15 



gressman, that this is the area in which our department is placing 

 its greatest hopes for an expedited resolution of the problem that is 

 before us today. One of the activities which our department has 

 been actively involved in collaboration with the Corps and EPA 

 and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies for the last 

 several weeks has been an attempt to identify those areas in which 

 there is a common concern and a common interest in trying to seek 

 resolutions to this problem rather than exacerbating some of the 

 hype and hysteria and differences that are so often attendant to 

 these kinds of activities. 



And we have clearly identified that establishing not only long- 

 term options but intermediate-term options to ocean disposal is an 

 area with which everyone agrees as a matter of policy, and it is 

 now simply a matter, to turn to a statement that Congressman 

 Saxton made, of finding not only adequate funding but especially 

 establishing deadlines for the creation of alternatives to ocean dis- 

 posal. I think it should be made clear that the New Jersey DEPE 

 has forcefully come out in favor of State legislation that would pro- 

 hibit any New Jersey State agency after December 31, 1995, from 

 permitting the dredging or disposal of any material contaminated 

 with dioxin at any level unless an official science-based standard 

 has been adopted by the U.S. EPA by that date. 



These are activities which the New Jersey DEPE has attempted 

 to undertake largely for the purposes of trying to prevent this 

 whole activity from becoming a pitched jobs versus the environ- 

 ment battle, because it is very much our belief that it is not, that 

 the New York Harbor should not be the area in which we refight 

 the East Coast version of the spotted owl versus the timber workers 

 or the snail darter versus the construction workers. Our goal in the 

 Port of New York and New Jersey should be nothing less than the 

 creation of a state-of-the-art port that serves as a model not only of 

 robust economic vitality but also of the highest standards of envi- 

 ronmental protection. There is absolutely no reason through a col- 

 laborative, informative process that we ought not to be able to 

 achieve both. 



New Jersey's role in this process, in addition to trying to serve as 

 a catalyst for this collaboration, has been to permit the dredging 

 activity specifically in Port Newark and Port Elizabeth with a 

 number of very stringent but, we believe, fair conditions attached. 

 The dredging activity would be conducted by the Port Authority, 

 presuming that the EPA and the Corps of Engineers go ahead and 

 issue the permit, on what we call a one-third, one-third, one-third 

 operation. One-third of the dredging activity will be done with no 

 barge overflow so that no amount of water is allowed to overflow 

 the sides of the barges as the contaminated material is being put 

 into the barges for ultimate disposal out at the Mud Dump. A third 

 of the material would be allowed to overflow the sides of the 

 barges, and a final third would be part of a research and monitor- 

 ing protocol designed to determine just exactly what the properties 

 and activities of the dioxin-laden contaminants or the dioxin-laden 

 sediment being put into the barges would be so that rather than 

 continuing to deal with the uncertainties of whether the dioxin 

 does adhere to the finest sediments, whether it does or does not 

 enter the water column during the dredging operation, we will 



