1-percent transfer proviso; and the time frame for investigating, surveying, and determining the existence of, and recovering scientific prehistorical, historical, and archeological data.

1. Area of applicability: The bill applies as stated in section 1(2) to "any alteration of the terrain caused as a result of any Federal, federally assisted, or federally licensed activity or program." Conceivably, this provision would apply to every activity of the Federal Government that directly or indirectly results in any action that alters the terrain. To administer such provisions of law would be difficult indeed. A farmer repairing or improving a building under a Farmers Home Administration or a Federal Housing Administration loan could be subject to the bill. The construction of a nature trail on a Boy Scout camp under a conservation plan developed by the Soil Conser vation Service could be subject to these provisions. A farmer excavating a manure pit, using plans developed by the Extension Service, could be subject to the bill.

If the provisions of this bill were applied literally to all federallyassisted endeavors that directly or indirectly modify the terrain, it would be applicable to the operations of over 3 million farmers, ranchers, rural residents, and even suburban and urban residents who are receiving cost-sharing, technical, credit, and educational assistance from the Department. In many cases the bill would be applicable to the activities of a single individual several times during a 12-month period. What actually constitutes Federal assistance?

Point No. 2, responsible agency, or as indicated in H.R. 735, the instigating agency: Much of the work that farmers and ranchers do is influenced by a variety of Federal programs and agencies. For any given operation, how is the "responsible agency" determined-and who is to make the determination? The following example may illustrate the difficulty in determining the "responsible agency" or "instigating agency." A local agency (State or county) orders a farmer to reorganize his operations so animal wastes will not wash from his property into a nearby stream. This requires immediate action for pollution control. He seeks help from a number of USDA agencies. The Extension Service may provide information on the layout of a complete waste management system for recycling animal manures back onto the land. The Soil Conservation Service may provide him with layout and designs for a storage pond, diversion ditches, and a pump back pipeline for spraying liquid wastes back onto the land. The Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service under the Rural Environmental Assistance Program (REAP) may agree to share the cost of some of the measures. The Farmers Home Administration may make him a loan to complete his financing. The Agricultural Research Service may agree to monitor operation of the system to evaluate its effectiveness in preventing pollutants from getting into the stream. A permit for the storage pond may be required from the Army Corps of Engineers in compliance with the Refuse Act of 1899. Since each of the agencies mentioned above is financed wholly or in part with Federal funds, the assistance they provide could be considered a Federal assistance. Which one is the instigating or responsible agency? In view of the many thousands of recipients involved in multiagency

program assistance administered by this Department, the question of "responsible agency" or "instigating agency," becomes very pertinent.

3. Fund transfer provision: Section 3(b) of the bill provides in part ***The instigating agency is hereby authorized to transfer to the Secretary such funds as may be necessary, in an amount not to exceed one per centum of the total amount appropriated in connection with such activity or program, to enable the Secretary to conduct such survey or other investigation and to recover and preserve such data. ****It is not clear to us as to what the "one per centum" applies to and what constitutes an "activity".

The transfer of 1 per centum of the Federal cost of a structure in a watershed or R.C. & D. project would usually be in amounts large enough to justify the administrative action and may be sufficient to defray reasonable costs or archeological survey, recovery, and preservation. However, the administrative costs of transferring 1 per centum of the Federal cost of providing technical and installation cost-sharing assistance to individual land users for practices such as terracing, farm drainage, cover cropping, crop rotations, and windbreaks would, in many cases, exceed the amount of funds transferred, if indeed we could identify the instigating agency. The accounting required for servicing hundreds of thousands of small jobs could make operations under this bill expensive and cumbersome indeed.

