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significant amount of effort on the part of the Agency to issue the 

 national toxics rule, to force the States to adopt the standards. 



Mr. Hughes. Frankly, there was a time when we had such a 

 hammer, and we will revisit that issue, as that is a very construc- 

 tive suggestion. We will look at it. 



But getting back to the basic question at hand, the Environmen- 

 tal Protection Agency has primary responsibility for protecting our 

 waters. We have States that are not doing any testing, while we 

 know, without question, that their waters are not always safe. That 

 suggests to me that EPA hasn't done its job. 



If it is a research problem, instead of coming in here and ex- 

 plaining that you already have enough jurisdiction to do these 

 things, I would much rather have you come in here and tell us 

 what kind of research assistance you need to try to do your job. 

 But I don't think it is acceptable to come in here and suggest, we 

 want to do it, we are getting to it, and now we have a negotiated 

 rulemaking that we will possibly reach sometime in the future. 



I don't think that is acceptable when you are talking about 

 public health. 



Ms. Stasikowski. Well, we are proceeding with phase two of the 

 negotiated rulemaking. Part of it is defining the resources that we 

 need to complete the rulemaking and also the resources that are 

 needed for research to expand our criteria to cover other patho- 

 gens. 



Mr. Hughes. Why didn't you start that five years ago when we 

 made that an issue? 



Ms. Stasikowski. Five years ago the Agency was working on im- 

 plementing of the 103 toxics criteria. With the resources that the 

 Agency had in this area, we were spending all of them on the 

 toxics criteria program. 



Mr. Hughes. I am being overly critical perhaps, but part of the 

 problem is that you do have a lot of responsibilities, and it takes 

 hearings like this and pieces of legislation like this to get you fo- 

 cused. Hopefully, this legislation will be enacted this time and then 

 we won't have to worry about negotiated rulemaking, because we 

 will have in place the necessary basic standards and a reasonable 

 approach to try to deal with our waters. 

 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 Mr. Ortiz. Mr. Laughlin. 



Mr. Laughlin. Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to see our Land 

 Commissioner here, Mr. Mauro, and I should observe for all those 

 that may not be aware, there are a lot of Americans in our country 

 that talk about clean beaches and clean water, and they give 

 speeches and they do a lot of talking, but you don't get much 

 action. I have never heard of anyone in our entire country that has 

 done more actual work toward implementing activity to clean up 

 our beaches than I have witnessed on one occasion — the many occa- 

 sions; that is. Commissioner Mauro himself has been active in pick- 

 ing up the trash, literally tons of waste and trash on our beaches 

 in Texas that have been picked up in its twice-annual, State-wide 

 beach cleanups. 



And, Garry, you are to be commended for that; and I am pleased 

 we have this opportunity to recognize the leadership that you have 

 given not only in our State but for the Nation for that. We have 



