Mr. Eichbaum: Well, in the case of Maryland, I think the 
answer to the question is, yeah, we would have done it on our 
own. We had been. That bill specifically deals with the moni¬ 
toring issue, and both agencies had in fact been working and 
doing it in a cooperative way in monitoring and other issues, 
the whole Maryland program. 
In fact, we supported Senator Fowler's legislation because 
we saw that as important to providing a framework for long-term 
commitment by the Legislature that in fact they be a part of 
that process of keeping those two agencies together over the 
long haul of a 5- or 30-year monitoring program. So we think 
it's valuable. Sometimes it's essential. It didn’t happen to 
be in that particular case. 
Dr. Morris: On the Federal side, my sense is that we 
would have gotten together. At least I would like to think we 
would have. But certainly from a pragmatic standpoint what the 
Senator did was extremely important in making it come about 
quicker. 
Dr. Thomas: I certainly would agree with A1 on that. I 
think from a pragmatic sense, certainly NOAA would want to be 
involved in that. I might add that contained in the functional 
statement for the NOAA Estuarine Programs Office in terms of its 
formation it really includes just this sort of thing we’re 
talking about in terms of coordinating and in helping to improve 
the management of our Nation's estuaries with regard to living 
marine resources within NOAA as well as coordinating with other 
Federal and state academic agencies and institutions. 
So I submit that Senator Mathias has probably hastened the 
process, but I think in a most desirable way. 
Dr. Morris: For a very pragmatic reason too, because in 
the budget battles the agencies are fighting over the same pot 
of money. So bureaucratically it gets very easy to develop 
bureaucratic enemies. Whereas now that we're sitting around the 
same table and find out that there's a human being on the other 
side of the face it's much easier to call up on the phone and 
say, "Hey, how about we getting together on this; I think we can 
work it out?" So from that standpoint the Senator did a very 
valuable thing putting us all together quicker rather than 
waiting. 
Question: I'd just like to ask one question to the panel 
at large. We've heard a lot of information on monitoring data 
and the need for more monitoring data for various parameters. 
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