Duncan Faircloth: “I commend the Chairman on this bill, and for his attention to providing funding to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum…”

“I commend the Chairman on this bill, and for his attention to providing funding to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, a public, nonprofit, educational institution, designed for Hatteras Island, one of North Carolina's Outer Bank islands. The Museum is dedicated to the preservation, advancement and presentation of the maritime history and shipwrecks of the Outer Banks, from 1524 until the present. Over three million tourists visit the Outer Banks each year, the vast majority of them interstate visitors. It is expected that approximately 100,000 tourists would visit the Museum, thus paying the full cost of running it, since a modest fee would be charged. The Museum has received federal, state, local and private funding in the past. Earlier this decade, Congress appropriated $800,000 from NOAA's construction budget towards this project. I wish to clarify that the bill's provision of $1,500,000 from NOAA's facilities budget to the 'Outer Banks Community Foundation on the condition that these funds are matched by a non-Federal source' is intended solely to be passed through to the Museum.”