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COMMENTS ON DRAFT AMENDMENTS 
Mr. Chairman you requested in your letter that we provide comments and sug- 
gested changes to draft amendments to the Ocean Dumping Act. We will need a cer- 
tain amount of time to involve all concerned organizational elements of NOAA in 
this endeavor, and to coordinate with other concerned Federal agencies. 
REAUTHORIZATION OF TITLE II 
The Administration requests an authorization of $4,835,000 for implementing Sec- 
tion 202 for fiscal year 1983 and such sums as may be necessary for fiscal year 1984. 
Mr. Chairman, this completes my statement, and I will be pleased to answer any 
questions. 
Dr. ByRNE. I was prepared to summarize my statement in some 
detail but, in the interest of time, I will just, very briefly alert the 
committee to the topics that are covered in the statement and then 
we can proceed with further discussion. 
NOAA has been involved with research activities in the area of 
ocean dumping and marine pollution. 
The statement addresses the type of research which has been 
going on together with some of the activities, some of the findings 
of our research activities involving sewage sludge, the Philadelphia 
dump site, and industrial waste. We address some of the discoveries 
we have made with respect to deep water dump sites and comment 
on dredge materials. We address the impact that the 1983 budget 
will have on the programs and look at some of the long-range effect 
research programs which will continue. 
We have addressed other elements of our research programs 
which are covered under other pieces of legislation; some focus on 
activities that have been carried out in the Hudson Raritan Estu- 
ary and Puget Sound, activities that have been carried out in the 
Great Lakes, and then addressed to a slight extent the role that 
has been played in our habitat investigations program within the 
National Marine Fishery Service. We have talked of the activities 
that we anticipate carrying out in the future in terms of hazardous 
materials and activities carried out by our ocean resources coordi- 
nation assessment program; and things that will be investigated 
under the deep sea bed mining and ocean thermal energy conver- 
sion program. 
Then, we concluded our statement with a short note that indi- 
cates that we would like to provide, for the record, comments on 
the draft amendments which your staff has provided. We are not 
prepared to do that at this time however, we look forward to doing 
so in the future. 
I would be pleased to address any of the specific elements of the 
testimony that I have so quickly and simply summarized for you, 
but I suspect that you may have other questions that are not in- 
cluded in the testimony that might be more appropriately ad- 
dressed. 
Thank you, sir. 
Mr. D’Amours. Thank you, Dr. Byrne. I appreciate your brevity 
and your summary. 
General Gay, you may proceed. 
