352 



Mr. PiNGELL. Excuse me, Mr. Secretary. Counsel is perfectly 

 welcome to sit at the table. 



Mr. Beggs. This is Frederic Schwartz, from my General Counsel's 

 Office. 



Mr. Heyward. In connection with section 8 and the assessment of the 

 penalties, do you have any reaction as to whether or not the process 

 of violation of permits should in some way authorize you to act rather 

 than to enforce this through the Administrator in connection with 

 violation of permits which 570U discover ? 



Mr. Beggs. I believe, in light of our general statutory authority, 

 we would have the power to enforce the act. 



Mr. DiNGELL. Captain, if you will yield just briefly, for purposes 

 of laying out the legislative historj^ on this matter. 



Then what you are saying is that this bill would not affect your exist- 

 ing statutory authority in these areas, and that you have statutory 

 authority in these areas to handle violations, for example, of the kind 

 you meet in improper dumping or illegal dumping or dumping in 

 violation of the administration's statute now before us ? 



Mr. Beggs. Yes, sir; that is my understanding as well. While the 

 assignment of the actual penalty under this act does lie with the 

 Administrator of EPA, there are general enforcement powers in the 

 Coast Guard under the existing statute. 



Mr. DiNGELL. Would you have authority sufficient to assess civil 

 penalties or criminal penalties under your existing authority ? 



Mr. Beggs. No, I think again that would have to go to the 

 Administrator. 



Mr. DiNGELL. I would appreciate if you would review^ those and 

 give us more deliberate thoughts, after you have had an opportunity 

 to reflect on it more fully. 



Mr. Beggs. Yes, sir. 



(The information follows :) 



Section 6 of H.R. 4723 provides for both civil and criminal penalties. These 

 penalties would be assessed by the Administrator of the Environmental Protec- 

 tion Agency, unless he chose to delegate all or part of that function. 



Mr. Heyward. I have one question which I think is important, Mr. 

 Chairman. That is in connection with the facilities for this surveil- 

 lance and enforcement that Mr. Pelly alluded to. 



I recognize that you may be able to do some part of the job in con- 

 nection with other missions, provided you can schedule the dumps so 

 that they can be surveyed. But I w^onder whether or not you are not 

 really saying that you are going to take on another job without addi- 

 tional resources. 



Could you furnish the committee some idea, depending on the num- 

 ber of permits involved, the distance offshore, the frequency of the 

 dumping that may be permitted, the hourly cost of plane surveillance 

 to ascertain the adherence to the dump site, the vessel cost per day 

 to escort vessels out to the dump site, so that the committee might ha^'e 

 some idea of the amount of money they are talking about in connec- 

 tion with the total enforcement problem ? 



Mr. Beggs. Yes. We will certainly do that. 



I might make this comment, thougli. We don't envision tliat in every 

 case there would have to be surveillance on the site. We believe that in 



