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agencies and statutory authorities, noting, for example, that the Corps would 

 "give great weight" to the views of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Nat- 

 ional Marine Fisheries Service, and State fish and wildlife agencies "with a 

 view to the conservation of wildlife resources by prevention of their direct 

 and indirect loss and damage." 106 / Concerning wetlands in particular, the 

 regulations stated that each permit review would take into account the cumu- 

 lative impact of numerous piecemeal alterations and that 



no permit will be granted. . .unless the District Engineer con- 

 cludes. .. that the benefits of the proposed alteration outweigh 

 the damage to the wetlands resource and the proposed alteration 

 is necessary to realize those benefits. 107 / 



The Chief of the Regulatory Functions Branch recently interpreted the evo- 

 lution of the Corps' public interest review process, a process intended to make 

 determinations in the face of competing and conflicting claims of what is 

 socially valued. He made the following comments about the evolution of consid- 

 erations in making a permit decision. 



For the past few years, considerable weight has been 

 assigned to the loss of wetlands. On the other side of the 

 balance, energy development has been gaining weight at a 

 steady pace. Food and fiber production are also gaining 

 weight. On the deny side of the balance, we saw a rapid 

 gain in the attention given to cultural and historic 

 values, but this appears to have leveled off. Water sup- 

 ply and conservation are already major factors out West 

 and promise to be of great importance in the East as well. 

 This factor may find itself on the issue or deny side of 

 the balance depending on the nature of the proposal. 

 Water quality and fish and wildlife values continue to 

 be of great interest to the public and, consequently, 

 command respectable weights on the balance. 



Not only do the weights given to the public interest 

 factors change in time but they vary considerably geo- 

 graphically. The regional fine tuning of the public 



106 / 33 C.F.R. 320.4(c). 

 107/ 33 C.F.R. 320.4(b)(4). 



