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doesn't meet federal criteria the application would never reach 

 the public notice stage of the process. Our request filed three 

 years ago on April 11 (1990) did. Yet it still isn't resolved 

 even though we are moving slowly toward a regulatory conclusion 

 perhaps this coming month. 



There are process issues and executive leadership issues which 

 arise in our story. 



On the process side the issues are clearly: responsibility, time, 

 costs, and process management between the responsible federal 

 agencies . 



Process Time 



The regulatory process is a due process approach. A permit 

 applicant should be able to have rules, requirements and standards 

 explained, provide information based on those requirements for 

 federal agency decision making, expect prompt attention within a 

 reasonable time period and receive a judgment based on scientific 

 and operations factors within a specific and reasonable time 

 frame. That expectation is what the Congress conveyed in its 

 approval of the procedures to be used. 



That has not happened in this case. Instead, because trace levels 

 of a substance the federal agencies did not have standards for 

 were found, we became a national process and scientific test lab 

 and a national cause for the environmental advocates. I've 

 attached a chronology of the three-year process we've been through 

 for the committee's review. 



Costs 



Because of new requirements we were asked to perform four 

 bioassay/bioaccumulation test sets when in the past we had been 

 required to do just one. The Corps and EPA required the facility 

 to be split into four reaches. This quadrupled the costs of 

 testing. We estimate that once this process is concluded we will 

 have spent approximately $1.5 million on this on permit 

 application. However, this is only one component of cost. Added 

 to it must be rising payments to outside contractors (sample 

 collection and analysis), the cost of monitoring of the dredging 

 site, our expenditure for the risk assessment, and Port Authority 

 staff time. The $1.5 million exceeds the $1.0 million cost for 

 the normal annual maintenance dredging of the facility. We 

 estimate the cost associated with this permit is more than 50 

 percent of the actual construction cost for the full three-year 

 permit. I have attached a table of the Port Authority's expected 

 costs for a one-year dredging cycle should the permit which was 

 issued and then suspended in January be reinstated. 



Mr. Chairman, some people believe that as a large agency the Port 

 Authority can easily afford whatever it may cost to obtain the 

 permit and accomplish the dredging. Although this is not true, we 



