The Newport Naval Station is now the proud host of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Marine Operations Center – Atlantic (MOC-A). Today marks the beginning of NOAA’s move from Norfolk, Virginia to Rhode Island as Naval officers, Rhode Island and federal government officials held a groundbreaking ceremony for NOAA’s new hub for research and homeporting ships.
The new facility will include a pier that can accommodate four large vessels, a floating dock for smaller ships, a space for repairs, and a building to be used for shoreside support and as a warehouse. The entire project costs $146,778,932 and was awarded to Skanska USA for the design and build. Construction for NOAA’s MOC-A is slated to finish in 2027. Besides serving as a homeport, the MOC-A coordinates NOAA’s ships that operate in the Atlantic and the Great Lakes, and the additional space from the new build will allow NOAA to consolidate its research vessels and upgrade its facilities. The site utilizes about five acres of federal land.
This project is over a decade in the making. Spearheaded by U.S. Senator Jack Reed, he ensured that Rhode Island was the best candidate for the new NOAA facility by working with Congress and directing federal funds to Rhode Island to make the project and the site viable. “This would not be happening but for Jack Reed. That’s a fact,” affirmed U.S. Secretary of Commerce and former governor Gina Raimondo.
NOAA already has two ships homeported at the Newport Naval Station, a fisheries research vessel, and an oceanic research and operations vessel that maps the seafloor. Two more ships that will call Newport home include a hydrographic survey ship that uses sonar for seafloor mapping and provides data for fishery management, navigation safety, and hydrodynamic models, as well as a new vessel that is currently being built, the 244-foot Discoverer, which is a lower-emission model.
“This is a significant day for the nation. NOAA’s Marine Operation Center – Atlantic and the four NOAA ships that will call Newport home are critical for economic security, sustainable management of our nation’s fisheries, and national security,” Rear Admiral Nancy Hann, director of NOAA Marine and Aviation Operations and the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps, says. “From this site, we will provide data to map the nation’s seafloors that are critical for the nation’s $2.3 billion maritime industry that depends on the safe navigation from the data our ships collect. We will collect fishery data to sustainably manage the nation’s $9.6 billion fishing industry. We will explore the nation’s oceans, ensuring that we can manage our resources.”
NOAA is essentially a national research administration, gathering and sharing data to effectively understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts across the United States and the world. It’s duties “include protecting marine mammals, protecting coral reefs and historic shipwrecks, managing commercial fisheries, understanding climate change, and producing the nautical charts that help keep all mariners safe,” explains the head of NOAA, Dr. Rick Spinrad. The administration is even responsible for severe storm warnings. Anything to do with the marine ecosystem, marine economics, and the weather falls under NOAA jurisdiction. For Rhode Island, a large coastal community and with deep economic ties to the bay and the ocean, much of what NOAA does is essential for business and everyday life.
The new MOC-A is LEED certified, and it is funded in part by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a part of his Investing in America initiative. “The $99 million investment we’re seeing manifested here reflects the spirit of the climate legislation envisioned by President Biden,” claims Dr. Spinrad. “The goal of the law is to help communities prepare, adapt, and build resilience to weather and climate events in pursuit of what we are calling a ‘climate-ready nation.’ This dovetails with NOAA’s mission to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, ocean, and coast, to share that knowledge and information with others who need to make critical decisions, and conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources.”
The Inflation Reduction Act is “a signature legislative success of President Biden, delivering the largest investment in clean energy and climate action in the history of this country,” notes Secretary Raimondo. “Here in the Ocean State, climate change is real. It’s not academic. It’s not something we read about or hear about from advocates. We know we live with it, with hundreds of miles of coastline in our little, beautiful state. We know the risks, but also the opportunities that come with living and working along the coast. Our economy, and all economies and coastal communities all around the country and around the world depend upon our ability to be resilient in the face of climate change, and that’s what this facility is all about.”
The new facility will also be mutually beneficial for Rhode Islanders and NOAA’s operations. “It’s a model for partnership; co-located with the Navy, in close proximity with Coast Guard facilities, not too far from our academic partners,” expounds Dr. Spinrad. “The result is effective, efficient, and impactful operations for Atlantic base fleet and a smart investment as we build that climate-ready nation.”
URI students and faculty will also have new and engaging opportunities from NOAA’s move to Newport. “You have the graduate school of oceanography and the leading oceanic agency in the world, and they’re going to be across the bay from each other. There will be internships, they’ll be asking some of the professors to do work there, etc.,” says Senator Jack Reed. “The other factor, too, is that there will be jobs available in the future for URI grads. Many, many of the young engineers at the Naval Underwater Warfare Center are URI grads. It’s just natural. They do internships, and then they come.” The result is keeping education and post-graduation jobs and research opportunities in Rhode Island.
NOAA and the U.S. Navy has also “committed that this project will be done with the Project Labor Agreement, to be a big PLA, that will ensure fair wages, good wages, strong standards, union workers, built by Rhode Islanders,” explains Secretary Raimondo. The construction should boost the Rhode Island economy and provide union jobs for local laborers. And, after the facility is completed, the new MOC-A will support about 200 jobs.
Governor McKee notes that “Rhode Island has momentum, is on a roll,” in building up the local economy, from “the health lab down in Quonset, the soccer facility and stadium in Pawtucket […to the] facility like we’re talking about here, the center is going to pay dividends for decades to come.”
Rhode Islanders may not need to wait decades to see the ripple effects from the new facility. With the influx of jobs and people relocating from NOAA, there will be an increased demand for affordable housing. “The whole state, we have to build more facilities,” agrees Senator Reed, “but I think what we’re sending out now – and it’s at least two years or so before we start seeing the import of people – is a strong demand signal to the housing builders that if you’re going to be building affordable housing, affordable ground units, they’re going to be taken up right away. There’s going to be no shortage of renters. That, I take it, is a market economy.”
Hello. Please note the O in NOAA is Oceanic, not Oceanographic as stated.