -- 
19   the point we're trying to make.  I don't think we really need to 
20   all go home and come up with 15 other ideas of how this should 
21   be presented.
22    MS. BOESE:  Well, another existing idea, and I have no 
23   idea if this is appropriate or if it'll work.  But we could, you 
24   know, kind of split up into a couple little work groups during 
25   some -- a period.  If we determine maybe today, tonight, now, 
0253
 1   that certain number of people will look at chapters one and two 
 2   and the other ones will look at three and four and then have a 
 3   chance to look at it tonight, talk tomorrow and then we'll have 
 4   had some input in a smaller group than a large group and maybe 
 5   it'll work a little better that way.  Does that make sense?
 6    MR. RAINEY:  We've got -- on the schedule we've got till 
 7   5:30 before we interfere with any, you know, of our following 
 8   activities.  And I don't know if there's any additional public 
 9   comment from what we had.  But does the panel have the energy 
10   now to tack -- to jump in, as Ann's suggesting, on a couple -- 
11   either the most wanted or -- you know, I agree with what Bill's 
12   saying, those to me seem to be that's the area we need to focus 
13   on.  We need to figure out if we're going to have this section 
14   on vision.  We talked a little this morning about weaving in, 
15   you know, some of the other things.  But we need to start 
16   filling in some fundamental things there or we could also 
17   discuss on the most wanted list if we wanted to talk about that.  
18   But we have the time here, I think we should probably try to get 
19   something out of it to get some momentum going.
20    CAPTAIN MYRTIDIS:  Scott, I think if there are no other 
21   public comments the idea of smaller groups could be very 
22   productive.  I think we should take a five minute break, 
23   everybody's tired, it's the end of the day, come back, quickly 
24   assign a few people to take one, two tasks and get done with 
25   that.  I mean we cannot go back in the beginning over and 
0254
 1   over....
 2    MS. BOESE:  No, no.
 3    CAPTAIN MYRTIDIS:  .....and over again.
 4    MS. BOESE:  No.
 5    CAPTAIN MYRTIDIS:  I'm personally tired of it.
 6    MR. RAINEY:  Okay, I agree.  Andrew.
 7    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  Just one -- I agree with Minas but I 
 8   think after we do the most wanted list because I think if you do 
 9   the most wanted list first then everyone has the focus of where 
10   you're going to go with the rest of the document.  If we cull 
11   this list down to whatever amount we do then that's kind of 
12   going to be the focus of the document, right?  Does that make 
13   sense.
14    MR. RAINEY:  Okay.
15    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  So I would think if we do that and then 
16   -- you know, okay, then people have -- you know, that's what 
17   you're focusing on is these issues.
18    MR. RAINEY:  Okay.  All right.  Let's do that, let's just 
19   take a quick five minute break then and then we can reconvene 
20   and take a look at the most wanted list.
21    (Off record at 4:56 p.m.)
22    (On record at 5:10 p.m.)
23    MR. RAINEY:  Okay, seeing no -- we had some questions on 
24   that there were anymore public comments.  There's no more folks 
25   here signed up so I -- what I'd like to do, a lot of talk at the 
0255
 1   break, I know we're all tired.  What I'd like to do is set this 
 2   up to take the major sections tomorrow and get folks to take a 
 3   look at a particular section, if you've got a section that you'd 
 4   like to do.  I'd like to kind of just talk about now who can 
 5   provide -- who's interested in looking at a particular section 
 6   and -- with regard to coming up with some specific hard examples 
 7   that we talked about and then tomorrow morning after Glenn's 
 8   briefing on the HSIA we can break up into those groups for each 
 9   of the sections to capture what we can while we're here on 
10   people's ideas on those examples and then also take a look at 
11   the most wanted list.  So what I'd like to do maybe is.....
