August 3, 1999

Masters Inn, Garden City, Ga.

[Tape recorder did not work at beginning of meeting. The initial section is taken from Cathy Vaughn's handwritten notes and supplemented with Larry Keegan’s notes.]

Meeting opened at 9:00 am

Ben Dysart (SEG meeting facilitator): Introduction and reminders of SEG's official mission, responsibilities, trust, etc.

Ben Brewton: Emphasized the need for openness, accurate records, and communication. Need to have open access to the public, all media and the public to the actions of this group. Discussed availability of information and records of scientific tasks being worked on in subcommittees.

David Schaller: Should be handled in the SEG communication committee

B Brewton: The whole SEG should discuss this issue – beyond the communication committee. Regarding time limits and moving along – issues are resolved whenever they are resolved. Cautioned to be careful if some have unresolved concerns they are not cut off based on time limits.

David Kyler: Give each item 10 minutes. Suggested as a guideline. If topic is important, will not be resolved in one meeting anyway.

B Dysart: Suggestion has some appeal.

Bill Farmer: Put time notations on schedule.

Press Brownell: Do need time limits. If topic exceeds limit, come back in afternoon to resolve it.

Judy Jennings: Requested to not be deferred again.

B Brewton: A number of items on agenda have been on there a while. Suggest we take old items first instead of SEG committee reports.

B Dysart: Committee reports have been taken first because most people in here want to hear SEG committee reports.

B Brewton: Will strike items 2 and 3 on the agenda.

Teri Leffek: Keep comments to 10 minutes, and we should be able to get to old items.

B Dysart: What is…

D Kyler: Might want to consider if item has been deferred – put in special class.

B Dysart: Proceed with agenda – 10 minutes per item, roll forward.

P Brownell: If meeting runs into lunch, may need to plan an afternoon meeting.

[Begin Tape 1, Side A]

B Dysart: [Regarding re-doing the June SEG meeting summary concerning the discussion at beginning of the meeting on removal of facilitator's opening exercise and re-posting it] My intention to put in verbatim on that particular session. I do not feel that I am authorized to change it around, or summarize it, or shrink it, or do anything to it. My feeling is that if somebody does not like what was actually said, there is not anything I can do anything about it. That will probably be posted sometime this week. I think that we will have some guidance that is responsive to the needs and desires and the interest of the actual Members of this group as to what you would like in the way of summary, as opposed to "don’t make it too long, don’t make it too short, make it detailed enough, don’t make it too detailed", and so forth. So you have the May one that has been redone, and you have the July summary. Those have been posted - you have a hard copy in front of you. Is there any comment?

B Brewton: In regard to the May summary, it was my impression, and I think it is borne out by the draft July summary, that at the last meeting we actually took formal action to approve those subject to two changes that were specifically itemized in the meeting. I noticed subsequent to the last meeting, several times notices went out asking for comments on the May meeting summary and I noticed the new summary that you produced, that revised 7/29 based on SEG member input at or since the SEG meeting. What I am trying to figure out, other than the two changes that the group agreed on at the July meeting, what changes have been made to the May minutes, or May summary.

B Dysart: I believe that is all.

B Brewton: (unintelligible)

Cathy Vaughn: Tom (Meronek) made one change on the May summary.

B Dysart: Just to refresh my memory, what were the two things that were to be modified, were they modified?

B Brewton: One was Patty’s discussion about cumulative effects I think, and I forgot what the other one was. What I was more curious about was there other changes that were made since then. The ones we sort of agreed, I didn’t pay a whole lot …

B Dysart: Minor clarification from the Corps and from Tom. Is that right Cathy?

C Vaughn: I think, on May, it was just from Tom, just the one.

Patty McIntosh: I had asked if there had been a response to my comment that was posted in those minutes. And I had understood or misunderstood that Cathy was gong to go back and listen to those tapes to see if there response.

C Vaughn: I did not do anything with May tapes. I do not have the May tapes, Marian has them.

B Dysart: Ask your question now, and we will put on August. It will be much more cost effective and much less transaction cost for the entire group. What was your question?

B Brewton: As a matter of procedure, I am always in favor of making any corrections that we need to to the minutes so that they are an accurate record. However, as a matter of procedure, once the group is actually voted so to speak, or reached consensus on the minutes, I don’t think that there should be other changes made unless those changes are put in a red-line version and brought back to the group for additional approval. Basically, my understanding was that in July we approved the minutes as they were with two specific changes. If other changes than those two were made afterwards they need to be specifically pointed out so we do not have to go through line by line and compare them. I would like to suggest that for future minutes changes.

B Dysart: I will put in the record that when we do re-dos of previous months’ summaries, we will do redline versions. Can you post redlines, Larry, on the web site?

B Brewton: I was talking about after they were approved. In other words, if it is still a draft, if the group says redo and it is still a draft, I just think that once the group has voted, so to speak, as we did in the last meeting, if there are other changes that come up other than what was specifically noted and approved, that those need to be noted.

D Schaller: Given your [Ben Dysart's] remarks about what you are planning to do with the June minutes, just so that all understand what the rule is, and I thought we had generally brought consensus to the issue of how we were going to do the minutes, and basically I understood that to be in a bullet fashion that captured the main issues and the issues by-and-large. You said you were going to do verbatim minutes on the June minutes.

B Dysart: On the web site issue that there has been considerable discussion about - not enough detail, things that were not reported what everybody said, and all the nuances. So that particular item would seem to be of great concern by some Members. I am simply going to verbatim…

D Schaller: That means at anytime anybody wants a verbatim transcript of a particular issue deliberated by the SEG, then they get…we will do that administratively?

B Dysart: We keep asking questions, I keep asking the question: what does the body, the SEG Members, what do they want, what would they find useful and helpful? I know there are people who say they come to the meetings, they hear what goes on, they do not need something that thick. They simply want to know what are the decisions, consensus, and recommendations. There are other people who want all the details and want all the nuances, want to capture all of the rich flavor.

