726 
ton basis in order to achieve some sort of parity with sewerage 
agencies who pay fees to landfill owners, may be superficially 
attractive, but is based upon a faulty premise. 
As Professor John Norton Moore, of the University of 
Virginia Law School, pointed out during a seminar in February 
of this year, the oceans certainly are a "common property" res- 
ource, as the pro-fee argument stresses. But, as Professor 
Moore said, so too are the great reservoirs of groundwater that 
serve 40 percent of our population as drinking water supplies. 
So too is the atmosphere a "common property" resource. The 
proposal to tax users of one common property resource -- the 
ocean -- makes no more sense than to tax those who operate 
incinerators for their use of the atmosphere, or to place a tax 
on land disposal to cover the risks of contaminating groundwater. 
These three media -- air, groundwater and the oceans -- are all 
common property resources. They are similar in that government 
does nothing to "prepare" them for waste disposal, as a land- 
owner does a landfill. 
As we understand the concept of user charges, it is to 
require those who specially benefit and profit from activities 
undertaken with Federal tax dollars to pay their fair share of 
those costs thus relieving the burden on all taxpayers. No 
Federal money is spent preparing the ocean and, indeed, we 
believe there are and can be some benefits to the marine en- 
vironment from appropriately prepared sludges. And I should 
point out that the local governmental agencies I represent in 
this hearing are all non-profit agencies, benefitting the 
millions of citizens who reside in our service areas. User 
charges are simply not appropriate for this activity. 
Our members strongly oppose an arbitrary tax on ocean 
utilization or disposal of sludge, to the extent that it is 
unrelated to actual government costs in relation to such acti- 
vity. We do not oppose a legislative proposal that would have 
those who use the ocean for waste disposal -- including dredged 
material, sewage sludge, and industrial waste disposal -- pay 
the reasonable, actual costs of government for site designation 
and permit processing. It is not unreasonable to expect those 
who use the ocean to pay a pro-rata share of the overhead 
incurred by the Federal Government. 
Our positions on research and monitoring are somewhat 
different from that on administrative costs, or “overhead". As 
NPDES permittees, we are all accustomed to carrying out routine 
monitoring of our effluent discharges. In fact, many sewerage 
agencies have highly qualified chemists, biologists, oceano- 
graphers, and other laboratory personnel in-house, to meet the 
authority's internal needs as well as its monitoring requirements. 
The City of Los Angeles, for example, spent over $1.5 million 
last year on routine monitoring of its ocean outfalls. 
