As sea ice continues its retreat from the North Pole this summer, many see America’s stake in contested and resource-rich region growing. But the head of the U.S. Coast Guard says access to new polar opportunities is threatened by an aging and inadequate Arctic fleet.

“While U.S. strategic interests in the Arctic region expand, both domestically and internationally, our polar icebreaking capability is at risk,” Thad W. Allen, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, told lawmakers on July 16. “I am concerned that we are watching our nation’s domestic and international ice breaking capability decline as reliance on foreign icebreakers grows.”

And whether the shrinking polar ice cap is the result of climate change or weather cycles is beside the point, Allen said.

“There’s a lot of competing science, but I’m agnostic to the science,” Allen told reporters at a briefing the day after the hearing. “There’s water where there didn’t use to be and I’m responsible for it.”

Of the Coast Guard’s three polar icebreakers, two — the Polar Star and the Polar Sea — have surpassed their intended 30-year service lives. While the Polar Sea is still operational, the Polar Star has been on caretaker status and docked in the Seattle port for more than two years.

The third ship, the Healy, was commissioned in 2000 but has less ice breaking capacity than the two ships that entered service in the late 1970s. While the older ships can break through ice up to 6 feet thick, the Healy maxes out at 4 A? feet.

In comparison, Russia has 20 icebreakers in its fleet, seven of which are nuclear-powered. The 50 Let Pobed, “50 Years of Victory,” can break through more than 9 feet of ice, according to a 2007 report by the National Resource Council.

The day after the House Transportation and Infrastructure Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee hearing, state-run media reports from Russia, the only other nation with polar icebreaking capacity, proclaimed “U.S. experts say Russia is winning the ‘Arctic Race.’” Kommersant, a business newspaper, reported “Russia beating U.S. to Arctic.”

While Russia’s icebreaking strength has long been a source of national pride, news of the strained U.S. Arctic fleet attracted very little attention in the United States.

“We are losing ground in the global competition,” Allen told members of Congress. “Like Russia, Germany, China, Sweden and Canada are all investing and maintaining and expanding their national icebreaking capacity.”

Increasing U.S. icebreaking power would be expensive.

A replacement ship for either the Polar Star or Polar Sea would cost between $800 million and $925 million per ship and take between seven and 10 years to construct, according to the Congressional Research Service, using Coast Guard data.

“Even if the funds were approved tomorrow, it’d take about eight years to complete the construction of the vessel and make it operational,” Arden Bement, director of the National Science Foundation said. “And we still have to plan our course of action for the next eight years, and that’s where we need flexibility.”

It would cost $56.6 million to reactive the Polar Star for 7 to 10 years, according to the CRS.

Those sums pale, experts say, in comparison to what’s at stake.

The U.S. has “billion-dollar, if not trillion dollar, national interests” in the Arctic, according to Mead Treadwell, chairman of the Artic Research Commission, a group that advises Congress and the executive branch.

He said the value of these national interests should help taxpayers balance the cost of maintaining and expanding the U.S. icebreaking fleet.

The authority for shifting money around for the benefit of the icebreakers, however, lies not with the Coast Guard commandant but the National Science Foundation. At the request of President Bush, authority over operations and maintenance money of the three icebreaking ships was transferred in 2006 to the National Science Foundation.

“The funding mechanism, the management structure that’s in place right now is not conducive for the long-range health and readiness of the U.S. icebreaker fleet.” Allen told lawmakers last week. “Without prejudice, I believe the money should be in the Coast Guard base, and we should operate it.”

Apart from any future economic activity that melting polar ice may bring, Allen said the Coast Guard’s icebreaking fleet is already overtaxed. He cited the National Resource Council report that said the U.S. should be operating a three-ship strong icebreaking fleet. With the Polar Star inactive, the U.S. is already one ship down.

“Continued growth in commerce, ecotourism, exploratory activities in the Arctic is increasing risk to mariners and ecosystems and creating demand for Coast Guard operational competencies and capabilities.” Allen said, “We are finding ourselves well beyond our traditional science support role in polar regions.”

While melting polar ice may immediately seem to negate the need for the massive icebreaking ships, large areas are still covered in thick ice.

And, Treadwell said, “tougher operating conditions and higher sea states, due to the evolving nature of sea ice and changing wind and weather patterns” that many environmental scientists are predicting will only make icebreaking capacity more critical.

Caitlin Webber can be reached at cwebber@cq.com.