D Schaller: There ought to be some consistency in the way we do that. Do verbatim one time and not another. None of us can change what is said at a meeting. If the tape player is working, it is working, and it is captured forever and ever, and you can’t go back and change it and say well I didn’t say that. The purpose of reviewing minutes is to define…be accurate or if the minutes are not correct, then they need to be changed. You can’t go back and say well (inaudible) when that is not what you said. Isn’t that a fact that everyone will agree to? They are what they are.

B Dysart: Jerry McCollum, in the back, conservationist from greater Atlanta area wishes to speak.

Jerry McCollum: I think I agree with this gentleman here, Ben [Dysart], and I have not been to any of these meetings. But I have been following them as intensely as anybody can from the outside. There certainly can be no argument if a verbatim transcript is provided. So, with representing those interests who have an interest at this table who can’t be here every session, I would suggest that maybe the thing to do is to provide that verbatim transcript regardless. That way you eliminate this discussion about who said what and what it meant. It is in the record, and it is there to stay. And if it weights a half a pound each time, then so be it. But that is really is just what I need rather than…I can spend less time…I drove four hours to get here, and I will drive four hours back for a three-hour meeting. It would be a lot better for me and the people I represent if I, in fact, had the verbatim transcript and just spend my time with that and so that we can dig out the issues of discussion that we have a more intense interest in. So, in that regard, I propose to this group that we dispense this discussion about correcting minutes, adjusting minutes, and rewriting minutes, and just provide a verbatim transcript every meeting.

Male Voice: Good idea.

B Dysart: Your humble facilitator would find that a lot easier to deal with than being continuously whipsawed in all directions by the parties. "This porridge is too hot, this porridge is too cold." The only thing I don’t hear is "this porridge is just right."

Male Voice: I make a motion that we consider Mr. McCollum’s idea.

C Vaughn: May I say something, please. You are talking about verbatim. Verbatim is typing every single word or the tape, correct? The last tapes, this machine last month worked very well, and I heard pretty well. But there is always time where someone is rustling papers, someone coughs, some do not speak very loudly. You cannot get a verbatim transcript. Also when someone repeats something five times, do you really want me to type it five times? I will.

B Dysart: That is the safe thing to do.

C Vaughn: Okay.

B Dysart: You will spend a heck of a lot less time typing it five times than going through it again, again, and again.

C Vaughn: Last month’s were not verbatim, because I did not type it five times. But it is very, very close. This month we will not have the tapes.

P Brownell: I support what David Schaller talked about and what Jerry said. I do think we though we need to have the capability to correct certain errors of fact, information, we do need to have that capability. We need to strive to have as much of a full record as possible, I think. Considering what Cathy says about…we need to have that capability to make a slight change. I think there may be some occasions where there are important clarifications that all of us would agree need to be made… We should have that window open.

B Dysart: In case somebody misspeaks themselves.

P Brownell: Sure, if you say something…

B Dysart: I have been known to do that.

P Brownell: Or if you don’t have enough facts so the people could understand what you were saying.

J Jennings: Think we have been on this over 10 minutes. Not to say that it is not valid…my major point is…I make it a priority to come to the meetings, so I hear it verbatim. If I need to review a meeting, I need to be able to do it in a timely way, which I sure don’t want to hear everything y'all said. I wasn’t here, I don’t want to have to read. That is not a time-efficient way for me to digest a summary of a meeting. I am not sure quite what (inaudible), if the way to deliver to me a meeting I missed is a verbatim summary, that is incredibility inefficient for me. I need an efficient way to understand what happened here if I can’t be here. But I got to tell you guys that I am going on vacation, and I can’t wait. So this must be (inaudible).

Larry Rogers: Dave is next, then me.

B Brewton: If I could just follow up then…

L Rogers: Ben [Brewton], you are out of turn.

B Brewton: No, I am not out of turn, I have had my hand up here every since they started talking and he just called me.

L Rogers: This man had his first, then me, then you.

J McCollum: I don’t want to saddle the staff of the GPA with the obligation of making a verbatim transcript. I am telling everybody in this room that the technology exists. So, you know, fix it. If it costs money, put a price on it. I don’t justify my schedule to anybody in this room either. I can be here sometimes, and most of the time I can’t. But I represent 58,000 members of the Georgia Wildlife Federation, and I intend to keep up with what is going on here. If it is more convenient for Judy to come up here, fine. Sometimes it is not for me. I am suggesting a way to dispense with all this discussion you have had so far. You know, you don’t need a correction to a record that is already perfected unless there is, you know, somebody says one word and they type another word. There are court reporters that do this for a living everyday.

D Schaller: Dog is on the ground, wounded badly, but still breathing, so I will kick him again. Jerry just said something very pertinent, and that is the administrative burden associated with this verbatim transcript. I am sure they can’t tell who is speaking each time someone speaks. To identify that person and to go on for endless time, trying to put it word by word. Jerry said there is technology available. I had understood at one time that Mr. Brewton’s communications committee was going to address the subject of the minutes, and maybe that got waylaid or thrown back in here and really didn’t get captured in Mr. Brewton’s committee. We will be happy to investigate the technology. May be we can make a bank of tapes, and people who want tapes can have tapes. But I would just point out to the SEG Membership that there is cost associated with production and the administration of these meetings, and there is not an endless supply of money to address each and every one.

L Rogers: I have got a couple of comments. First, I would like to say why don’t we have a show of hands and the majority rule, as to whether we have a brief bullet summary like you do in most meetings of the happenings of the committee meeting and then if there are any discrepancies, then they could be corrected just like in a normal meeting. We could just have a show of hands and the simple majority – that is the way we would go. Second comment, you could have that with a tape backup of every comment, and if someone wanted to have that, that would be available. You could make copies rapidly of those, and send those tapes and let person, such as Jerry, Ben [Brewton], or whoever wanted to listen to every comment, they could listen to that. Then both purposes would be served.

B Brewton: I was just going to suggest… a lot of this, as Dave said, is getting into some things that the communication committee has discussed. We did not have…I’ve got a report I going to give you. We did not have a meeting in the past month due to schedule conflicts, but I am going to report some of what we talked about previously. It does address some of these things. In the interest of moving on we have got two other sets of minutes to talk about here. I would like to ask that perhaps that we defer for the moment discussion about the types of minutes until we talk about these two or three that you have on the table. When I give the communication committee report, I will tell the group some of the ideas that the committee had and how I plan to try to proceed with that.

