Coast Guard Lists Toward Security Duty

The Coast Guard spent 2,263 fewer duty hours on search and rescue this spring and 4,322 fewer hours than last year on drug interdiction, fanning concerns that port security duties will diminish traditional missions.

A congressional analysis--among the first to measure trade-offs among competing priorities as a result of the war on terrorism--found that Coast Guard boats and aircraft devoted 9% fewer operational hours to rescue missions from April through June of this year, compared with the same period last year.

Other missions were squeezed harder, from drug interdiction, which saw a 15% drop in hours, to environmental protection, which plunged by 53%.

Instead, Coast Guard units spent 30,805 additional hours on port security--more than an eightfold increase.

“The traditional missions haven’t disappeared,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “We still need the Coast Guard to keep drugs and illegal migrants off our shores, to protect our environment ... and to protect the lives of our fishermen.”

Murray chairs the Senate transportation appropriations subcommittee, and her staff analyzed the data, the most recent available. An aide said the April-June period was picked to try to establish some distance from the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

Though port security has become a top responsibility since Sept. 11, Cmdr. Jim McPherson, a senior Coast Guard spokesman, said rescues will always take precedence.

“If we get a search-and-rescue case, we are going to prosecute it to the end,” McPherson said. “We would be able to shift assets from port security.” He also questioned whether comparing two three-month periods is enough.

No reports have emerged of lives lost at sea or rescue missions jeopardized as a result of security duties. And these days, there is hardly a federal agency that is not devoting more resources to security.

The Coast Guard, however, has a unique reputation for multi-tasking.

The service is the ambulance squad, police department, game warden and maintenance division of U.S. coastal waters, handling everything from regular inspections of signal buoys to nighttime rescues in pitching seas. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Coast Guard took on drug and migrant interdiction. Now, it is protecting the nation’s longest border--more than 95,000 miles of coastline--from terrorist attack.

The future of the Coast Guard has been one of the most contentious issues in the debate over creating a new Homeland Security Department. Some lawmakers oppose moving it from its home in the Transportation Department, fearing that it will lose its ability to handle several missions at a time. The new statistics are likely to become fodder in that debate.

“The Coast Guard operates in a zero-sum fashion.... [It] has been drawing down on its other major responsibilities in order to ramp up for port security,” said Michael Sciulla, a spokesman for BoatU.S., which represents 535,000 recreational boaters.

But Sciulla said a shift in priorities does not automatically have to compromise safety. Equipment and technology upgrades that the Coast Guard expects to receive for its anti-terrorism mission could also help rescuers to more easily zero in on radio signals from foundering boats.

“Their budget has been squeezed for many years, and now money is going to be thrown into homeland security,” Sciulla said. “The Coast Guard will have more manpower and newer equipment ... and that will benefit recreational boaters.”

But Murray and other lawmakers worry that a fundamental shift has already taken place in the way the Coast Guard sees itself.

“The [appropriations] committee is greatly concerned that the new emphasis on security ... means that the Coast Guard has no intention of restoring missions like drug interdiction” to their pre-Sept. 11 levels, the analysis said. “The committee does not agree ... that the taxpayer should be content with a diminished effort in the areas of marine safety, marine environmental protection, drug interdiction and fisheries enforcement.”

“In fairness, the Coast Guard responds to each and every call,” said a staffer who helped prepare the committee analysis. “But there are issues there. How well they respond has to do with how well their boats and aircraft are located. There are gray areas in terms of whether they are at their best.”

The panel approved a 20% increase in the Coast Guard’s operating budget and a 14% increase in procurement, but the funding bill is far from final passage.

The Coast Guard’s search-and-rescue program was facing difficulties even before the attacks. An audit last year by the Transportation Department inspector general found that rescue boat stations were understaffed and crews were working with aging equipment and little formal training. The inspector general launched another audit this summer, partly because of concerns that security duties would further erode the search-and-rescue program. Its findings have not been released.

McPherson and other Coast Guard officials said the service is managing to juggle its responsibilities by calling up reservists and enlisting the aid of local authorities and boaters.

Preliminary statistics this year indicate that the overall number of search-and-rescue cases is down. But the Coast Guard is also registering fewer false-alarm distress calls, and boaters have been advised to try to assist one another with minor problems before calling for help.

The amount of cocaine seized in drug interdiction operations is running behind last year’s figures, but more marijuana has been seized than in the previous federal fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2001.

“We understand people’s concerns, but what has made the Coast Guard successful is our flexibility,” McPherson said. “An AC-130 [aircraft] taking off from Clearwater, Fla., looking for migrants can easily shift into search and rescue, and if it sees a go-fast boat, it can do a law enforcement stop. Everybody is cross-trained.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Coast Guard Priorities

The Sept. 11 attacks have dramatically changed how the Coast Guard allots “operational hours” of its boats and aircraft. Operational hours, during second quarter of each year (April-June)

2001 2002 Percentage change

Port security 4,040 34,845 +763

Marine environmental protection 1,678 790 -53

Navigation infrastructure 38,425 29,133 -24

Fisheries enforcement 27,190 21,483 -21

Drug interdiction 28,207 23,885 -15

Search and rescue 24,371 22,108 -9

Source: U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee; graphics reporting by TOM REINKEN/Los Angeles Times