RT: US Goverment Ignores Japanese Debris Heading this Way!

The United States is awaiting the arrival of debris three times its own size from Japan, but despite new objects washing up daily on the West Coast, Washington is "hoping" the problem will literally just disappear. Earlier this week, a 70-foot metal dock turned up on the Oregon shore. Japanese officials immediately identified its original home: The Japanese city of Misawa, which had been devastated by the tsunami in March 2011. The dock is only the forerunner of a much more dangerous wave of flotsam, Chris Pallister, who heads Gulf of Alaska Keeper, a coastal clean-up organization, told AP. "There are going to be a lot of drums full of chemicals that we won't be able to identify. I think this is far worse than any oil spill that we've ever faced on the West Coast or any other environmental disaster we've faced on the West Coast," continued Pallister, comparing the debris to the Exxon Valdez spill that devastated the region in 1989. West Coast politicians echoed the concerns of environmentalists, with Alaskan Democratic Senator Mark Begich calling the drift a "national emergency." He said the cleanup could cost $45 million. But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Ocean Service (NOAA), the organization responsible for such emergencies, only has $618,000 dedicated to tsunami debris removal. In fact, NOAA's entire budget is less than a tenth of the amount of necessary funds. It has said that it will be up to individual states to save their own beaches. In turn, considering the unpredictability of here the flotsam will land, individual states are hoping that the national government will create a central program from which resources can be allocated as needed. So, why hasn't the US government created such a program?