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APPEilDIX A 



12-MILE SITE 

 TECHNICAL SUMMARY 



This report was prepared in response to a request by the Environmental 

 Protection Agency (EPA) for additional technical information concerning 

 Mew York City's petition to redesignate the 12-Mile Site. The request 

 was made by EPA in a letter from the Region II Administrator to Mew York 

 City dated 9 December 1982 (EPA 1982), and through a "Notice of Petitions 

 for Rulemaking and Announcement of Consideration of Commencement of 

 Rulemaking", which appeared in the Federal Register on 20 December 1982 

 (47 FR 56665). 



In order to redesignate the 12-Mile Site, EPA must consider a number of 

 criteria established as part of the Ocean Dumping Regulations at 40 CFR 

 228.5 and 228.6. Since the site has previously been designated and used 

 historically, the criteria in 40 CFR 228.10 for evaluating disposal 

 impact must also be considered. Each of these criteria was examined by 

 EPA in the Final Environmental Impact Statement on the Ocean Dumping of 

 Sewage Sludge in the Mew York Bight, September 1978 (1978 FEIS), which 

 formed the basis for final designation of the 12-Mile Site and the 

 60-Mile Site. This report provides a comprehensive referenced update of 

 the technical information incorporated in the 1978 FEIS and demonstrates 

 that the conclusions of that document not only remain valid, but are 

 reinforced by the more recent data. The conclusions from the 1978 FEIS 

 include the following: 



"Continued use of the existing [12-Mile] site is not a present 

 threat either to public health or to water quality along the Long 

 Island or New Jersey beaches. Moving present sludge dumping 

 operations to an alternate site without adequate justification 

 would result in the unnecessary contamination of a relatively 

 clean area of the New York Bight. Moreover, contamination of the 

 new area would not be balanced off by recovery of the old; the 

 quality of the existing site and its surrounding area could not 

 be expected to improve significantly even if sludge dumping were 

 terminated, because the bottom is severely contaminated and pol- 

 lutants from other sources will continue to flow into the Bight 

 Apex" (EPA 1978, p. 4). 



In fact, the more recent technical information demonstrates that the 

 adverse effects of contamination of the New York Bight apex are less than 

 had been thought in 1978, that the relative contribution of sewage sludge 

 to the contamination of the Mew York Bight apex is small compared to 

 other identified contaminant sources (Section 6.6)*, and that total 



* References in the Technical Summary refer to sections in the main body 

 of the report. 



A-1 



