COAST GUARD SPENDING LESS TIME ON RESCUES

Port-Security Duties Are Up Eightfold, Post-9/11 Study Finds

Washington -- 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 limit
traditional missions.

A new 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 percent 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
percent drop in hours, to environmental protection, which plunged by 53
percent.

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 chosen for its distance from the immediate aftermath
of the terrorist attacks.

While port security has become a top responsibility since Sept. 11, Cmdr.
Jim McPherson, a senior Coast Guard spokesman, said rescues always will
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 now there is hardly a federal agency
that is not devoting more resources to security.

The Coast Guard, however, has a unique reputation for multitasking.

The service is the ambulance squad, police department, game warden and
maintenance division of U.S. coastal waters, handling everything from
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 -- 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 the Transportation Department, fearing it
will lose its ability to handle multiple missions. 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 need not compromise safety.
Equipment and technology upgrades that the Coast Guard expects to receive
for its anti-terrorism mission also could help rescuers 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 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 panel approved a 20 percent increase in the Coast Guard's operating
budget and a 14 percent increase in the procurement account, but the
funding bill is far from final passage.