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that of the court in the New York City case and that of EPA's 
current ocean dumping regulations and criteria (which mirror_ 
the intent of the 1977 sludge phase-out amendment). The approach 
laid down by the court would require harm to the ocean--no 
Matter how severe or inappropriate--to be uniformly and 
invariably balanced against the incremental costs and impacts 
of land-based alternatives. EPA's regulations would invariably 
preclude dumping on the basis of either excessive environmental 
effects or availability of lendenssed alternatives. The draft 
amendments, on the other hand, would recognize gradations of 
harm to the marine environment. The most harmful material could 
not be dumped at all; the most innocuous could be readily 
dumped. For material between these extremes, the magnitude of 
anticipated harm would be balanced against the availability- 
of “prudent and feasible" alternatives. This strikes us as an 
eminently reasonable approach to take. 
There are those who argue that the "prudent and feasible 
alternative” test chee would be established under the draft 
amendments would require would-be ocean dumpers to resort to 
extravagantly more costly land-based alternatives in preference 
to ocean dumping. This is a gross mischaracterization of the 
letter and intent of the draft amendments. The "prudent one 
feasible" rubric was not puiled out of thin air. It has a 
long and respectable history as a central feature of the 
Department of Transportation Act (49 U.S.C. §1653 and 23 U.S.C. 
§138) where it applies to highways routed through public parks and 
