09.14.06

Senate Passes Comprehensive Cantwell-Backed Port Security Package

Legislation includes Cantwell provisions to improve ferry security, test new scanning technology for cargo, boost security inspections at foreign ports

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) applauded the Senate’s approval Thursday of a comprehensive port security package that would bolster cargo screening at domestic as well as foreign ports, establish minimum security standards, and provide incentives to encourage shippers and importers to improve security beyond minimum standards. The legislation, introduced by Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Patty Murray (D-WA) and backed by Cantwell, would also authorize $400 million in grants to improve port security, establish a pilot program at three foreign ports to test systems to scan 100 percent of cargo, and help smooth the continuation of commerce following an attack. The package also contains Cantwell-sponsored provisions to boost ferry security, inspect security at foreign ports, and scan cargo loaded onto rail cars for radiation.

“This legislation will take much-needed strides toward making our ports more secure and our country safer,” said Cantwell, the senior Democrat on the Senate Coast Guard Subcommittee. “We need to deliver more resources and develop better technology to bolster security at our ports and make sure our trading partners are doing all they can to secure ports in their countries. Ports create jobs and drive economic growth for the entire Northwest. More than 100,000 workers in the Puget Sound area depend on the ports of Seattle and Tacoma for their jobs. To protect our economy and the safety of all Americans, we have an obligation to make certain our ports are secure.”

The port security legislation passed on a 98 to 0 vote Thursday evening. The legislation will now go to a conference committee where differences between the Senate bill and a separate port security package previously passed by the House will be worked out.

Thursday afternoon, Cantwell spoke on the Senate floor in favor of the bill as well as amendments she had offered that were included in the bill late Wednesday night. One of the amendments offered by Cantwell and passed by the Senate would authorize the Coast Guard to add the personnel needed to complete the inspection of foreign ports by the end of 2008 and maintain a two-year cycle for re-inspection. At present, there are only 34 Coast Guard inspectors who review security at foreign ports that ship cargo to the U.S. and the Coast Guard has only been able to inspect ports in about 59 out of the 140 countries that trade with the U.S. The agency currently maintains a re-inspection cycle of 4 to 5 years.

The second Cantwell amendment would improve security at ports that load containers directly onto and off of rail cars. Currently, U.S. customs officials do not scan these containers. Cantwell’s amendment would establish a test center at a U.S. port to test technologies that can scan rail containers for radiation. Many container ports and transport companies are moving to on-dock rail systems to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and lessen the environmental impact of using trucks. The Port of Tacoma helped lead the way in this transition as the first port in the U.S. to develop an on-dock intermodal rail yard.

Also included in the bill is language authored by Cantwell to improve security on Washington State Ferries by directing the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to work with their Canadian counterparts and ferry operators to develop a plan to inspect passengers and vehicles on each U.S.-bound ferry before the ferry departs from Canada. At present, explosives screenings take place when passengers and vehicles traveling from Canada disembark at ports in the U.S.

[Cantwell’s remarks as delivered on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon follow below]

I rise to discuss the Port Security Act of 2006, the underlying bill we’re discussing in the senate here this afternoon.

I want to start by commending the steadfast dedication of my colleague, Senator Murray, from the state of Washington, and Senator Collins for their hard work in moving this legislation through the Senate, and certainly Senator Stevens and Inouye for their leadership on this issue.

I want to say that Senator Murray has done great work both here in Washington, D.C. and at home in the State of Washington to close security gaps. And I have enjoyed working with her to make sure that our ports in Washington state are more secure.

Mr. President, port security ought not to be an afterthought or an extra security measure when we are talking about securing our borders or securing our communities. It should be one of our key priorities. Washington state knows how critical these ports are to our economy and to our way of life. There are ports all along our shore lines from Seattle to Vancouver, Bellingham and other cities. They create jobs. They drive economic growth for the entire Northwest. And in the Seattle-Tacoma area, the ports are the third-busiest in the nation, with over 11,000 containers passing through Seattle and Tacoma daily.

That’s more than four million containers a year. That’s more than 100,000 workers in the Puget Sound area including longshoremen and freight forwarders and others who depend on the ports of Seattle and Tacoma for their jobs. And certainly they want to see them safe and secure. Last year the ports of Seattle and Tacoma combined to move more than $45 billion in revenue from imports and $12 billion in U.S. exports. But these are not just the homes—these ports—to international trade.

