37 



yesterday, we had not received it, but I don't know if we have re- 

 ceived it today. 



Mr. Pallone. OK. But you do intend to review it? 



Ms. Liburdi. Absolutely. 



Mr. Pallone. And I would like to see some sort of response to 

 that in view — I mean, the other people here from the other agen- 

 cies have indicated that they would. 



Ms. Liburdi. It is our intent to review it, both within staff and 

 using our consultant, EA Engineering, who has been doing the risk 

 assessment work for us. 



Mr. Pallone. OK. And would you give us some sort of response 

 to it? 



Ms. Liburdi. Certainly. 



Mr. Pallone. OK. One more thing. I notice that you were con- 

 cerned about the length of this whole process 



Ms. Liburdi. Yes. 



Mr. Pallone [continuing], that it took for the permits, but cer- 

 tainly from my point of view, and I am expressing my own opinion 

 here, that part of the reason for the delay was, in fact, assertions, 

 which I put a lot of credence to both by the EPA initially and I 

 think it was primarily by the EPA, that basically information 

 given by the Port Authority in regard to the amount of material 

 that was to be disposed of was inaccurate. And so my own view is 

 that, essentially, the port was contributing to that delay because 

 they were not providing accurate information about what was to be 

 dumped. Did the port ever respond to the EPA's statements in that 

 regard? 



Ms. Liburdi. We have responded with the information that was 

 requested in terms of the surveys that would have provided the 

 actual calculations of the depth, and we also provided a written 

 summary of what has been alleged to be misstatements by us about 

 data. And I would be happy to provide that to you as well. 



Mr. Pallone. I would be pleased to have that. Is your position 

 then that, in fact, there was never any question about the amount 

 of material that was to be dredged? 



Ms. Liburdi. No, that is not my position. 



Mr. Pallone. OK. 



Ms. Liburdi. My position is there are changes, but there are rea- 

 sons why those changes occurred in terms of the process and the 

 amount of time it has taken to get to a decision point. 



Mr. Pallone. OK. Just one other thing I wanted to ask you. We 

 talked about alternatives, and one of the concerns that I have had 

 is that alternatives really haven't been looked at sufficiently. Has 

 the port ever expressed a willingness to subsidize or contribute in 

 any way to any of these alternatives? 



Ms. Liburdi. Yes, we have. Since the first time I testified before 

 this committee, we have done that. And, in fact, we have indicated 

 as recently as last week that we are willing to contribute to the 

 demonstration and development of alternatives, and that we have 

 indicated to various groups who have participated with us in recent 

 dialog sessions that we are willing to put our own resources up to 

 update the upland disposal and containment island site studies if 

 that will help move the Federal process forward. We have also indi- 

 cated that we would be happy to contribute further to development 



