Amant mentioned one a second ago when he talked about the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. He said that we lost 100,000 acres of marsh just to dig this 60 mile long canal. It's 500 feet wide and 36 feet deep. That was a direct loss of 100,000 acres of marsh. The loss that has resulted since it's been built, I don't have a figure on, but it's continuing to eat away at land in St. Bernard Parish, and this is a horrible ongoing problem that has not been addressed. Salt water intrusion into Lake Pontchartrain has resulted, and has been forecasted, Lake Pontchartrain is expanding. This is the type of situation prevalent along Louisiana's entire shoreline.

In April, Representative Tauzin, chairman of the Louisiana House Natural Resource Committee, held a hearing on land loss in Louisiana, and heard a presentation from Dr. Rodney Adams of the LSU Center for Wetlands Resources. Dr. Adams showed maps, overlays, of where the Louisiana shore was in 1850, 1870, 1900, 1920, and so forth. Just to give you one statistic, the mouth of Bayou Lafourche-which goes all the way down to Grand Isle and is where the superport has come in, the mouth of Bayou Lafourche is receding at the rate of 48 feet per year. That means if you go and hammer a stake down there at, say, an in-between point in your tides, at an average tide level, and return a month later, that stake will be several feet out into the Gulf of Mexico. That's what that figure means.

You heard testimony today that we're going to lose Grand Isle. I have had private conversations with people who've told me that by the year 2020, the Gulf of Mexico is going to be located across the river here. So, I cannot overstate this problem. This is, as I say, a land ripoff of a magnitude that is unbelieveable. What we have here is a tragedy, a devastation of our land, an absolute catastrophe. I know this has been brought to your attention. Some of the questions you've asked earlier in the day, Congressman Breaux, you asked Mr. Faulk if you could build a temporary canal. He told you that you can put the spoil back into the canal. We call this mitigation to some extent. The oil companies toss the spoil up on the side. They dig a slip, dump the spoil up on the slip, the sides of it, and they leave it. The canal stays there. For the superport, the first time the permits are coming through, we get the permits in the Sierra Club, and we've seen the permits now. They are backfilling canals. The industry doesn't want to do this. They don't even want to talk about it. They want a free ride. They just want to take land, and we feel it's a terrible injustice. We don't see why that state should exist.

Thank you.

Mr. BREAUX. Thank you, Mr. Halle.

[The following was submitted for the record:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MICHAEL HALLE

Congressman Breaux, members of the Subcommittee on Wildlife and Fisheries. My name is Michae! Halle. I am presenting a statement on behalf of the Delta Chapter of the Sierra Club.

The purpose of this hearing, quoting in part from your letter inviting the Sierra Club to speak, is to:

(1) explore the impacts of development of oil and gas reserves in wetland areas; (2) examine the procedures currently in use for evaluating permit applications; and

(3) find the means by which U.S. Government agency objection to such work can be resolved.

Now what this subcommittee is really doing is proposing to act on a bill by Congressman Dave Treen which will cut the review procedure down to sixty days at the end of which time the permit will either be denied or it will automatically be issued. For I can tell you very simply what the impact of the development of Louisiana's oil and gas reserves is, has been, and will continue to be and that is very simple. That impact is loss of land.

In fact it is a land rip-off of America. These oil companies, the trusty friends of America as they bill themselves, are destructionists. And are they bashful about it? They are not. The strip miners have been regulated, the lumber companies, the steel mills belching soot and the chemical plants dumping mercury and arsenic but not the oil companies. And why not? That's a political question I won't try to

answer.

Instead I'll ask another one: what is the difference between a strip mine and an oil well constructed in the Louisiana wetlands? I will tell you: the strip mine today eventually will be covered over and replanted; the oil well will turn highly productive Louisiana land into open water.

Let me cite a few statistics on this: In 1975, 87 companies directly destroyed 1907 acres. In 1976, 119 companies directly destroyed 2423.8 acres.

This, of course, does not begin to touch on the salt water intrusion through these canals that leads to much more secondary loss, a fact well documented by Dr. John Day, Rodney Adams, and N. Craig of the LSU Center for Wetlands Resources, Sherwin Gagliano of Coastal Environments Inc., and many others.

About the procedures used for evaluating permit applications: The Corps, the USFWS, NMF, and the EPA are all involved in this. A recent study by USFWS from Nov. 1, 1977 to Oct. 31, 1978 showed that only 7 percent of the 1522 oil related permits were delayed. This is on Pg. 7 of a document entitled A Review of Fish & Wildlife Service Participation in the Regulatory Program of the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The average number of permits delayed was 2.8 per month. And of 58 delayed permits, the average delay of 33 of them was only 1-32 days.