B Dysart: So you propose to revisit the summaries after your committee report? I think it might be more productive to wait just a minute…in other words…no not revisit the question about how to do minutes on the on-going basis in conjunction with the committee report, group wants to do that.

L Rogers: I have made a proposal though. I don’t know if anybody called for a second or not.

Neff McIntosh: Ben [Brewton] made a motion as well.

B Dysart: There was a motion made by Jerry that there be verbatim transcripts. Then another motion, show of hands, one way or another. Perhaps we can combine these, and people who want a transcript, can vote for that and then people who …

Stuart Stevens: Question on whatever motion we are voting on here…does that carry over to the [SEG impact] subcommittees as well? Or is this just the SEG? Are we going require the subcommittees to also have verbatim minutes, if we voted to do that? Or is that something your communications committee’s going to address?

B Brewton: Well that was the other item I asked to be put on the agenda. I didn’t think that the communication committee was dealing with subcommittee records and reports. But I guess we could if we need to. But I guess one point of order here we need to talk about – this is supposed to be a consensus group. I have never heard…I don’t think we are doing things by a vote of simple majority to do things one way or another. I don’t think that ….

B Dysart: Is there a consensus that you would like to have verbatim transcripts? Is there a consensus that you would like to have verbatim transcripts?

Male Voice: Yes.

B Dysart: You can raise your hands, you can nod your head…someone coughed in an expressive manner…

D Schaller: I think it might be more sensible that we identify the costs associated with a vote we are about to take. We set a course for a ship to sail the Atlantic whether there are icebergs in the way or not. Let's identify….maybe we can do this on the Internet for instance. Is that a stupid idea?

Male Voice: Not at all.

D Schaller: People can tune it in any place I guess. Can they record it off the Internet? Can you save it, download it? Maybe we ought to explore it. I am not suggesting that is what we need to do because I don’t have any idea what that costs. Maybe?

B Brewton: You can do audio very easily.

B Dysart: Live down-link the SEG?

D Schaller: I don’t mean for that to be stupid.

B Brewton: I was chuckling because I suggested that some things be posted on the internet some time in the past and there was some resistance to it in certain quarters. But I think it is a good idea.

N McIntosh: Interesting that Dave pointed out the cost. I was going to say that last week CEO did request the tapes from Georgia Ports for the June meeting, I think. June and July. If any Member wanted to get the tapes, here is what we went through. We had, I think four or five e-mails. It took me three phone calls to coordinate a pickup time and it cost us $130.00. So it is not incidental if you wanted to hear any particular part of any particular tape. To get that stuff from GPA. - it is not inexpensive. So if there is a way that a court reporter…we talked about this before. How much could a court reporter cost? I have been in meetings where a court reporter was present. I am sure Jerry has, obviously he wouldn’t have brought it up. It is a great idea. If you could take the court reporter’s transcript. I am sure they would actually put it into a format that could be up loaded to a web site, if not the web site, and then you could access that whether it is Acrobat or Word or would probably have to be something like that. That would make sense. Then if Judy wanted to perhaps have a committee where they created the bulleted version of the meeting. But the full-blown word-by-word is very interesting when you get into some of the details. The commitments, especially when you get into commitments made by GPA and science reports that are under question that deferred for a later meeting. So I would strongly urge that we get a full blown transcript and I urge that we approve… the SEG today somehow get together and make a decision in hiring a court reporter at GPA’s expense to provide a blow-by-blow of every meeting.

B Farmer: We voted to follow the agenda. Determining what the format of our minutes is is not on the agenda. I would like to suggest that this issue be deferred to the communications committee, and they come back with a recommendation. All these discussions that we are having – they have. And have them come back with a committee report next time.

Male Voice: Second.

B Dysart: Let’s see what recommendations and results the communications committee has to share with us. So you are saying defer it?

B Farmer: Have them make a recommendation after they have discussed …

B Dysart: My understanding communication committee was looking at what was needed, what would be helpful in the way of communications, support achievement of SEG mission. Is there consensus on Bill Farmer’s recommendation?

Several voices: Yes.

B Dysart: Let the record show that everyone nodded vigorously.

S Stevens: Would that also include the question I had about the subcommittees?

B Dysart: Yes.

B Brewton: Let me clarify that, I was under the impression last month that we were going to defer it until this month and discuss the idea of record keeping and availability from the subcommittees. If the group wants the communications committee to take that up, we can do that, I have no problem with that. The only thing is that the other committee people and chairman are not necessarily involved with that group and I thought it was more appropriate for that to be discussed here, in their presence, rather than a handful of us go off and decide what these other people should be doing. But if they want to….you know…that is up to the group which way you want to go on that.

B Dysart: Certainly when there are things that need to be deliberated and thoughtful recommendations brought before the body, that is appropriate - as opposed to having open-ended discussions of 40 people. That is the (inaudible) that we traditionally stated.

B Brewton: Let’s ask the group if they want the committee to look at that or if they want to discuss it here…

B Dysart: Who can wait for Ben Brewton’s communications committee to look at the matter of minutes and records of SEG committees? Bring back recommendations to this body.

J Jennings: You have got to have the committee chairs there. I am clearly a proponent of the bullet form of reporting. There is a limit to what I am going to do (inaudible) (inaudible) economic working group committee (inaudible). I consider that discretionary.

B Dysart: Would this body like to suggest or request that the committee chairs be at … members of this committee and effectively represent the views of the committees of the communication committee. It sounds convoluted, and it is.

T Leffek: …and not to go over this point, but we set a rough time limit of 10 minutes, and we have spent over a half an hour on this issue. Do we need a timekeeper? Do we need…not to denigrate the issue - it is important - and we all need to get a resolution on this. But we set a time limit. We want to get to Ben’s [Brewton] items and Patty’s items on old business. We need to forge ahead. I think it is great that the communication committee …deal with this issue. Committee chairs should be there. Move on.

