Mark Begich

If we have a Magnuson-Stevens Act which is designed to manage our fisheries to sustainable levels and those that reach those sustainable criteria, then, in my view, that is the ultimate certification versus some third-party group…

When we built our Constitution, we wanted to make sure we developed it for Alaskans; sustainable, long-term, generational.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your new guidelines. Thank you for your follow-up you will be doing.

This is a huge issue that has caused a huge stir, as you can imagine, my state especially.

We commend Senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, and this Committee, for recent efforts to pass federal legislation targeted to resolve specific problems and to address region-specific challenges.

This legislation would enable many of our people to maintain their subsistence way of life without facing burdensome fees that many cannot afford.

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That would be great.

I get that, but the language does not prohibit the State from paying for it or does it?

In a broader sense for mitigation.

We do not care who the roads are owned by. We are going to prioritize them at the same prioritization of what's a risk.

The end result was, to be very frank with you, in this city, we built more roads in 5 years than we built in 20.

When there are floods or there are lack of resources now coming because of erosion or flood or other activities, they are unable to survive.

By mitigating the future, by moving those homes, we prevented the homes you rebuilt from being flooded.

Our greatest risks are the ones that we do not anticipate and for which we do not prepare.

The Federal Government had a hand in this.

The impact is much more dramatic than just a few homes. It is the ability to survive.

Is it financial resources? Is it expertise? Is it expertise within the Tribes?

Can you, for the Committee, at some point, prepare something that explains doing a demonstration project, what it might entail, what kind of agency coordination and what kind of costing would be required?

So the real-time forecasting, and this is very interesting what you are talking about, because I can imagine NOAA folks are just ecstatic about this kind of information that they can get their hands on.

To do better planning and strategies?

I mean, there's not enough resource we are putting into this kind of research, is that a fair statement?

I was just over the area probably now 2 weeks ago with the Secretary of Interior and we flew to the Arctic.

It is not just a little bit of, people think that well, it is just a little bit of dirt falling off.