This study also contains copies of six letters of objection by the USFWS. Each is a request for the well to be drilled directionally resulting in shorter canals and slips. How many of the delays were requests for directional drilling is unknown but the Sierra Club feels, whatever the number, it probably should have been more.

The third problem to be addressed at this hearing, the means to resolve permit delays, demands consideration of one fact above all others. And that is, the likelihood of domestic oil production increasing in Louisiana is an impossibility. Every forecast done for the state indicates our oil and gas resources are being exhausted. The permitting program has only been in existence since 1972 (Section 404 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments). Do the oil companies offer alternatives to NMF and USFWS and the Corps to make their jobs easier? Do the oil companies even blush with shame at what they are doing to Louisiana's land? Do they even hint the damage may eventually be so great it cannot be undone? No. They say in their report by Mid-Continent Oil and Gas, Here we have lost $237,000 and there $62,500 and elsewhere $585,000 in lost production. And the Governor of Louisiana says the state loses $250,000 a day. But do we really? Won't it eventually be produced. Do these figures take into account wells that did not produce? And what of rigs delayed here used to drill elsewhere?

What is this great rush? The Oil & Gas Journal of June 11, 1979 concluded that the reason less drilling was going on was due to uncertainty over prices not to delays caused by the USFWS and NMF.

We salute NMF and the USFWS for daring to stand up to the oil industry. And we urge you, Congressman Breaux, to report Dave Treen's bills unfavorably when you hold official hearings on them. We also urge you to consider recommending increased staffing for NMFS and USFWS so that they may more fully do their jobs. We also suggest that the Corps of Engineers be given increased staffing to do cumulative impact studies of the thousands of small but cumulatively damaging canals being dredged. These are our suggested ways to resolve the problems associated with oil company activities in the Louisiana shorelands.

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. Danby?

STATMENT OF CLIFF DANBY, ORLEANS AUDUBON SOCIETY Mr. DANBY. Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Cliff Danby, and I am here today representing the 1,300 members

of the Orleans Audubon Society. The Orleans Audubon Society thanks the subcommittee for the opportunity to discuss the issue of oil and gas development in the gulf coast wetlands.

Particularly, we would like to discuss the alleged delays in processing drilling permits in Louisiana, and the need for legislation to speed permit processing.

First, we wish to discuss why there is a need to regulate oil and gas exploration in Louisiana wetlands. We've already heard here today about Mr. Gagliano's study that shows that 161⁄2 square miles of louisiana's wetlands are disappearing yearly. He goes on to state that "40 percent of that loss is caused by dredging, and that mineral extraction industries account for 65 percent of the dredging."

An analysis of permits issued for the period of January 1975 to June 1977 shows that oil exploration activities have caused a loss of 5,600 acres of wetlands. This is mostly from dredging.

Does dredging harm wetlands? Gagliano goes on to say that dredging greatly accelerates marsh deterioration and erosion. He concluded that massive environmental degradation has occurred and that the entire coastal system may collapse.

The Wildlife and Fisheries Commission has performed a study which shows that the dredging and channelization produce an overall decrease in the productivity of the marsh, despite what Mr. St. Amant says.

Members of the oil and gas industry itself have recognized the destructive effects of mineral exploration to marsh lands. Bybee of Exxon, at the Symposium on Coastal Marsh and Estuary Management held in Baton Rouge in 1972, stated that "industry channelization resulted in direct destruction of marsh areas and permanent changes in the ecosystem.

It has, therefore, been amply shown that dredging in the wetlands is harmful. Commercial and recreational fishing industries of the Gulf of Mexico depend on estuaries. About 90 percent of the commercial and 70 percent of recreational catch are species that are estuarine dependent. These industries help support the economic well-being of Louisiana. The destgruction of coastal estuaries can only lead to the demise of commercial fishing industries, together with the businesses supported by recreational fishing.

We might pause here to question why there is not a panel representing the commercial fishing industry today, since they have a vital interest in the wetlands of this State.,

Who is regulating the activities in Louisiana's coastal wetlands? State agencies are not. They are more interested in the exploitation of the wetlands and routinely issue letters of no objection to planned actions. That leaves Federal agencies to do the job. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service are doing an effective job in reviewing permits affecting coastal wetlands. Therefore, we strongly support these two Federal agencies. Without them, there would be practically no review of drilling permits and the disappearance of the Louisiana wetlands would continue to accelerate.

