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will regulate discharges from the majority of these facilities. Pro- 

 ductive or unique biological areas, not covered by these general 

 permits, will receive further evaluation, and may be the subject of 

 future general permits. Different areas of the OCS may require 

 different permitting strategies and different permit conditions. 



You may be familiar with the Flower Gardens in the Gulf of 

 Mexico. To date, three final NPDES permits have been issued and 

 nine additional draft NPDES permits have been proposed. The 

 permits establish no discharge zones for both drilling fluids and 

 cuttings to protect this sensitive marine ecosystem. I want to com- 

 ment that the no discharge zones for the drilling fluids is greater 

 than the area for the cuttings. EPA's most recent NPDES permit- 

 ting action concerns the Georges Bank. Our region I office in 

 Boston is currently reviewing NPDES permit applications submit- 

 ted by four companies for exploratory drilling in Georges Bank. As 

 part of the application requirements, EPA required the applicants 

 to submit bioassay and bioaccumulation test data for the drilling 

 muds that they expect to use in this area. Appropriate NPDES 

 permit limitations and monitoring requirements will be developed 

 once these data are received and evaluated, along with the recom- 

 mendations of the Georges Bank Biological Task Force. We have 

 been working with the companies, other Federal agencies, and 

 environmental groups and expect to publish the notice of draft 

 NPDES permits for Georges Bank by December. 



In the next few years, EPA expects to continue efforts to issue 

 NPDES permits in a timely manner through increased participa- 

 tion in the OCS lease sale process, through efforts to increase the 

 collection of scientific data on the fate and effects of the discharges 

 from oil and gas facilities, and through coordination of NPDES 

 permitting with the OCS lease sale process. 



Thank you for this opportunity to highlight our OCS permitting 

 activities. I will be happy to answer questions concerning these 

 activities. 



Mr. Studds. Thank you very much, Ms. Compton. I have a 

 number of questions but I think they all boil down to one in terms 

 of importance. I am going to ask you the big one first, what I think 

 is the most important one. And that gets at, I will get more specific 

 in a moment, how your agency, given the way the law under which 

 you operate reads, could be granting any permits or could have to 

 this date granted any permits, for the discharge of drill muds into 

 the ocean. Let me begin by quoting as you I am sure know by heart 

 and I think you cited in your testimony, from section 403 which 

 sets the criteria for ocean discharge permits. The last sentence of 

 which, section 2, says: "In any event where insufficient information 

 exists on any proposed discharge to make a reasonable judgment 

 on any of the guidelines established pursuant to this subsection no 

 permit shall be issued under section 402 of this Act." I read that as 

 an absolute outright prohibition on the issuance of a permit in the 

 absence of sufficient information to assess the criteria which you 

 are directed to assess and to follow in that section. EPA provided 

 testimony before this committee earlier this year on this very 

 subject when as you know we had scientists representing Interior, 

 Commerce and EPA, one of whom was Dr. Bolton sitting at your 

 right. Almost without exception they told us we do not know all 



