652 
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY 
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20310 
Honorable Walter B. Jones 
Chairman, Committee on Merchant Marine 
and Fisheries 
House of Representatives 
Washington, D. C. 20515 
Dear Mr. Chairman: 
This is in response to your letter requesting views 
on H.R. 6113, 97th Congress, a bill "To amend Title I 
of the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 
1972", as reported by your Committee. The Secretary of 
Defense has assigned responsibility for reporting on this 
bill to the Department of the Army. 
As reported, the bill would authorize appropri- 
ations for Fiscal Year 1983 and would make a number of 
Changes to Title I of the Ocean Dumping Act related to 
EPA site designation, monitoring of dumping sites, issu- 
ance of interim permits, recovery of permit processing 
costs, disposal of radioactive wastes, adherence with 
the London Dumping Convention, continued use of exist= 
ing interim sites and the authority of Federal district 
courts to hear mandamus actions to compel site designa- 
tions. 
The Department of the Army, on behalf of the Depart- 
ment of Defense, supports the efforts of your Committee 
to fashion a workable reauthorization of the Ocean Dumping 
Act for the next fiscal year. We are, as you know, very 
much interested in insuring that ocean dumping be allowed 
to continue unimpeded, subject to necessary and reasonable 
environmental safeguards. We understand that the reported 
bill was crafted with this same objective in mind and we 
welcome and support that effort. However, we feel that the 
actual bill contains a number of provisions that could be 
misinterpreted or would lead to unnecessary obstacles to 
reasonable ocean dumping. Accordingly, we are opposed to 
enactment of the bill as reported by the Committee on 
Merchant Marine and Fisheries and favor, instead, enactment 
of a simple two year reauthorization of the Ocean Dumping 
Act. 