4. Time frame for action. Section 3(b) would authorize the Secretary of the Interior to take action to investigate, determine the existence of, and recover and preserve scientific, prehistorical, historical, and archeological data if he determines such action to be in the public interest. Section 3 (c) would require the Secretary to keep the instigating agency notified of progress. We have no question with these requirements other than the problem of identifying the "instigating agency." However, we are concerned that the bill does not establish a reasonable time frame for actions by the Secretary of the Interior. We feel that equity and fairness to individual land users that might be subject to the bill indicate a need for the bill to establish reasonable time limits on delays to their activities. Other programs administered by the Department of Agriculture which would be subject to the bill involve a goodly number of construction contracts. We are concerned that undue delay by the Secretary of the Interior would result in successful claims by such construction contractors because of such delays and ultimately be reflected in increases in contract bid prices and construction costs. If a reasonable time frame were established by the bill, the contracts could be drafted to offset somewhat the likelihood of increasing bid prices.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Owen T. Jamison, Assistant Director of the Division of Recreation, Forest Service, has accompanied me. We would be pleased to respond to any questions which you or members of the subcommittee may have.

Mr. BURLISON. Thank you, Mr Davey.

You point out four areas in which you feel that the proposal is not specific enough, but I have not noticed any specific suggestions for tying the provisions down a bit more.

To be specific, on the first point you raise, the area of applicability, what limitation would you suggest?

Mr. DAVEY. Mr. Chairman, we have not really seriously considered amendatory language to the bill. We will be pleased to give this some additional thought. I think we have some problems in identifying the difference between technical assistance, cost-sharing assistance, credit assistance, loan guarantee, and a number of these other areas, some of which result in direct Federal transfers to individuals for constructing various kinds of activities. Others are more of an advisory, educational, motivational type of context.

There may be room here to make some distinctions between the area of coverage by the bill.

Mr. BURLISON. On your second point of the responsible agency, do you have any clarifying language that you would suggest on this point?

Mr. DAVEY. No, sir, we do not have any suggestions at the moment on that. This will be a difficult one because most of the services to farmers usually result in inputs from one or more agencies of the Department. So trying to put the clarification on the instigating agency as the bill indicates, may be a difficult thing indeed.

Mr. BURLISON. And finally, what about the time frame for action? Would you have any suggested guidelines of any sort on this point? Mr. DAVEY. Well, one of the bills indicates a 60-day clause. I believe H.R. 735 does not. And we were addressing ourselves primarily to H.R. 735. Our concern here as we tried to indicate, is that the contractor in trying to protect himself for delays will probably have higher bids, thus resulting in higher contracting costs.

If we had some more definitive period here in which the Secretary would be required to act, this could be brought into the contract language and somewhat offset the tendency on the part of the contractor to bid higher just as a self-protection type of device. It would still probably result in higher costs because, if there were down time while the survey, archeological survey, was being made, somebody would have to pay the contractor. Normally it is the person issuing the

contract.

Mr. BURLISON. Does the gentleman from Pennsylvania have any questions?

Mr. SAYLOR. Mr. Davey, your comment No. 3 with regard to fund transfers took my mind back to the days when the veterans committee, several Congresses ago, decided they were going to have all of the veterans insured without the Government going into the insurance business. And I recall somebody from the Department of the Army coming down and telling us what a horrible job it would be, all the difficulty they would have in determining administrative cost of writing one check each month. And in response to a question which I asked as to whether or not they knew or if somebody in the Army could tell on the first day of each month the number of people that they had in the Army, the answer was yes. I also asked, are they still teaching West Point multiplication so that you could multiply it by a dollar figure and transfer that and come out with the right figure so that somebody in your Department could write a check? The answer was, well, we can but it would be difficult.

I just give you that as example of another agency of Government. that had trouble with talking about transferring of 1 percent of its funds.

If you left that language out I think you would have made a pretty good statement but I think you left yourself pretty vulnerable, with an awful weak spot. I think you are really constructive in suggesting a definition of the area to which it is to be applied, the responsible agency, and your time action but as to getting around to 1 percent-you know, if we did not have computers, even though they make mistakes, I think you might have had a pretty good case but I think you weaken it a good bit by including No, 3.

Mr. DAVEY. Well, what I was trying to point out, Mr. Saylor, was a problem in the case of the "responsible" agency. Perhaps there are seven agencies of the Department that render a service. Now, does the 1 percent apply to each one of the seven agencies or to one, or is it on a prorated basis? Yes. The Department can easily write a check for 1 percent but normally these funds are appropriated to these separate agencies and normally they handle the financial details...

