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land. This legislation will help protect our lives and the beauty around 
us, and I hope the committee will approve the bills. Thank you for the 
opportunity to appear. 
Mr. Drinee tt. Thank you for a fine statement. 
aa our friend and colleague from Maryland, the Honorable Sam 
Friedel. 
STATEMENT OF HON. SAMUEL N. FRIEDEL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND 
Mr. Frievet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a great pleasure for me 
to appear before your excellent subcommittee this morning and to 
provide you with my views on this terrible problem of water pollution 
and specifically how it relates to our coastal waters which are so im- 
portant. H.R. 18593, which I have cosponsored, will go far in improv- 
ing our ability to correct the current situation. 
We from Maryland know and enjoy the God-given benefits of these 
waters. I am sure that many members of the subcommittee have taken 
the opportunity to enjoy Maryland’s water wonder, the Chesapeake 
Bay, as well as our ocean beaches at Ocean City. Of all the estuaries of 
the world, the Chesapeake Bay is probably one of the richest. It is 
rich because it produces that marvelous delicacy known as the Mary- 
land hard-shell crab. In addition, the fame and succulence of the 
Chesapeake Bay oyster is world renowned. Shellfish and finfish, the 
economic base for watermen in the Chesapeake Bay area, produces a 
$65 million-a-year business for Marylanders. In addition, our bay also 
provides recreation for millions in the metropolitan area comprising 
the Baltimore, Washington, and Virginia corridor. The bay’s total 
recreation value has been conservatively estimated at $135 million. 
Chesapeake Bay, 200 miles in length and with approximately 4,600 
miles of tidal shoreline, is certainly an asset which any State would be 
most proud to have. But what has been happening recently? Scien- 
tists have estimated that the Chesapeake is 10,000 years old. It has only 
been within the last 100 years that there have been enough people using 
the bay to create the problem. In the last 25 years, or since World War 
II, we brought so many people to work and play and live near the bay 
that in some areas the effects of our people pollution are becoming 
serious. Many parts of the bay are severely polluted. There is fecal 
contamination, bacterial contamination of several thousand acres of 
oysterbeds; many of the creeks and rivers and some estuaries are af- 
fected in the same manner. Very high turgidity, very low fish produc- 
tion in some specific areas, are examples of this kind of pollution. We 
can’t say, and I’m not saying, that the Chesapeake Bay is entirely pol- 
luted, but there are serious examples of pollution throughout the bay. 
While our excellent Water Resources Commission, acting through the 
Department of Water Resources, is making a massive effort to correct 
these situations under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and 
other State laws, it simply does not seem to be enough. 
H.R. 18593, which I have cosponsored, would require that the Sec- 
retary of Interior consult with the Army Engineers in establishing 
standards which would apply to the deposit or discharge in the coastal 
