360 



gram under section 13 of tbe Act of March 3, 1899, commonly known as the 

 Refuse Act (33 USO 407). Section 2(a) (1) of the President's Executive Order 

 stipulates that the Secretary of the Army "after consultation with the Admin- 

 istrator [of the EPA] respecting water quality matters, issue and amend, as ap- 

 propriate, regulations, procedures, and instructions for receiving, processing, 

 and evaluating applications for permits pursuant to the authority of the Act." 

 Paragraph (2) provides that the Secretary of the Army "shall be responsible 

 for granting, denying, eonditioning, revoking, or suspending Refuse Act permits." 

 It is the position of AIMS that the foregoing procedure prescribed by the Presi- 

 dent in his Executive Order 11574 should be followed as the most practicable 

 and expeditious method of consiidering and acting on dumping permit 

 applications. 



To ti-ansfer from the Secretary of the Army and Chief of Engineers to the 

 Administrator of the EPA complete authority to issue permits for the disposal of 

 dredged material resulting from waterway improvement projects, including 

 dredging of access channels and berths to private facilities, would in our opin- 

 ion seriously jeopardize the economic justification and progress of essential 

 water^^ay improvement projects now under study or recommended by the Army 

 Engineers and those which have been authorized by Congress, including perhaps 

 those projects for which funds have already been appropriated. 



"^Iiile the Corps of Engineers has consistently endeavored throughout the 

 years to develop and maintain a balanced evaluation of the effects of a waterway 

 improvement project on navigation, industrial and economic growth, fish and 

 wildlife, water quality, pollution, conservation, aesthetics, ecology and otJier 

 environmental factors, we are of the opinion that because it is the primary 

 function and concern of EPA to preserve the environment, no matter how laud- 

 able it may be, EPA will not be in a position to evaluate on an impartial and 

 equitable basis all the foregoing factors related to a waterway improvement 

 project. It is logical to conclude that from the standpoint of EPA environmental 

 considerations will outweight all others by far and influence the EPA Adminis- 

 trator to require that dredged material be transported for disposal far at sea or 

 to inland locations. In either ease, the effect of such a requirement on projects 

 under study or recommended by the Coi-ps of Engineers or authorized by Con- 

 gress would be to greatly increase the cost of STich projects and thereby jeopardize 

 their economic justification by adversely affecting the benefit-cost ratio. We have 

 been reliably informed that for each 30 miles the dredged material is transported 

 the cost of spoil disposal is doubled, thereby substantially increasing the cost of 

 the waterway improvement project. If the material is ordered to be disposed 

 at sea, it would be necessary to use oceangoing barges. Most of the barges now 

 in use for transporting spoil disposal are not constructed for oceangoing opera- 

 tion. The cost of constructing oceangoing barges for spoil disposal at sea would 

 be very substantial and would of course be added to the cost of the project. 



Should the EPA Administrator take the above action with respect to disposal of 

 dredged material, this would also seriously affect the continued maintenance of 

 channels at their authorized project depths since the cost of such channel mainte- 

 nance would be greatly increased. If equivalent apixropriation increases are not 

 provided annually in the President's budget and by Congress in Public Works Ap- 

 propriation Acts, the maintenance of channels at their authorized project depths 

 will not be possible and the estimated return to the Federal Covernment on its 

 original investment in deepening of the channels, based primarily on savings in 

 transportation costs, will not be realized. It is axiomatic that if channels are 

 not maintained, the cargo-carrying capacity of vessels will be reduced due to 

 reductions in draft occasioned by lack of channel maintenance, thereby causing 

 an increase in transportation cost per ton of cargo. Such increased transporta- 

 tion costs are usually refiected in increases in tiie prices of goods and services to 

 consumers. Thus it is the general public that will ultimately bear the burden of 

 higher costs involved in the construction and maintenance of waterway improve- 

 ments that may be caused by requirements imposed by the EPA Administrator 

 for disposal of dredged material far at sea or at inland locations, rather than 

 at for more economical waterway or shore locations adjacent to or in the 

 vicinity of the river and harbor construction or maintenance projects, which for 

 the most part is the present practice. The Corps of Engineers has endeavored to 

 follow the latter practice in the interest of maintaining the cost of waterway 

 improvement and maintenance projects at a minimum, thus helping to achieve a 

 favorable benefit-cost ratio so as to establish the economic justification of im- 

 provement projects. We could not be sure that the Administrator of the EPA 



