REAUTHORIZATION OF THE MARINE PROTEC- 
TION, RESEARCH, AND SANCTUARIES ACT, 
TITLES I AND II 
THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 1982 
HOousE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON OCEANOG- 
RAPHY AND SUBCOMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND WILDLIFE 
CONSERVATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT, COMMITTEE ON 
MERCHANT MARINE AND FISHERIES, 
Washington, D.C. 
The subcommittees met, pursuant to recess, at 10 a.m., in room 
1334, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Norman E. D’Amours 
(chairman of the Subcommittee on Oceanography) presiding. 
Present: Representatives D’Amours, Breaux, Studds, Hughes, 
Patman, Forsythe, Pritchard, Evans, and Carney. 
Mr. D’Amours. The subcommittees will come to order. We are 
meeting today to hear from three administration agencies, EPA, 
NOAA, and the Army Corps of Engineers, on the reauthorization 
of the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act. 
This past year has been an eventful one in the life of this act. 
Last January, an influential report from the National Advisory 
Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere [NACOA] said that existing 
law was too restrictive and that we must make more use of the 
oceans’ assimilative capacity. Then a Federal district court judge in 
New York told EPA that it had been incorrectly implementing the 
act all along, that it could not impose a legislatively manded De- 
cember 31, 1981, deadline, and that it would have to rewrite its reg- 
ulations accordingly. EPA, to nobody’s surprise, decided that it was 
satisfied with this highly questionable ruling and would not appeal. 
Because of these actions, we face the prospect of a large-scale 
return to ocean dumping. Some 20 to 25 municipalities are lining 
up to apply for new dumping permits. Many of them are the same 
municipalities which had only recently successfully halted their 
ocean dumping. Perversely, the administration has chosen this par- 
ticular time to recommend severe cuts in programs needed to re- 
search and monitor the impacts of all dumping. 
It has become painfully obvious that the MPRSA—the Ocean 
Dumping Act—as presently drafted means very different things to 
different people. It will be our job in this committee over the next 
several weeks to decide what it should mean to everybody by 
making the changes necessary to clear ambiguities, whether they 
are clear or they are imagined. 
I had hoped that we would hear testimony today on the discus- 
sion draft of the amendments prepared and circulated by the staff, 
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