Puget Sound is also the home to America’s largest ferry transportation system, with more than 26 million passengers and 11 million vehicles traveling throughout Puget Sound and to and from British Colombia. Despite these numbers of trade and economic development and of passenger movement and cargo container movement, there are still clear vulnerabilities.

For too long, too little has been done, I believe, to protect our ports and to improve the protections on our ferries. This bill will take a step forward on both of those issues. Right now, we are inspecting the contents of less than 3 percent of the more than six million containers entering our country each year. Most of this inspection occurs after the container is off-loaded and sitting on the docks of a U.S. port. The reality is that by then it is too late. And so working on point-of-origin issues is very important as my colleagues Senators Murray and Collins understand.

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which Senators Coleman and Levin lead, issued a report in March that stated we are only inspecting 0.34 percent of all containers destined for the United States overseas, and of those that were considered high-risk containers, we are only inspecting about 17.5 percent.

Given this low inspection rate, it is really no surprise that each year we find illegal immigrants stowed away on cargo containers destined for the United States. This spring, 22 Chinese stowaways were apprehended at the port of Seattle. So if illegal immigrants know that they have a good shot at entering the United States in cargo containers because of our failure to inspect the contents, it ought to be no great leap of imagination to expect that terrorist organizations might also have the same idea. In fact, the C.I.A. has reported that a weapon of mass destruction is most likely to be delivered in the United States by a cargo container entering a seaport. But the problems extend beyond our failure to inspect cargo.

We have no standards for container locks and seals. We have inadequate funding for critical research and development of screening technology. We have no international security standard for conducting terror and background checks on port workers. That's why, again, the point-of-origin issue and working internationally is so important.

The accuracy of cargo manifest information submitted to customs is also a major problem, especially when we're using this information as part of a system – the Automated Targeting System or ATS – to identify high-risk cargo. We recently, at the Port of Seattle had this made clear to us. That is when in August, Customs identified two suspicious containers and set them aside for inspection. They thought that there were things contained in there that bomb-sniffing dogs detected were explosives. Thankfully for us in the Puget Sound area, it was a false alarm.

But it made all too clear the potential for disasters at our ports with today's standards. With the high risk of terrorists placing weapons of mass destruction in containers during transit, we need to begin securing container doors with tamper-proof locks and seals, instead of what we are doing today, which sometimes can often be just a ten-cent zip lock or the equivalent.

Many containers are filled with cargo from more than one source, which also makes this transfer and tracking challenging. In fact, during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, the C.E.O. of the Port of Seattle, Mic Dinsmore, put it this way -- quote -- "as ships make its way to the U.S., it might well stop at several other ports. Throughout this process, at least seven different handlers may have access to the containers before it even arrives in the United States. Every stage in the supply change creates additional hurdles for monitoring this cargo.

That’s why we need to make improvements, as this legislation does, to improve the systems that hold the shippers accountable for accurate information like is required under the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism. C-TPAT is a good start. But as has been reported, there is more to be done, particularly validating the participants of this program. Senator Murray has been a leader in this area in working with Operation Safe Commerce, a program to identify ways to better secure the supply chain, including cargo containers. But, Mr. President, these threats are real, and we can’t wait any longer.

This legislation makes important critical improvements to the current regime. It authorizes $400 million for port security grants and it makes improvements to the Container Security Initiative, a program that is important right now for inspecting cargo, as I said, at the point of origin, and with the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program, the public-private initiative that secures that supply chain.

This legislation directs the department to establish minimum standards for container security, and it authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to accelerate the deployment of radiation detection equipment. It also authorizes the testing of systems to improve scanning of containers overseas. To make this possible, I was proud to cosponsor this legislation earlier this summer in directing the Department of Homeland Security to conduct a pilot program where we have seen at the Port of Hong Kong good results from this technology that I think will help us move closer to our goal for 100 percent container inspection.

Now, this pilot program is just initiated at three foreign ports, and we’ll need to work hard at expanding it. This underlying bill also includes language to help us in improving the screening for our ferry systems in Washington state, particularly those coming into the United States from Canada. Right now some ferry runs from Canada aren’t being screened for explosives before departing for the United States. In an F.B.I. Report in 2004, the National Threat Assessment named vehicle-borne explosives as the type of weapon that Al Qaeda would most likely use for a maritime attack. The lack of explosives screening not just impacts the passengers on board the ferries, but those communities and coastal regions where this ferry transportation exists. That’s why this inclusion in the underlying bill is so important for us in the Northwest.