Fred Beason: With respect to Judy, I appreciate what she is saying. But you have got to go back to Dave who is working on the other side of the coin. It is expensive to anybody and everybody. I suggest that we let Ben [Brewton] handle it. If he comes up with a proposal and we all agree, that is what we will do 100%, we live with it. As a committee chairman, you know you buy in to responsibility. It costs time or money or both. That is the same thing Dave has got over there. It is costing him money to have this meeting and put together for us to facilitate (inaudible), and that is part of doing the job. We have got Ben [Brewton] in charge of the committee, let him run, come up with a proposal, we accept it or we reject. Go forward (inaudible)____.

B Dysart: I felt a breeze against my face there – I like that.

Bob Scanlon: Ditto what Fred just said. We have spent time, about an hour now, and most of us are here to talk about substance of the issues, what goes on in the subcommittees. I have not heard anything I want to read yet.

B Dysart: I would suggest that next time you come in very aggressively in saying I want to talk about this and this and that is what we are going to talk about. That will be first. Is there a consensus on that. I see a consensus. Yes. Are we going to do anything with these two summaries that are in front of you? Where does that stand, where do we stand on that? Does anybody still want to do anything on the July summary or the May summary?

B Brewton: I do. Saw the July summary on Friday afternoon, so I am not really prepared…I would suggest that we take the time to review it and bring it up for approval at the next meeting. I do think …

B Dysart: So we will roll these three forward, and have four the next time.

Morgan Rees: I do have one quick comment on the July summary. It had to do with the exchange between Blan Holman and me on the need for a 404 permit. Whether I misspoke, that is probably the case, but the clarification is that, if the Corps does the project, there would not be a formal permit, but they would still be required to demonstrate 404 compliance. If the Port does the project under Section 204, they would have to get a 404 permit. I am not sure that was clear in the way I said it in the July minutes, but that is the way it is.

B Dysart: In the spirit of clarifying and re-asking your question, in the spirit of Patty McIntosh, the record stands clear.

T Leffek: Do we need a timekeeper? Do we need someone to say "it has been 10 minutes" to keep everyone…

B Dysart: Who has a watch? Larry – do you have a watch? We will let you be the honorary timekeeper. If you do a good job today, you will never have to do it again. I think the consensus is : let's see what we can do in 10 minutes and make a decision. Have we heard enough, or do we want to roll it forward, revisit it next time? The next item - the first item on the real agenda sort of - is the communications committee report. Ben Brewton.

B Brewton: This will be very short. We did have one meeting, which I think was prior to our last meeting. We were unable to coordinate schedules due to vacations and so forth. We will be meeting on either the 17, 23 or 24 of this month, depending on Morgan having to come from out of town. So we are trying to work with his schedule. Everyone is invited. Also, anyone, a number of you have done this, I invite you to send me any e-mails on any thoughts you have ahead of time. We will see that everybody - that those thoughts get plugged. Basically, I will tell you quickly what we discussed and what limited decisions were made. We spent quite a bit of time having essentially the same type of discussion this group had a few minutes ago about the different methods of doing the minutes, verbatim, bulleted form, third person summary, narrative summary, etc. and no decision was totally reached. There is some investigation about some alternative methods. Just as a side, my personal view, I am inclined to suggest to the committee verbatim with a summary attached that would address Judy’s needs. That sort of thing. That is not a committee recommendation, that is my personal thoughts. The two things that the committee did strongly concur on – Ben [Dysart], Cathy, and others involved know it is a monumental task and one of the things we are looking at is maybe there needs to be someone who that is their only duty, is getting the minutes and the agenda in a more timely manner. The last couple of months, the minutes have come out – the summary has come out on Thursday or Friday before the Tuesday meeting as has the agenda, and I think the group’s goal was to aim to have the minutes available within about a week. This is consistent with some of the input we have received. Lot a people have said by the time three or four weeks passed, my memory has grown dim of the meeting and my ability to read them and correct them or so forth is lower and then has a little more advance notice of the draft agenda that could be added to or changed. So I think that the two things that we did achieve consensus on were getting the schedule and coming up with a method where the minutes and the agenda would be available on a more rapid basis. The exact method and style of the minutes was discussed and was subject to some discussion and debate and we are going to continue that this month. I will send out a notice and any and everyone who would like to attend is invited. Do any of the other committee members have any comments? Okay, that concludes our report.

L Rogers: Three minutes.

B Dysart: So we received that as information based on – that is from a meeting you had month before last?

B Brewton: That is correct.

B Dysart: Restart the clock in just a moment. Economics working group – Judy Jennings.

J Jennings: (Passed out four papers/reports) The point is – the economics work group, the point is trying to understand, get a better handle on the benefit-cost analysis and its relationship to national economic development number. (inaudible) searched for information and education in a way that is not punitive to GPA in a financial way. There is a recommendation, there is an action item to invite as a guest speaker to the SEG, not to replace this meeting, but in addition to this meeting. The action item is to invite as a guest speaker from the Institute for Water Resources, an individual by the name of Phil Thorpe. And I have provided you with a brief resume which came from Richard Hill, who has been very helpful, with the Corps, with helping me with the(inaudible) to invite (inaudible) to be a guest speaker on behalf of the SEG. Also invite the public. The thing is he has information on a variety of topics we are interested in. Not, (inaudible) the Savannah project, but to the maritime industry and navigation interests in particular. He wasn’t invited. Now the economic working group has investigated his availability to speak to us. What I am asking that the (inaudible) come to a consensus about that he is an appropriate guest speaker - possibility one of others - and then to ask GPA to approve him as a guest speaker. Now the Corps of Engineers will pay for him to attend. What I need for GPA to do is after (inaudible) is to pay for a meeting space and any publicity that we think appropriate (inaudible) that is publicly available. So what you are looking at, so what we are after, the economics working group is, has questions about the benefits and the costs that lead you to questions about the benefit-cost ratio which leads you to questions about the NED, which leads you to questions about (inaudible) authorized Congressionally, from 42 or 48 feet. So that is what we are trying to do here, is establish (inaudible) studies to fund what this project is. I think (inaudible)__. But in order to shed light on that, I am suggesting that we bring a speaker and in an effort to do it in an initial manner, the Institute for Water Resources was suggested by the committee, and at this meeting there were 10 people. Two were (inaudible) GPA, there were a couple of Corps people, (inaudible) municipalities. I think we were well represented when we made this recommendation. Now the initial contact has been made. Richard Hill with the Corps has been very helpful. He helped make the initial contact with Phil Thorpe who (inaudible) with appropriate background for a presentation to this group. He is available on a variety of dates in the future. I would like to suggest August 26 or after. What I would like this body to is to recommend him as an appropriate speaker, realizing who he is, where he comes from, and the background I have provided you, which did not come from him, so if there is anything inaccurate, I will take the responsibility for it.