Similarly, do you do it-the transfer on the total program, funds that are given to that agency or do you do it on the particular service as we described here? There may be $100 worth of technical assistance helping a farmer on a pollution abatement problem. Is the 1 percent applied to the $100 worth of technical assistance or is it applied to the total program back at the Washington level? This is another aspect of what I was trying to point out.

Mr. SAYLOR. I do not know whether it is going to be 1 percent, but if the fight that exists between the Interior Department and the Agriculture Department will be continued, the Agriculture Department will be for the smallest denominator and the Interior Department will be for the largest. Somewhere between the two we will strike a happy medium.

Mr. DAVEY. I suspect you are right.

Mr. BURLISON. The gentleman from Iowa.

Mr. KYL. Well, I think the gentleman is correct in expressing some of these questions. I think we are going to have to tighten this down a little bit or we are going to have to have your happy medium to read the crystal ball to find out what we are doing here.

I think you have made a valuable contribution. Thank you, sir. Mr. DAVEY. Thank you.

Mr. BURLISON. The gentleman from Puerto Rico.

Mr. CÓRDOVA. No questions.

Mr. BURLISON. I thank the gentleman..

The next witness is Brig. Gen. Kenneth Cooper, deputy director. civil works, Office of the Chief of Engineers, U.S. Department of the Army?

We will be delighted to hear you.

STATEMENT OF BRIG. GEN. KENNETH B. COOPER, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF CIVIL WORKS, OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF ENGINEERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY

General COOPER. In the interest of saving time I would like to have my written statement inserted in the record and I would like to make a few comments.

Mr. BURLISON. Without objection, your entire statement will be included in the record.

General COOPER. Basically, sir, we recommend the enactment of the version of the bill under consideration, H.R. 6257, for two specific reasons. (1) H.R. 6257 does add the word "projects" within the phrase "Federal or federally assisted programs or activities," and to us this would preclude any interpretation of 1 percent transfers of the entire civil works program. The committee also addressed this issue, when you talked about a limitation of $6 million or so in the entire program. But from our point of view, if "projects" is added, it would help us. (2) The other aspect of H.R. 6257, which we prefer, is the fact it does allow provision for small projects which may have large archeological or historical significance to exceed the one percent limitation. With those minor reservations and one minor technical change in H.R. 6257, we recommend enactment of H.R. 6257.

Sir, that completes my brief summary. I will be willing to answer any questions you may have.

Mr. BURLISON. Would your Department approve of the Senate' version of the bill rather than making variations requiring a late hour conference?

General COOPER. You are referring to Senate 1245?

Mr. BURLISON. Yes.

General COOPER. Yes, sir.

We agree that there should be provision to take care of these archeological and historical aspects of projects, but there should be some limitation.

It has been our experience in some cases when we go to the Park Service and ask them to do a survey in connection with a project they say: "We would like to but we do not have any funds." We think that is one of the limitations this bill would overcome.

Mr. BURLISON. All right. So your Department would not concur with the Senate action there.

General COOPER. We concur with the Senate bill, sir.

Mr. BURLISON. The gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. SAYLOR. General, I was looking at section 3 of the bill 6257 which you have referred to. Do you believe that the 1 percent would only apply in those areas where there was research done? Is that what I gather from your statement?

General COOPER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SAYLOR. What other civil works program do you have that would not be included if you used this language which you suggest? General COOPER. We believe that the permits we issue under the River and Harbor Act of 1899 would not be included under this bill. We issue thousands of permits under section 10 of the River and Harbor Act of 1899 and we are restricted temporarily from issuing any permits under section 13 but we would assume this bill did not cover these permits. If you leave out the term "project," it could be construed as including

Mr. SAYLOR. But these permits which you issue do not call for construction by the Corps of Engineers.

General COOPER. That is correct, sir, but it could be construed that we issue licenses that do call for construction in many cases.