The life of oil fields is finite, but wetlands can last indefinitely. Action is needed now to protect them for future benefit.

5

Now, we'd like to discuss the so-called backlog of permits. A survey of oil drilling permit applications processed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service since January 1979 shows that they timely process 93 percent of those permits. Only 7 percent, or 58 in 8 months, were delayed for various reasons. This is considerably less than the 180 backlog per day cited by the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources. He alleged that these delays reduced drilling activity. Also, Representative Treen was quoted in the Franklin Post as stating that ". evidence supporting permit delays was the large number of presently inactive drilling rigs, and a drop in drilling permits." On this basis, legislation was introduced to require the permitting to take no more than 60 days. However, in the Oil and Gas Journal of June 11, 1979, members of the oil and gas industry stated the causes of reduced drilling to be "Congressional inaction on energy legislation, a natural gas surplus, uncertainty over Federal pricing regulations, restrained cash flows and a lack of substantial discoveries." Further, they predicted a possible rig shortage by the end of 1980. There was no mention of permit delays as the cause of reduced drilling activity.

In addition, a news article cited industry spokesmen as saying they were perplexed by the number of idle rigs, and that the current slump was comparable to similar slow seasons in 1974 and 1968.

Based on this information, we conclude that the alleged permit backlog was contrived in order to prevent adequate reviews of permit applications.

We think the oil industry has some responsibility for the delays in permit processing. Our reasons for this belief are:

A. Absence of information on permit applications necessary to evaluate full impacts of the requested action.

B. Lack of environmental considerations when making the applications.

C. Lack of pre-coordination with interest agencies and citizen groups when applications impact particularly sensitive areas.

D. Failure to apply Federal guidelines for work in wetlands in making permit applications.

E. Directional drilling opportunities are often overlooked so as to minimize damages.

Overlooking these aspects often requires that oil companies supply the additional information after the permit was submitted, further delaying the permit process.

It seems to us also that permit applications could be made well in advance of planned drilling dates. We realize that drillings are probably delayed as long as possible in order to benefit from rising oil and gas prices. However, the drilling permit application could be processed ahead of time.

It seems that by now the oil industry has been confronted enough times with environmental objections to know what needs to be done to minimize wetland impact. They ought to build these considerations into permit requests. Actually, the oil industry should have its own guidelines for its members to follow. This would facilitate permit processing.

A cause for delays at the Federal level is the lack of personnel to handle permits. For example, the National Marine Fisheries office

at Galveston, Tex., handles permits for Texas and Louisiana. Louisiana is the most active area in the country. Yet NMFS has only two people to handle these permits. As a result NMFS has had to contract out the review of permits. We believe that adequate staffing of the Federal permit function would help speed the review process. On the other hand, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has three people reviewing permits just for the State of Louisiana. In conclusion, we do not feel that the proposed legislation is needed because:

One, we are not aware of any real permit backlog;

Two, delayed drilling action seems to have been voluntary by the oil industry itself for economic reasons; and

Three, work in wetlands needs to be fully evaluated in order to minimize harm to a valuable, renewable resource.

Finally, the Orleans Audubon Society states again its strong support of the review functions of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service in view of the value of wetlands to this State and this Nation.

STATEMENT OF ROSS VINCENT, PRESIDENT, ECOLOGY CENTER OF LOUISIANA

Mr. VINCENT. As I indicated at the outset, we support this committee's efforts to minimize, even eliminate if possible, avoidable delays in permit processing, for all types of permits, including those related to oil and gas production.

We would be deeply concerned, however, if measures contemplated in the interest of speed or efficiency threatened the two most important elements in any decisionmaking process-protection of the overall public interest, including, but certainly not limited to fish and wildlife values, and assurance of the essential right of every American to a meaningful voice in public decisions which affect his or her future.

There was a time, expecially here in Louisiana, perhaps in other places as well, when virtually anyone who chose to do so could run roughshod over the Nation's wetlands with little or no fear of interference. There was a time, just a few short years ago, when the corps' permit process was little more than a rubber stamp exercise. We would be most distressed to see the return of those unfortunate times.

If a problem really exists, it seems to us that the only viable option we have is to identify corrective actions which maintain the essential integrity of the consultation processes established by the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act. Substantial tinkering with those processes would be a serious mistake in our judgment. In order to assess the seriousness of this problem, we need to ask a few questions.

First of all, just how many permits are involved in these agency delays if, in fact, they're occurring? All of the information we have seem to indicate that the delays involve only a small handful of permits, that the vast majority, well over 90 percent, are processed promptly, without objection or comment from anyone.