B Brewton: Specifically, what would you be asking him to speak on?

J Jennings: I have asked this whole group to provide me with a list of questions. I have got a list of questions from quite a few people, and they should be circulated to you. I will be glad to add to that list any questions this group or any member of the public would give me. I am, however, not asking him to address the feasibility of the Savannah project in particular. I don’t think that I would…without the ability to analyze Savannah in particular, I don’t think I should ask him…I don’t think he would be able to answer that. I am asking him general questions about navigation. I would like to know, for instance, Ben [Brewton], when the feasibility for this project was done, there was a projection for a world fleet mix. I personally question the fact that that is accurate. In fact, I think if you took what they put on the table two and one-half years ago and compare them with what we have now, they are not the same. That is my personal thought. All I am after is the most current information about the maritime industry. This is one avenue to proceed with that. One avenue. The cost to GPA would (inaudible) a meeting space (inaudible) and any additional preparation that we want to do. And you can ask him any question you want. He may or may not have the ability to answer it. It would justify, actually I think it was Morgan’s, maybe not, no it was you Larry, who said why don’t we include the public. I think it is fantastic. I think it is not too early for an open discussion. I am asking on behalf of the economics working group - who had ten members in attendance that day, all which concurred - …that this SEG host the person as a speaker on behalf of the SEG. Realizing that we don’t condemn or endorse any of his remarks, but simply host him as a speaker. And then I would also like today an answer from GPA, if I could get that. Not to be pushy. That’s it.

L Rogers: Eight minutes

B Dysart: We have a written report, a recommendation …

J Jennings: You should have four pieces of paper. If you don’t have all four, you don’t have it all.

B Dysart: … from the economics working group. What is the pleasure, what is the discussion of the recommendation that this gentlemen be invited to be a speaker?

J Jennings: (inaudible) on August 26. If not, I will look for other dates

B Dysart: What do youall think about the idea?

M Rees: Just an observation, two observations… Judy, I don’t mean to catch you off guard. It occurred to me after we met the other day, that would it make sense, I’m not suggesting that we ought to do this the question came to my mind, would it make sense to do this in conjunction with the Chatham Environment Forum that already has a regularly scheduled meeting, regular scheduled facility? I don’t want to impose on whatever your agenda is at the Environmental Forum, but I just offer that as a thought.

J Jennings: My thought is that I am the very newly installed chairman of the Environmental Forum and would not in anyway (inaudible) without their (inaudible) .Clearly, if we open it to the public, they are invited. I will be glad to invite and encourage Environmental Forum participation. But I don’t see that would enhance or go beyond including the public. There are other members of the Forum here. Bob, what do you think about that?

B Scanlon: I would have no objection to doing that. The facility would be an issue. Normally the Environmental Forum meets in a donated facility. For instance, one of the industrial members usually has it at its own facility.

M Rees: I’m not pushing… just offer it as a thought…

J Jennings: The only problem with including the Forum is that it meets on a bi-monthly basis, and it just met. So it would be almost two months before I could get a recommendation. I love it. I would be glad to pass it through mail and e-mail and make sure they are all invited. But in terms of buy-in for sponsorship, I think that it might be – to me…Okay, let me say this – my original recommendation, my thought, the economics working group was to re-invite Booz-Allen & Hamilton to the table. My answer to that from GPA was that they are no longer in our employ. The principals involved in the analyses are not in their employ. So it is not really a viable option. So, rather than push it in this working group, I looked for another viable option. And this is the one that came to the table. The Chatham Environmental Forum is a lovely idea, and if we thought we could (inaudible)(inaudible)_.

J McCollum: I only have three pieces of paper. I heard four described.

J Jennings: What are you missing, Jerry?

B Dysart: Larry points out that we are pushing our 10 minutes. Is there a consensus, is there support for a recommendation from the economics working group that we invite the gentlemen who is an expert in navigation projects, waterborne commerce, to come in a very cost-effective manner?

Male Voice: What was the question, please?

B Dysart: Question was, does SEG support the economics working group recommendation. This gentleman be invited to come to make a short presentation to (inaudible). And I presume, also included in there would GPA be willing to provide facilities?

D Schaller: Probably Ben [Dysart]. We would like talk about it. For instance, if we do promote it, then it sort of attaches us to him and makes it an endorsement (Judy talks over David – could not hear David) (inaudible) that may be inappropriate.

J Jennings: I’m glad you brought that up (inaudible). I expected that to come up from somebody, but not from you in particular. So I would like to address that (inaudible).

B Dysart: Is this a matter you and David need to talk about?

J Jennings: No, on the table, if you don’t mind. Because I did expect this question. I am not offering this person as an authoritative guru, god, gospel on the maritime industry, in fact, clearly not. He is an employ of the Institute for Water Resources which is a function of the Corps of Engineers. We need to be clear about who he is and what our source is. Take the information for which it comes. In fact, I would also like to hear a speaker from NIT, APA, and even the EPA (inaudible). I think we need to consider it from there. I might, David, if want to work together, we could deal with publicity to address that aspect.

D Schaller: Not opposed at all. Love to do that.

