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there are a lot of people outside the Federal Government who are 
very concerned about ocean dumping research and who perhaps 
have the tools and availability of personnel to do some coordinated 
research, particularly as it relates to the criteria for sludge dump- 
ing. 
User fees for the dumping of sewage sludge might be all right, 
but not if the funds collected are used for the designation of 
dredged material sites. You probably can’t get the same fees from 
the dredgers and, if this is the case, in my view it may be that I 
will want to take the position of no user fees at all if we are not 
going to be able to coordinate the research and monitoring efforts. 
I understand that my proposal for a commission may have only one 
supporter out of all the members who were interested. Fortunately 
it is my colleague from New Jersey who is interested in this ap- 
proach. The Commission is structured after the Marine Mammal 
Commission but, more importantly, would coordinate research. It 
wouldn’t draw operating funds from the U.S. taxpayers in general 
but would collect the money from the municipalities that are in- 
volved in the disposal of their sewage sludge through ocean dump- 
ing. 
However, the problem of waste disposal is much broader than 
just sewage sludge disposal. 
It may well be that sewage sludge is only a minor problem in 
terms of what is actually going into the oceans. 
Do I understand you to say that you do not support the assess- 
ment of fees for your research and development activities? 
Mr. Erpsness. Congressman, if the question is, should the fee 
mechanism be used to cover research as opposed to some other ap- 
proach to cover the cost of research, I believe, as I tried to state 
clearly earlier, that the EPA would not support using a user fee 
mechanism as the basis for supporting the research programs that 
are needed in this area, for a couple of reasons. 
One is the question of stability—the adequacy of the program to 
generate revenues to do what is needed in the research area, and 
whether that can be really accomplished through a fee system 
where there is some variability as to what kind of revenues you are 
going to generate. 
But more important, I think, is the issue of the concept that the 
general public, the beneficiary, ought to be supporting a research 
through the general fund, through general taxes perhaps, which is 
institutionalized now in EPA’s budget process, for example. 
Mr. ForsyTHE. Aren’t you talking about taxing the same people, 
whether it be through the Federal Government, local government, 
or some other public body? There is some industrial activity but 
that is the smallest part of the ocean pollution problem. Public 
dredging is done with public funds, port authority funds, city or 
State funds. When you get into the sewage sludge problem, here 
again I don’t believe I know of a single private for-profit operator 
of a sewage treatment plant. They are public bodies and the people 
are paying for that service through one mechanism or another. 
So we are talking about the same people, aren’t we? 
Mr. Erpsness. Well, yes and no. If the people of city x are paying 
a user fee to cover the cost of ocean dumping for costs directly re- 
lated to that dumping operation, designating the site, monitoring 