12    DR. LAPINE:  (Indiscernible - away from microphone).
13    MR. RAINEY:  Okay.  The issue is everybody is pretty well 
14   spent I think tonight and we're right up against our time where 
15   we've got to have time to transition into everything else that 
16   happens tonight.  So I'm not in disagreement, I think we're just 
17   simply not really going to be able to get started on that from 
18   the comments I got at the break.  So, yes, before we leave here 
19   we're going to discuss the most wanted list and get people's 
20   take on that.  We're going to talk about specific examples in 
21   the section.  And I have another idea.  One of the things that 
22   happened in the draft and -- to get it to this point is that 
23   everybody had a start on it from -- kind of from a different 
24   thing and everybody meaning -- I got to be involved to try to 
25   pull some of my ideas together.  We had some copy, NOAA -- Ann 
0256
 1   took a start on some things.  The whole suggested section here 
 2   that's blank on the visioning thing, I would like to toss out my 
 3   idea that I'm not sure we even want that extra session.  To me 
 4   it gives us -- it takes us back to the beginning and it seems to 
 5   me if we flush out the sections that we have with specific 
 6   examples and we have our recommendations on that and that all 
 7   feeds into the most wanted list, I mean that tells a story I 
 8   think of what the vision that we see or, you know, the near term 
 9   deliverables.  So to have a separate suggested section on, you 
10   know, the future vision and all of that to me sets up -- sets us 
11   up with a task that maybe we don't even need to go there because 
12   we're doing that by nature of, you know, flushing out the other 
13   existing things.  So, I mean, again, I'd like to discuss that 
14   with you so we get this thing scoped.  But those are the things, 
15   I agree with what Bill is saying as far as where we need to 
16   focus our attention, you know, while we're here.  So I'm not 
17   saying we're not going to do the most wanted list but I think 
18   let's take a look at the sections, at who can take a look 
19   particularly at each of the sections and then tomorrow we'll 
20   talk about the most wanted list, ideas for the section and that.  
21   Andy.
22    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  I wonder if we should agree on the 
23   sections before we divide them up.
24    MR. RAINEY:  Okay.  Well, I mean as we've got the titles.  
25   Basically -- everybody has it in front of them, right?  So 
0257
 1   that's -- the starting point will be what we have there.  Okay.  
 2   So we would have a separate discussion on the most wanted list 
 3   to try to get that.....
 4    MR. GRAY:  The letter from the Chair is the first one, 
 5   right?  And then -- the letter from the Chair is the first 
 6   thing, other than the title.  And then you got the most wanted 
 7   list.  And I don't think -- are those sections?  And then you've 
 8   got critical connections and that goes on for several -- and 
 9   then you've got hydrographic services.  And I don't know what 
10   sections are and what chapters are in this.  So I don't.....
11    MS. BOESE:  I think if we break up into five groups of 
12   four, I think there are 20 people here, and basically assign.  
13   Group one will look at the letter and critical connections.  
14   Group two will look at hydrographic services starting on page 
15   six.  So that tonight you can take a look at it individually, 
16   then at 9:15 tomorrow when Glen has so kindly given us his hour, 
17   an hour of his time, you can meet as a group, write some ideas 
18   down, present them to the whole panel.  I'll take your sheet, 
19   I'll also be listening, and we can come to some -- we will have 
20   gone through it as a panel once.  Do you think -- will that 
21   work, can we do that?  Okay.  So.....
22    MR. GRAY:  (Indiscernible - away from microphone).  
23    MS. BOESE:  Yeah, let's -- without the most wanted group 
24   one will be pages two through five.  So group one would be -- we 
25   can do it just around the table or -- who would like to work on 
0258
 1   that, five people.  One, two, and just -- I'm not going to write 
 2   your names down, three.  We need another person.  Four.  Andrew.  
 3   Okay.  All right.  We're onto the next one.  Okay, page six and 
 4   seven.  
 5    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  (Indiscernible - away from 
 6   microphone).
 7    MS. BOESE:  Okay.  There's one on six and seven, there's 
 8   two on six -- three, do I hear a four.  Four.  Great.  Page 
 9   eight and nine which is NOAA emergency response.  That'll be -- 
10   okay, we need four people to work on page eight and nine that 
11   aren't working on another section necessarily.  Who isn't in a 
12   group yet?  Okay, one, two, three, one more.  Four.  Okay.  
13    CAPTAIN ARMSTRONG:  I still have a fundamental problem 
14   with the categories that we have here.  I just don't think they 
15   match what we're trying to say.  If we have 10 most wanted that 
16   doesn't say anything about resilient coastal communities what in 
17   the world do we have a section about resilient coastal 
18   communities for?  Similarly we don't have any -- if we agreed 
19   earlier today that we were going to talk about the full scope of 
20   ocean mapping in NOAA, we don't have anything that's talking 
21   about resource support or habitat mapping or all of those other 
22   things that are involved in the integrated ocean and coastal 
23   mapping, we don't have a section on that.  I just -- I don't 
24   think we're at the point of dividing up the sections yet, I 
25   think -- you know, maybe I'm alone but I don't think we got the 
0259
 1   sections right.
 2    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I agree.
 3    MR. RAINEY:  All right.  Then let me ask this then.  Could 
 4   everyone -- what we'll do, we'll start at the top with the most 
 5   wanted list and we'll work it out until we've got a consensus 
 6   and then we'll see where we are with that as far as if we need 
 7   to change that.  Okay?  All right.  And we'll do that as a -- in 
 8   plenary so to speak and then we can break from there.  Okay.  