B Brewton: It looks generally like the group is favorable to it. I suggest that we endorse the concept. Let them work out the details. I think there should be some appropriate disclaimer that is open to the public to facilitate questions and public discussion. You ought to do it at a time where you have enough lead time to provide reasonable publicity. There should be some disclaimer that states that the views that are expressed are not necessarily those of the GPA nor of the SEG. Because we have no idea what he is going to say, whether we agree with it. I would say y'all work that out.

B Dysart: I think those are useful comments and provisions, and I see a consensus. If Judy and David will do this and report, keep you informed.

J Jennings: Ben [Brewton], do you think August 26 is pushing it?

B Brewton: I think it is pretty quick. Also it is in the middle of the sort of back to school furor. I think you might get better attendance if you went over to some time in September. My personal opinion.

B Dysart: Striped bass committee, Tom. The agenda says you principally want to update folks on what progress made in the meeting following the July meeting.

Tom Meronek: That is right. I will be very brief. There is not much to say. We did have a brief meeting after the last SEG meeting. Several of the Members were in attendance, and we decided - not going to go over the whole issue again - but we were having problems coming to terms with the issue of the timeline of the SEG’s project and the timeline of our 1135 committee’s project. It was decided that we would try to match these timelines, and to do that, I believe Morgan had volunteered to write a letter to the Corps of Engineers asking that the timelines be matched. I will let him address that.

M Rees: I have a draft letter, it is not out yet.

T Meronek: Working on it. That is where we are. We are trying to match the timelines for those two groups.

M Rees: I want to coordinate it informally before we send it. Make sure it captures what the intent was.

B Dysart: Any questions or comments about the striped bass area?

B Brewton: I just want to ask – I think the group approved that – recommended that you go ahead with those studies two or three months ago. I know there have been these delays. At this point, how much additional time do you think is going to be elapsed before you are able to actually commence the studies?

M Rees: The data collection has already started. We didn’t wait for that. We knew there were things that had to be done, that were time sensitive.

B Brewton: So this issue of coordinating the grids and so forth has been …

M Rees: That has all been resolved. The only remaining issue on the table was coordinating the timeline – year or two schedule of their study vs. what we are doing. Other time sensitive stuff has been resolved and is being worked on.

B Brewton: So you think that will be resolved shortly?

M Rees: Hope so. Depends on how the Corps plays in this, and that is a little bit unknown at this time. But between Georgia DNR and GPA, I think we are in agreement that we need to work with the Corps.

B Dysart: Tom, is that it?

T Meronek: That is it.

B Dysart: Do we have anything this time about the fisheries overview? Do you have anything that you want (inaudible).

T Meronek: I believe that I asked for that to be deferred for later on in the year. I will bring it up with you when I am ready for it.

B Dysart: If you will let me know when you are ready. Thank you. Let’s hear from Pres and Bill Bailey on the report back from the organizational meeting of the overview Savannah harbor fisheries and aquatic resources.

P Brownell: Bill and I talked about that briefing before this meeting, and I volunteered to try to capture what this meeting discussed on their first meeting, which was July 23. Basically, what we talked about were three things. That was what were the mission and organization of our committee and what we thought the role, the scope of our discussions would be and any study recommendations that we might be aware of. Also we talked about the recommendations that we might be able to bring this time to the SEG. Back to the first item – discussion of the committee’s mission. It seemed to be a good consensus of the group that we felt that it would be a beneficial function to have an overall fishery and aquatic resources committee. That committee would basically be a table where we could bring forth discussions, productive discussions, on fishery issues. They might include any of the full range of fishery issues. Kind of be an umbrella for all the other fishery discussions that committees or subcommittees continue to have now. The idea was that we would bring forth the issues to the SEG as they got into a form where they actually involve a specific recommendation. One of the discussion items we have here was to also take this committee and what we would do is change around a lot of the members, which might change from time to time, depending on what level of expertise that we really need. So sometimes we might concentrate more on one species like shortnose sturgeon, we might concentrate discussion on striped bass, or another time we might attempt to is to bring forward those technical experts that could speak about each of those topics. Each meeting might be a little bit different in its focus. We would change the focus as needed just to promote discussions and recommendations – to make sure we have covered all the bases on fishery issues and the overall studies. A topic that came up was whether or not to have a chair. We basically came up with an idea of an organization – we don’t need a chairman per se. What we would do, though, is try to get some support, perhaps from Georgia Ports Authority, to coordinate our meetings. Someone to do the legwork and try to get the meetings scheduled and see that they took place. Do the legwork of contacting everybody, setting up conference calls, (inaudible). If we had a coordinator person such as that, then that would enable us to function as a group, and the discussions might change from one subject area of fisheries to another (inaudible) have a chairman. What we will do is bring forth after each meeting is basically decide on who would present the results of the committee meeting to the SEG. At one particular time, it might be more striped bass issues in which the striped bass expert might (inaudible), the next time might the sturgeon, which the sturgeon experts who bring forth the information. So that way we wouldn’t have a chairman per se. So that was the idea we had for organization. So each time we basically decide who was going to be the presenter, what issues would be brought forth. Another area we talked about was other some studies areas that maybe we need to take a look at. We did come up with some preliminary ideas for questions that may need to be answered that haven’t been dealt with yet. We did not get as far as actually coming forward with recommendations to the SEG at this time. What we decided was that at, our committee meeting, we would take these issues that were identified, these topics and we would talk about them some more to see if they have merit. And then we would forward any study recommendations that we were ready to report to the next SEG meeting. So we don’t have any specific study recommendations now. We did deal with some topics. Areas in which questions might need to be answered. We can discuss these further if the committee (inaudible) before we make specific recommendations. So that is pretty much as far as we got. The main thing is that we wanted to bring to the committee is that the committee felt that we need some type of coordinator or supporter. Maybe not necessarily a facilitator, but some coordinator person that would help us organize the meetings and make sure the meetings took place. Summarize the meetings perhaps, and see to it that when we are ready that the committee products would go to the web site so that others could have the benefit of those discussions. Also the fishery committee is not necessarily set up to be exclusive of anyone. It is a focus group. Discussion of fishery needs by the technical experts. To make those meetings work the most (inaudible) people – technical experts – would encourage those folks to be involved. We wouldn’t, on the other hand, discourage anyone from taking part if they so want to. These are fishery discussions. It is a fishery study forum for technical matters entirely. So if we could get a recommendation (inaudible) specific information may be of interest (inaudible). So that is what we have. Does anyone have any questions about that?

