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bill," the Burton bill, "is inconsistent with the spirit as well as the 

 letter of the Ocean Dumping Act and the London Convention. It al- 

 lows for large-scale open-ended dumping without limitation on the 

 amount of material. It contains no guidance or requirements with 

 regard to prior consideration of the impacts of the authorized waste 

 on the marine environment, monitoring programs after disposal, or 

 methods of packaging or containment of the materials. Therefore, 

 the research program requirements fail to ensure that activities 

 will be scientifically sound, appropriately limited, and undertaken 

 only after consideration of potential adverse impacts." 



So my point, Mr. Chairman, was that the research program itself 

 is essentially an open-ended opportunity to do ocean dumping of 

 dredged materials, you name it. There is no real definition. So I do 

 not agree with Mr. Livingston that the research project, if it moved 

 forward, would not result in ocean dumping. It would. But thank- 

 fully now, we have a commitment that it would not do this re- 

 search project or this study until our subcommittee acts. 



At least, that is the way I understood it. I think that past experi- 

 ence tells us we have to be vigilant in this regard and constantly 

 make the case that this should not happen, but I think that we at 

 least made some progress today. 



Mr. Weldon. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for his 

 comments and for his work on the House floor, and I thank our col- 

 league from New Jersey, who I know is alive and well someplace 

 in this building or the building across the street. Hopefully, we will 

 see him before we adjourn the session. 



But with the comments that our good friend and colleague, Mr. 

 Pallone, just made, we do have a distinguished panel of experts 

 here, scientists, and as we know, in the scientific community there 

 is always room for disagreement on a number of issues and that 

 has been evident by the testimony today. So I would go down the 

 line and ask each of you, if you had the chance to take action on 

 this issue today and to allocate funds through NOAA, as I under- 

 stand it would have been, to allow a research project to move for- 

 ward, what would your position be? We will start with Dr. Valent 

 and go right down the line. 



Dr. Valent. To perform this 15-year demonstration project? Ab- 

 solutely no. 



Mr. Weldon. Thank you. Dr. Edmond. 



Dr. Edmond. I think absolutely yes. If you are talking contami- 

 nated dredged soil, the volumes involved are enormous. The ex- 

 pense of cleaning it up chemically is enormous. It is in the ocean 

 already. Unfortunately, it is in one of the most biologically produc- 

 tive parts of the ocean, estuaries. We are taking it to the least bio- 

 logically productive part of the ocean and disposing of it in an orga- 

 nized, safe way, and we should not be misled by the bags breaking. 

 Those are engineering questions. We can solve those. It is an op- 

 tion that should not be walked away from because the situation is 

 getting progressively more serious, both in this country and inter- 

 nationally. 



Mr. Weldon. Thank you. Dr. Grassle. 



Dr. Grassle. In terms of our priorities, I do not think we should 

 go forward with the proposal as stated. I think that for contami- 

 nated sediments, there are bigger issues to be solved, particularly 



