359 



Mr. D' Amours. Thank you very much, Mr. Beller. I am going to 

 hold off on the questioning until Mr. Danenberger has also testi- 

 fied. But I am most appreciative of the fact that you did summarize 

 very adequately your testimony. I am sure Mr. Danenberger will 

 follow suit. 



Mr. Danenberger, would you proceed, please. 



Mr. Danenberger. OK. I just want to note one correction in the 

 testimony that is presented. They did manage to get the name 

 changed on the statement, but they did not correct the position. I 

 am not the associate director for Minerals Management Service. I 

 have a much better job. 



I will try to summarize as briefly as possible so that we can move 

 on with questions. 



I think Bill did a good job of summarizing the program. I will 

 just hit some other highlights and try and respond to some of the 

 other requests for information. 



As far as other studies that have been done prior to OCS sale 42, 

 which is the first lease sale for the North Atlantic, the Department 

 had contracted for a 2-year North Atlantic environmental baseline 

 study in 1976 and 1977 at a cost of $4.5 million, and a 5-year physi- 

 cal oceanography program, between 1977 and 1982, at a cost of $14 

 million, acquired extensive geophysical and meteorological infor- 

 mation, and conducted a comprehensive coordination and program 

 review produce with States, Federal agencies, and private institu- 

 tions. 



One of the aspects of the agreement that ended the litigation on 

 the sale was the biological task force, which ultimately led to the 

 program which Bill has described for you. 



The program was accepted by the Department of the Interior, 

 which has been responsible for most of the funding. 



I have attached some details and summary reports to the state- 

 ment that you may look at at your leisure. 



At this point we are nearing the completion of the second year of 

 the monitoring program, and preliminary results from the second 

 year have not altered the assessment produced by the first year 

 effort. To date the Department has committed $4.3 million to the 

 program and a continuation effort into the third year is planned at 

 an estimated cost of $1.5 million. 



The monitoring program has been useful in policymaking in sev- 

 eral ways. The Department has a wide range of enforcement and 

 regulatory actions it may take if information is obtained that indi- 

 cate detrimental effects to the environment. 



For example, we may invoke the provisions of the biological stip- 

 ulation which would require lessees to conduct special environmen- 

 tal surveys. To date the results of the monitoring efforts have not 

 indicated the need for additional surveys, and the interruption of 

 drilling activity has given us some time to pause and look at the 

 data. 



The Georges Bank monitoring program data is also being used by 

 EPA, as Mr. Beller indicated. 



As far as additional deep water studies, in 1979 the Department 

 began a multiyear effort to assess the biological and physicial proc- 

 esses operating in the North Atlantic canyons and on the slope. 

 That effort is being performed by Lamont Doherty Observatory at 



