1 Jerry, when he was talking yesterday about the fluids in the 



2 drilling muds put into surface waters, said that within 200 meters of 



3 the platform, they were diluted--what I took him to say, he said diluted 



4 to 10 parts per million, which I thought meant a 10^ solution within 200 



5 meters of the platform. 



6 MS. HUGHES: I was just wondering what he said. 



7 DR. AURAND: In the produced water, he said that the saline brine 



8 impact agents are low molecular weight; hydrocarbons, there are several 



9 metals in the drilling muds. They are several -fold higher than sea 



10 water except that there is rapid dilution and, except in coastal 



11 wetlands, there is no measurable increase in salinity even within 



12 several meters of discharge; in other words, rapid mixing. 



13 In 35 feet of water, hydrocarbons were detectable until out to 100 



14 meters after several-- I wrote down 5--years of a 1,000 barrel per day 



15 discharge; no elevations of background metals at that distance. 



16 I can tell you that we are looking at the effects of produced 



17 water discharges in coastal embayments, but not in off-shore situations, 



18 because they have become an issue in coastal areas in Louisiana. In 



19 that case, they sometimes discharge them into canals and, in those 



20 cases, they have had a very definite impact because you will see 



21 hydrocarbon build up in the ends of the canals and you will wipe out the 



22 benthic fauna. 



23 It has not come up as a study topic in the off-shore situation. 



24 Florida is concerned about it, but they don't know what to do with it, 



25 either, in terms of how to treat it. All the evidence is that there is 



26 very rapid mixing and a return to normal salinity levels, which is what 



27 everybody seems to use as a tracer for this. 



28 DR. RAY: For water dispersement, I think a lot of those 



29 dispersion rates, in general, are fairly well known from a variety of 



30 different dispersion studies. For the produced water, probably as a 



31 category of materials, probably the highest concentrations of specific 



32 organics are in the volatiles that John was talking about, the benzene, 



33 xylene, toluene complex which can make up--in the worst case, I've 



34 seen--that was about 10 parts per million. 



318 



