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finding of no harm to the environment, or to deny a permit based 

 on demonstrated harm. Without the monitoring program, litigation 

 against the EPA permit decision would have been inevitable. 



A major reason the monitoring program was able to contribute 

 to a smooth permitting process is that the Task Force came to be 

 very successful at performing a function which was only 

 considered secondary when the Task Force was created. The Task 

 Force became a focal point for much of the public involvement in 

 addressing the issues surrounding the begining of exploratory 

 drilling. In the procegs of developing the monitoring program on 

 a relatively open and cooperative basis, people came to believe 

 that the monitoring program would ask the right questions and 

 that studies would be conducted using best available techniques. 



The credibility of the monitoring program in the scientific 

 and environmental communities must be counted as another of the 

 major successes of the Task Force. This credibility was not 

 easily won; the first version of the monitoring program 

 recommended by the Task Force was rejected by the Department of 

 the Interior on the advice of numerous parties, including the New 

 England States. It took almost a full year to develop a 

 monitoring program which was satisfactory to all concerned, but 

 in the end the program that emerged was widely perceived to be 

 well designed, and I think has come to be seen as well executed. 



By focusing on the qustions surrounding the effects of drill 

 muds on benthic organisms, the accumulation of drill muds around 

 a rig and down current from the drilling area, and on the fate 

 and effects of hydrocarbons, the monitoring program attempts to 

 address central issues in the regulation of oil and gas drilling. 



The study design is scientifically sound in that it builds 

 on preceding research on the fate and effects of drill mud 

 discharges and specificaly corrects for some of the problems 

 found in earlier studies. It is also sound in the use of 

 existing knowledge concerning the physical oceanography of 

 Georges Bank to establish the experimental design. 



The results of the monitoring program are now begining to 

 come in. Although all the data has been collected from one full 

 year of seasonal cruises and from the stations at the 

 rig-specific sites, much work in analysis and interpretation of 

 the data remains, so conclusions are still preliminary. It does 

 appear that there was little permanent accumulation of drill muds 

 or hydrocarbons in the immediate vicinity of the rig, and that 

 trace metal concentrations have not been signif icnatly elevated. 



If born out by the final analyses, these results would give 