 9   All right.  Okay, so if everybody then would focus on that, you 
10   know, to the extent we can tonight, and we'll pick up there in 
11   the morning and then we'll see where we are, we'll move forward.
12    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  Scott, Andrew McGovern.  Maybe real 
13   quick we could probably throw out a bunch of these -- even if we 
14   can't finalize the most wanted list now we could probably cull 
15   it.  You know, as Bill said before, there are some of the things 
16   that are good, they're just not a most wanted.  So maybe we 
17   could very quickly go through these and say, you know, before we 
18   get into the weeds these three can just, you know.
19    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  (Indiscernible - away from 
20   microphone).
21    MR. RAINEY:  Okay.
22    MR. GRAY:  Bullet number three, eliminate the backlog of 
23   critical hydro -- that should be one of them.  Number four, five 
24   -- number six, expand existing real time tide, current, et 
25   cetera.  The bottom one on that -- on the left, conduct full 
0260
 1   bottom coverage in the federally maintained channel.  Those to 
 2   me are the three most important things that I feel should be 
 3   done.  I would add to that something and I don't know how to put 
 4   it.  But that somehow emphasizes -- as Elaine pointed out, 
 5   there's really nothing in this whole paper about the 
 6   recreational community and what we're going to do on that.  But 
 7   I think it should somehow appear in there, something they'd be 
 8   able to relate to.  Because I'm not sure that these ones that I 
 9   think are the three most important are that important to the 
10   recreational community but there may be something else that is.  
11   Then things that I would be happy to dispense with is the second 
12   one on the first column, improve the efficiency of NOAA's 
13   contracting process.  Well, sure, go ahead and do it, doesn't 
14   have to be a most wanted.  I don't know where I come out on 
15   replace the aging fleet.  But over on the right hand column, the 
16   first full one there, implement new surveying and mapping, so 
17   forth.  I don't think that's that important.  Increase 
18   investment in emerging mapping.  That's pretty vague.  Develop 
19   new and expanded partnerships to enhance -- that's pretty vague.  
20   I would either turn all those into one or just get rid of them 
21   for now because these are just do the job you're supposed to do.  
22   They're not things that I think are going to be big money, big 
23   ticket items which we really need money whereas those first 
24   three I pointed out, those things you really need some dough to 
25   do them.  And that's what you're trying to do with this thing I 
0261
 1   think.  So that's kind of where I come out as a -- that's why I 
 2   made the suggestion that I don't think we want 13 items in this 
 3   thing.  So that's a proposal, or the start of a proposal.
 4    DR. LAPINE:  I would take the three that Bill doesn't 
 5   think are very important on the second column, the implement new 
 6   surveying mapping, increase investment and develop new and 
 7   expanded partnership and build one item out of those three.
 8    MR. GRAY:  Fine.
 9    DR. LAPINE:  That'll (indiscernible).
10    MR. DASLER:  I agree with that.  I was -- what I was going 
11   to add because the problem is we're collecting more data than we 
12   can process and get on the chart and we do need to address that.
13    MR. RAINEY:  What if, folks, if we went and you numbered 
14   these, you prioritized them and you crossed out the ones that 
15   you didn't think merited a number and then we can consolidate 
16   that tomorrow rather than getting everybody's kind of variation.  
17   And if you have something that is not on the list.....
18    DR. LAPINE:  Scott, I don't think we need to eliminate 
19   any, I think they need to be folded in.
20    MR. RAINEY:  Okay.  But.....
21    DR. LAPINE:  Replace the aging fleet, improve the 
22   efficiency of contracting all contributes to eliminating the 
23   backlog of critical hydrographic services.  And same thing with 
24   the shoreline one.  So what we need to do is build four or five 
25   overreaching thoughts which then we could have four or five 
0262
 1   sections in here that address each one of them.  And we don't 
 2   have to throw away anything, kind of got to rearrange it a 
 3   little bit.  
 4    MS. BOESE:  Can we get those four -- can we work and 
 5   consolidate and get some wording down for, you know, folding 
 6   these three together, could we do that tomorrow at 9:15? 
 7    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I think we could do that maybe even 
 8   this evening.....
 9    MS. BOESE:  Okay.
10    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  .....in those groups you were talking 
11   about.
12    MS. BOESE:  That'd be great.
13    MR. GRAY:  I don't want to talk anymore tonight.
14    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Speak for yourself, huh?
15    MR. GRAY:  You can have the room to yourself.  We're going 
16   to the (indiscernible).
