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Show 51 minders of the very difficult and personal cost that this drought is exacting. I appreciate your remarks. I think, Dr. Hayes, that this microphone is not going to work. Would you tap it and we'll see if it will. We will proceed with Dr. Hayes and then Mr. Ovard. STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL J. HAYES, CLIMATE IMPACTS SPECIALIST, NATIONAL DROUGHT MITIGATION CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA- LINCOLN Dr. HAYES. My name is Michael Hayes, I am a Climate Impact Specialist, National Drought Mitigation Center. I appreciate this opportunity to speak before the Committee today on issues related to long- term water and drought planning. As background, the National Drought Mitigation Center was formed at the University of Nebraska in 1995. The mission of the NDMC is to help people and institutions develop and implement measures to reduce or lessen long- term societal vulnerability to drought by proper planning and appropriate risk management techniques. There are six of us at the National Drought Mitigation Center: the director; two additional scientists, including myself; and the staff people. Drought has been a persistent feature, not only here in Utah but across the United States in the last couple of years. My first transparency shows some of the economic costs due to some of the recent droughts in particular areas of the country. Unfortunately, though, when you look at those costs, they are not complete and you won't see any costs from 2001 and 2002 on that list. This illustrates one of the challenges with drought and it is very difficult to quantify the impact due to drought, and that's because of the characteristics of drought. For example, you cannot quantify the problems, the chronic drought problems that, for example, are faced in Southern Utah right now. There is just no way to put a dollar amount onto those types of losses that these people are facing. FEMA, though, recently has estimated that the average annual losses caused by drought in the United States are between six and eight billion dollars. That's more than any other natural hazard. The recent drought events illustrate the country's vulnerability with drought and why we need to take a more risk management approach in dealing with drought to properly reduce some of these drought losses that we have across the U. S. One of the areas where we have been making progress with drought is in the monitoring arena. And Dr. Potter talked about that a little bit already this afternoon. Monitoring is very important because it tells you where we are, and where we might be going in dealing with the droughts. Another area where we have had a lot of success in recent years is in state drought planning. My second transparency shows the status of drought planning by state across the United States as of May this year. In 1982, three states had drought plans in the United States. Now there are 33 states in the gray and the blue shades that have some kind of drought plan in the United States. In 1998, New Mexico took a very important step in developing their drought plan. They actually incorporated specific mitigation actions that the state could take |