41 



set or designed with that in mind of protecting the most sensitive 

 wildlife, and that is one of the issues of debate here — is a fish con- 

 sumption standard really appropriate in this kind of context. 



Mr. Pallone. All right. In that same regard, what actually has 

 the National Marine Fisheries brought out and expressed concern 

 about? Isn't it essentially the same thing? 



Ms. Clark. Well, they are looking at the endangered species that 

 may be feeding upon fish that may reside near the Mud Dump Site 

 or maybe fish that have been impacted by the Mud Dump Site, and 

 some of those endangered species are mammals, so that it is some- 

 thing they have to be considering; is what kind of potential impact 

 might be impacted on those particular species. 



Mr. Pallone. And then the third thing I was going to ask you is 

 to what extent is this permit dependent upon capping? In other 

 words, now we have this report that basically says that capping is 

 in adequate, in my opinion — I suppose somebody might dispute the 

 report, but there is no question about they are saying — and, you 

 know, my impression is this whole permit is dependent upon cap- 

 ping being something that works. What is your opinion in that 

 regard? 



Ms. Clark. From what I have read from the correspondence and 

 memorandum of at least the EPA that their agreement to any cri- 

 teria with respect to dioxin turns on the ability of capping to iso- 

 late the dioxin-contaminated sediments. And to that respect, cap- 

 ping then is extremely important in that EPA is holding that cap- 

 ping has to be respectively done in order for this kind of permit or 

 any other kind of permit that might have dioxin-contaminated 

 sediments to be allowed to go forward. 



Mr. Pallone. OK. Let me just ask one more thing because I 

 know my time is up. You talked about an EIS, and I, of course, 

 have asked the Corps and the EPA to do another EIS. How can it 

 be that they have not had to do an EIS here? I don't understand. I 

 thought under NEPA an EIS was required for anything like this 

 that might have a major impact on the environment. How do they 

 get away with not doing an EIS? I mean, either the Corps or the 

 EPA or whatever. 



Ms. Clark. Well, it is the Corps' decision because it is an action 

 that they are permitting, and their explanation as far as I can tell 

 is that enough EIS's have been written with respect to impacts at 

 the Mud Dump Site, and this project is really no different than any 

 other projects that have been evaluated before except for dioxin. 



Mr. Pallone. But the dioxin— isn't that a sufficient reason to 

 suggest that it is different? 



Ms. Clark. It is our belief that, yes, it is sufficient, and, in par- 

 ticular, in conjunction with the situation of the Mud Dump Site 

 being contaminated to a degree now, to what degree will more sedi- 

 ments add to that problem? We feel that that question hasn't 

 really been addressed and could have been addressed in an EIS 

 process. I think a lot of these issues that we have raised and have 

 been raising could have been addressed in the EIS process, and we 

 may have resolved a lot of them and wouldn't be here today if one 

 had been prepared. But that decision was made by the Corps, and 

 in some respects was made almost before the public notice went 

 out — not totally but it was a preliminary finding. 