[End Tape 1, Side A and begin Tape 1, Side B]

D Kyler: (inaudible) economics committee (inaudible). I was in charge of the (inaudible) of our organization about the secondary resurgery (?????????????) effects – environmental impacts (inaudible) as (inaudible) economic consequences for businesses dependent upon natural resources (inaudible) So I would encourage your group to do whatever it can in expertise and support and evaluation of the impacts that you are trying to identify in terms of economic value of those who depend upon those resources.

P Brownell: Good point. I think certainly when you are dealing with any fishery resources, there are some considerable economic factors that are involved here.

D Kyler: We figure regionally between (inaudible) based tourism and commercial and recreational fishing about a million dollars a year indirect and direct impacts. What it is in the county I don’t know. What it is in relationship to the Savannah River or this project I do not know. It is big though.

P Brownell: Very good point. Thank you very much.

B Dysart: So the exploratory meeting you are talking about, Pres, a firm recommendation for establishing committee. You are still exploring the matter of administrative support and so forth. Who has the action on that?

P Brownell: Right now, basically in absence of a chairman or in absence of a coordinator person, to help us move forward, Bill Bailey and I have volunteered just to make sure the meeting takes place in the interim. I think it would be a lot more effective if we had a …if the Georgia Ports Authority would provide us with a coordinator person. Make the job easier. None of the agency representatives have the time to organize meetings, set up conference calls.

B Dysart: At your last meeting, was the committee …, SEG endorsed the formation or endorsed it in spirit and said report back this time.

P Brownell: It was my understanding from the last meeting that the SEG did say we want a fishery committee to be established.

B Dysart: I would presume that the group is still continuing…endorses…supports that. And you Pres or Bill will be working with, coordinating with Morgan, on what the possibilities are for support to make this viable. The focus of this committee is on fisheries technical experts or for discussing those matters.

P Brownell: That is right. We will have another meeting prior to the next SEG meeting. Our intent is to have another meeting to discuss specific fishery-related questions and things that need to be answered.

B Dysart: Are there any other questions or discussion?

B Brewton: Only thing is I think that Pres and Bill sort of reluctantly agreed to handle that committee. Are y'all willing to continue on handling it, sort of coordinating until some one else steps forward?

P Brownell: That is my understanding. I can’t speak for Bill. I think our understanding was to try to keep that process going. That coordinator person …

B Dysart: I sense this body is supporting your and Bill’s plan to (inaudible). Larry, how are we doing on time?

L Rogers: A little over on 10 on that.

N McIntosh: May ask one question? In the last meeting, Press, you had talked about this coordinator person in lieu of a chairman for the committee and you sort of looked at GPA and I think you have asked the question again. Is that something that we need as the SEG make a full request of GPA that they…because what you are looking for is someone to send out notices and send out minutes, right? Set up the time? But not really chair the meeting per se, just coordinate the meeting…

P Brownell: Right. It really wouldn’t be a chairman per se because we would be changing our focus around anyway. This is a small group. Don’t think it necessary to have a chairman if we have a coordinator…

N McIntosh: Should the SEG make a formal request for the GPA to provide a coordinator person for the fishery committee?

P Brownell: I think that would be very appropriate.

B Brewton: Second the motion.

N McIntosh: Is there a consensus?

B Dysart: The consensus is to explore this topic…

B Brewton: To ask GPA to provide them the support they need.

N McIntosh: Let Pres and Bill get with GPA and decide who at GPA is…it is simply a clerical function, a record function.

M Rees: We will work it out.

B Dysart: I think the system is almost working here.

T Leffek: I just wanted to point out – maybe we should take a ten-minute break. We are making great progress, but it might be helpful for everyone to get up for a second, and then come back.

B Dysart: Ten-minute break. Reconvene at ten minutes until eleven.

[Meeting resumed before tape was turned on) Shortnose sturgeon report]

P Brownell: (inaudible) … We do have a considerable amount of (inaudible) of shortnose sturgeon. (inaudible) All that has been favorably resolved as I understand it. Off and running.

Priscilla Wendt: That is pretty much my understanding. All the contractual problems have been worked out. The last I talked to Mark, he was in the process of interviewing field personnel.

Bo Ellis: He was hoping to be on the water around now. I haven’t heard that he is yet. He was well underway with hiring staff, ordering equipment.

B Dysart: Priscilla, Pres, Bo, appreciate that.

Rob Mikell: Sometime in the future, can we get a presentation on what he is actually doing? (inaudible)

B Dysart: I think next time that will be a great idea. The next time I request agenda items, why don’t you roll that in, and we will try to do a better job… I will try to do a better job matching things up. Sometimes things come in saying what about so and so. Nobody assumes responsibility to respond on that. If you will put it on me, I will make sure somebody is lined up to speak on that.

Bill Bailey: There is a task statement on the web site that describes what he is supposed to be doing.

R Mikell: I would still like to hear it so I could ask questions.

B Brewton: I have a question, I could defer this to the discussion of the Westphal/Marchand letter if we are going to get that far. If not, I would like to pose the question here. And that is - are there or are there not shortnose sturgeon in the Savannah River?

B Dysart: To whom are you addressing that question?

B Brewton: I am addressing that question to anyone who might provide the answer.

B Dysart: Can anyone provide the answer?

P Brownell: There definitely are shortnose sturgeon in the Savannah River. We don’t know how many. We don’t know all the areas that are important to them at this point.

B Brewton: I would call the group's attention - maybe if we get here we can discuss it later - to a statement made in a June 9 letter from Doug Marchand to the Corps of Engineers that says there is no evidence of shortnose sturgeon even existing in the Savannah River. But may be will …I guess we are making pretty good progress and we will get to the Westphal letter. So I will defer that until then.