17    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Just following.....
18    MR. SKINNER:  I don't know if this is on, I guess it is.  
19   I mean I'm happy to take a stab at putting together like the top 
20   five based on -- and five, there's no rhyme or reason to it, 
21   it's just a good number, based on what Bill and Lou have said.  
22   And people can start with that tomorrow if you want.
23    DR. LAPINE:  So -- this is Lou again.  Tom, are what you 
24   saying is the three that Bill suggested plus the amalgamation of 
25   the three I suggested plus recreational boating are the five?
0263
 1    MR. SKINNER:  I think -- well, I would have taken the 
 2   three that -- Bill's three from the right, one from column A, 
 3   three in the first column and then combining the three that you 
 4   and John were talking about and then one that talked about the 
 5   other uses of this data as the fifth recommendation and then 
 6   that section we would address the things that I think Andy was 
 7   talking about.  That we don't have the, what is it, protecting 
 8   communities or resilient communities and emergency response.  
 9   We'll be able to address how this data could be used in other 
10   applications but the top four would be navigational related.  
11   And if I had heard someone make this offer I would say yes and 
12   run for the bar.
13    MR. RAINEY:  That sounds fine Tom, thanks.  Andrew.
14    CAPTAIN MCGOVERN:  Yeah, I think, you know, you can -- I 
15   mean if you took that -- the one bullet, the first bullet Bill 
16   said, eliminate the backlog of critical hydrographic surveys.  
17   What fits under that?  Bullet number one, bullet number one, 
18   bullet number four, bullet number five.  And on the second 
19   column the implementation of surveying and those three that Lou 
20   mentioned before, they all kind of fit under eliminate the 
21   backlog to critical hydrographic surveys, right?  Every single 
22   one of those fits under that one bullet.  That's how you do it, 
23   take all those things.  Yeah, so maybe we -- you know, that's a 
24   big bullet, eliminate the backlog of hydrographic surveys by, 
25   you know, all those things and then -- you know, a couple of the 
0264
 1   others and you could -- I think five is probably a good -- you 
 2   know, you could just say, you know, this is the five most wanted 
 3   and we could fit everything we want into five -- they may be 
 4   bigger bullets but there'll be five bullets.  Then you can 
 5   expand them back in that -- maybe the five -- maybe the 
 6   sections, we got five sections that match to five most wanted 
 7   and those five sections then flush out.  You know, so maybe we 
 8   don't have to say it, maybe we got to think a real catchy -- 
 9   eliminate the backlog of critical hydrographic services, that's 
10   it.  And then the section takes all those other bullets and 
11   brings them in and.....
12    MR. SKINNER:  I think -- one of the ways I thinking of it 
13   was maybe just have -- I like eliminate the backlog of critical 
14   hydrographic surveys.  And then sort of an indentation of like, 
15   okay, you know, this is what you need to do to do this, very, 
16   very short, and then go on to the next one so that if someone is 
17   just looking through it they're like, okay, here are the main 
18   points.  If they're like, well, I don't really understand that 
19   there's something that says this is really what we mean here.  
20   But I think it's really important that -- to limit the number of 
21   most wanted because then it sort of -- the message gets lost in 
22   the sauce.
23    MS. BOESE:  I think that would be just excellent.  We 
24   accept the offer.
25    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Well, I'm not voting but I suggest you 
0265
 1   take up this offer.
 2    MS. BOESE:  Absolutely.  
 3    MR. RAINEY:  Okay.  Okay, Barbara has an announcement for 
 4   us for tonight.
 5    MS. HESS:  (Indiscernible - away from microphone).
 6    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  What's the dress code for tonight?
 7    CAPTAIN BARNUM:  Consensus here that we dress down, 
 8   business casual, so we can eliminate the ties if you so wish.  
 9    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  (Indiscernible - away from 
10   microphone).
11    CAPTAIN BARNUM:  You're welcome to wear it.  I'll have the 
12   same outfit on.
13    UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  (Indiscernible - away from 
14   microphone).
15    CAPTAIN BARNUM:  And Barbara already talked about the 
16   logistics for tom -- or tonight for the steakhouse.  One other 
17   thing, I was talking to Jack, it rung a bell about the 
18   priorities.  And one of the points our Secretary, Secretary of 
19   Commerce, of which this report may be provided to him, and that 
20   is too many priorities are no priorities.  And so that's one of 
21   his points.  So if we want this to resonate with him I think 
22   you're on the right track.
23    MR. RAINEY:  Okay.  Thanks very much.
24    (Off record at 5:30 p.m.)