National Marine Fisheries Service has also recommended two of 

 these actions to further reduce the potential for harm to endan- 

 gered species. 



For those of you have not had the misfortune of being exposed to 

 a Congressional hearing before, let me point out that we proceed 

 with a little piece of barbarity we imported from Washington — 

 those are the three lights over here for witnesses. There is a red 

 one, a yellow one, and a green one. We have asked all of the wit- 

 nesses, some of whom have lengthy and detailed testimony, to con- 

 fine their oral presentation of that testimony to no more than five 

 minutes. That is not easy, I understand. All of the written testimo- 

 ny will appear in its entirety in the record. Future historians will 

 never know what you actually said and what you did not. If we do 

 not adhere fairly strictly to that rule, we will be unable to get to 

 the question period and to conclude in time to go where we have 

 got to go. When the yellow light goes on it means you have one 

 minute left. When the red light goes on it means you are finished. 

 We do apologize. That is a bit of rudeness that was invented in 

 Washington. It works, however. We are sorry for the bluntness of it 

 all. 



We are going to take the seven members — eight members, I 

 guess — eight members of the panel as an entirety. We are going to 

 hear each of you prior to going to questions. Let me just also ob- 

 serve that I am going to do something which I said I would do a 

 month or so the Cape, and that is give some of our experts here on 

 these critters an opportunity themselves to ask questions of the 

 Government spokesmen who are here. We will go in the order in 

 which the names appear on the witness list. 



We will begin with Mr. Thomas Bigford, who is with the North- 

 east Region of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Mr. Bigford. 



STATEMENT OF THOMAS BIGFORD, CHIEF, HABITAT AND PRO- 

 TECTED RESOURCES DIVISION, NORTHEAST REGION, NATION- 

 AL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 



Mr. Bigford. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. My 

 name is Tom Bigford, Chief of the Habitat and Protected Resources 

 Division of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service northeast 

 regional office in Gloucester. We thank you for the opportunity to 

 discuss the Endangered Species Act and the Section 7 consultation 

 we conducted on issuance of a national pollution discharge elimina- 

 tion system permit for the Massachusetts Water Resources Author- 

 ity (MWRA) outfall. 



Accompanying me today are two of the principal authors of the 

 biological opinion, John Catena and Colleen Coogan, from the 

 Northeast Regional Office of the National Marine Fisheries Serv- 

 ice. They will help answer any technical questions. I would also 

 like to acknowledge Commander Jack Moakley, a NOAA Corps Of- 

 ficer who works in NOAA's Office of General Counsel. 



As you know, in September, our biological opinion on the effects 

 of the MWRA outfall was released to EPA and the Corps of Engi- 

 neers. I have attached a copy of the opinion to our written testimo- 

 ny for the hearing record. 