To build on many of the other critical provisions in this bill, there are two amendments that I offered that were included. The first would improve inspection of foreign ports, the point of origin for cargo entering the United States. The U.S. has an obligation to ensure that our international trading partners have strict security standards and a way to enforce them.

We’re only going to be as safe as the inspection process that our foreign partners implement. The Coast Guard is authorized under the Maritime Transportation Security Act to conduct inspections of foreign countries and their ports to validate their compliance with the International Ship and Port Facility Security code (ISPS).

Currently the Coast Guard only has 34 inspectors as part of the agency’s international port security program to review the more than 140 countries that are shipping cargo to the United States. To date the Coast Guard has only been able to inspect ports in about 59 out of those 140 countries. We need to reinforce this relationship. We need to maintain a standard with these foreign governments, these ports, these private sector entities to ensure that we have adequate intelligence and security measures and that they are in place before these ships heave and are destined for the United States. That’s why I’m proud to sponsor an amendment with Senator Snowe, the Chairwoman of the Coast Guard Subcommittee that would authorize the Coast Guard to add additional personnel to complete the inspection of foreign ports by the end of 2008 and maintain a two-year cycle for re-inspection. Currently, the Coast Guard maintains a re-inspection cycle about every four to five years, so this basic step, I believe, is critical to gathering adequate information—gathering adequate information about cargo entering the United States before it reaches our ports. It also helps us identify countries that are not compliant with International standards and helps us identify those high-risk vessels and cargoes. But we have to also improve at home our ability to scan for those containers that are going to be loaded onto rail cars.

So the second amendment, that I’m glad the managers of this underlying package have accepted, directs the Department of Homeland Security to establish an Intermodal Rail Radiation Detection Test Center and test technology that can scan containers on rail for radiation. Now, currently, the U.S. Customs officials do not scan containers that are loaded directly onto rail. For us in the Pacific Northwest, this is an important issue since so much of our cargo comes through our ports and onto rail systems and is then moved throughout the United States. Though scanning containers transported on rail cars does present a formidable challenge we must step up to that challenge.

The 2006 Government Accountability Office report on combating nuclear smuggling stated—quote—‘to speed seaport development and to help ensure that future rail deployments proceed on time, we recommend that the Secretary of Homeland Security in cooperation with the Commissioner of C.B.P. develop procedures for effectively screening rail containers and implementing new technologies to facilitate this.’

Just a few weeks ago, I had a chance to tour the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, where they are teaming with customs and border protection to develop and test this technology to scan rail transport containers for radiation. Many container ports and transport companies are moving to on-dock rail systems to reduce the costs and improve efficiency and lessen the environmental impact of using trucks. So more and more of the container business is moving towards rail. For example, the Port at Tacoma helped lead the way in this transition as the first port in the U.S. to develop an on-dock intermodal rail yard. So today, approximately 72 percent of the cargo arriving at the Port of Tacoma is transported by rail directly from the terminal. So we want to make sure that there is a screening process available that will help us make sure that the United States and cargo rail-transported shipments are more secure. This underlying language in the bill will help us get the right technology test done and the right deployment of the technology.

Mr. President, since 9/11 we have taken many steps to enhance the security infrastructure of our seaports, but further improvements can and must be made. We know the challenges that are facing us, and we know what would happen if a terrorist struck our ports. Millions in my state live, work, and commute around Puget Sound. Many are mere yards from the port, making it a very devastating impact on the populace of Puget Sound if such an environmental disaster would happen. And the Economic impact, I should say, would also be disastrous. We saw in 2002, when the west coast had a closure of a few of our ports, it cost our national economy $1 billion a day. So the Ports of Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, Everett and our other major ports are gateways to supplies and products coming to the entire nation through the State of Washington. Without them, everything from jobs, productivity and economic growth slows down or stops. By making a real commitment to improving security at our ports and the cargoes that move throughout our country, we will have a more secure nation. We will create jobs and a faster economic growth for the entire country. So I want to commend the managers of this legislation for their commitment in moving this legislation at this time and continuing to push on this difficult task. But I also want to remind my colleagues, as one port security expert said, Stephen Flynn of the Council on Foreign Relations—quote—“We are living on borrowed time.” So I believe the measures in this Port Security legislation are long overdue, and I hope my colleagues work to see it passed this afternoon.

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