319 
specified compliance schedule for the 22 most activelv used ocean dumnsites 
_ (accounting for up to 90 percent of U.S. ocean dumping). 
Despite EPA representations to this Committee last Spring, and to 
House and Senate Appropriations Committees, that it néeded more ocean 
dumping funding to permit compliance with the NWF court order, once the 
funding was obtained, EPA scaled down its site designation plans. 
Considerable slippage has already occurred in the site study 
schedule to which EPA is legally obliged to adhere. As of last May, 
the site designation work for only. one of the 22 sites covered in the 
settlement agreement was proceeding on schedule. For the other 21 
sites, the estimated dates for final designation were anywhere from 
4 months to 16 months behind schedule. There has undoubtedly been : 
further slippage since last May. For example, the draft site designatior 
EIS for the "Mud Dumpsite"™ (for dredged material) in the New York Boner 
which under the settlement agreement was to be completed in December, 
1980 (and, even under EPA's May, 1981, revised schedule, by last 
October), was not issued until this February--14 months late. 
All told, EPA's site study and designation program which 
(supposedly) began in earnest in January of 1O77=-over five years ago-- 
has yielded only 11 sites out of 144 (a meager 7.6%) that have been 
formally studied and designated by EPA. In the meantime, the dumping 
proceeds unabated--at five or six dozen ocean dumpsites each year 
(many of which change from year to year). 
In short, little has changed in connection with dumpsite designa- 
tion since the advent of the Ocean Dumping Law--except that EPA is now 
operating in violation of an Act of Congress, an international treaty, 
a court order, and its own regulations. 