M Rees: I would like to respond. The clarification, if you will, I will take responsibility for having written that particular piece of that particular letter. But the Tier I EIS indicates that there was no evidence of shortnose sturgeon in the channel area. That is the clarification. We were aware there were shortnose sturgeon in the river. We don’t have any evidence they are in the channel vicinity. Let me answer it fully. Because of the absence of knowledge of the shortnose sturgeon being in the channel area, what prompted us in the first place to agree to do whatever studies were necessary to find out what about the habitat, where are they, and how can we help to make sure they recover. There is no, I guess maybe I am being a little defensive, but I would infer from some of the comments that there might be a perception of an effort to downplay some of these issues. I assure this is not the case. In fact, I think if you look at the entire Tier I EIS and everything that has occurred subsequent to that, that there is a genuine active - and we hope more through - effort to deal with that issue with an open and scientific way.

P Wendt: As far as I know, what is known about sturgeon and this portion of the Savannah River is that they – at least prior to the last deepening project - they did occur in the vicinity of the Kings Island Turning Basin. That was served to be a very important habitat for them. I think the issue is that was prior to the last deepening project. We don’t really know what their status is in that vicinity right now.

M Rees: I think that the way we said it is we don’t have evidence that they are there. Again, I will take the responsibility for having characterized it probably imprecisely. But the fundamental bottom line is that we are looking to see if they are there, and we are going to make sure that whatever the project does, complies with whatever is required to comply with in terms of making sure that the sturgeon and its habitat are taken care of.

P Brownell: I think it is incumbent on the committees such as the fisheries committee to at certain times to identify areas in which it might be helpful to brief this entire group so they will have a full understanding of the issues being discussed. I haven’t really thought about that that much. But such things as a presentation, slide show, or something like that talking about sturgeon use of the Savannah River or something or maybe we will talk about this in the committee. Those will be the kind of things that perhaps at the right time we will bring back and may necessitate an afternoon session scheduled.

B Brewton: You are going to get us here all day aren’t you Press.

P Brownell: I’d rather not. That is something we will talk about on the committee. May have some reservation about that, certainly extra work, but it may help everyone understand.

B Brewton: I think that is an excellent idea. Morgan, I would just have one question and I will defer any other ones until later if we discuss that letter. Since you acknowledge that the statement in the letter is not correct as written …

M Rees: Imprecise.

B Brewton: Imprecise? Is that different than - Well anyway, we won’t belabor semantics of that. Has a corrective letter been sent to Sec. Westphal about Mr. Marchand’s noting the error in the letter?

M Rees: No, I just became aware of it recently. In fact, actually by virtue of getting a copy of the letter the SELC sent to Sec. Westphal.

B Brewton: Right. So will a corrective letter be sent acknowledging the mistake?

M Rees: I didn’t say it was a mistake. I am not sure that the Corps people to whom the letter from the SELC was addressed understood it the same way you understood it. I don’t know. If it is a problem, we will address it. But I haven’t heard from them that it is a problem.

B Brewton: My understanding was that the letter said… I read the letter and it said that there currently were well… It says there is no indication of any shortnose sturgeon currently existing in the Savannah River. Based on what you just said, I think it is obvious that (inaudible)

M Rees: I would edit the sentence to say channel. Just add channel before the period.

B Brewton: Okay. Anywhere in the Savannah River Channel is what you say corrects that. Is this statement, is somebody going to notify Sec. Westphal from GPA that the original submission was inaccurate?

M Rees: Ben [Brewton], I would like to point out two things. Number one, I just became aware of this, and we haven’t strategized what to do about it. Number two, I don’t know what this has to do with finding science. I mean we…no matter what that sentence says, we are not going to change the objective of complying fully with the Endangered Species Act and with examining what is in there and what is not in there.

B Brewton: Well, Morgan, I was trying to defer this discussion until later, but I mean I would respectfully state to you and to anybody else here that if the head official of GPA is making a flat unqualified statement that there are no sturgeon in the Savannah River and we are simultaneously embarking upon a study of the shortnose sturgeon but the top GPA official has already made a flat unqualified statement that none exist, that calls to me, it calls for me, it calls into question the credibility and integrity and the ultimate validity of the study. I just, it surprised me that with these studies just commencing that Mr. Marchand would make such a flat statement, that is not the only one in the letter. So therefore, since you somewhat qualified that statement, it would seem to be appropriate for that to be corrected to Sec. Westphal. That was my question. I don’t think it was unreasonable or inappropriate question. I think the SELC letter went out, oh, I don’t know what the date on it is. What is the date on it Neff.

N McIntosh: July 12

B Brewton: July 12.

B Dysart: The study, you said, calls into question the integrity and credibility of "the study." Which study, for the record, are you referring to?

B Brewton: I think that the fact that the top GPA official has made a – what’s that?

Male Voice: (inaudible)

B Brewton: Has made a statement in his supplemental information in support of the feasibility of deepening the Savannah Harbor attached to his June 9 response to Sec. Westphal. The fact that an outcome has already been flatly stated for the study prior to the study commencing …

B Dysart: Are you talking about a past study or about …

B Brewton: I am talking about the study that is being under the auspices of the SEG on the striped bass - sorry - shortnose sturgeon.

B Dysart: So this study you are referring to ...

B Brewton: Is to the proposed study.

B Dysart: (inaudible) integrity and credibility has been called into question that is being conducted by us?

B Brewton: By us, the SEG.

L Rogers: Ten minutes.

M Rees: Do these cards mean anything this week? Maybe I can clarify. The letter to which Ben [Brewton] is beating up on has nothing to do with the SEG. Absolutely nothing to do with the SEG. Was prepared prior to any of the SEG deliberations on the shortnose study. It has to do with questions that were raised by Corps Headquarters with respect to what was said in the Tier I EIS. Period. No more meaning than that. And I just expect much more is trying to be made of this issue than is there.

B Farmer: Is this discussion on the agenda?

B Dysart: This is under the shortnose sturgeon study.

B Farmer: Is the committee chairman reporting this somehow in his study?

B Dysart: I guess what I was trying to pursue was whether we were talking about the credibility and integrity of past studies, current studies, or future studies. I keep encouraging the group to focus on what the Congress has suggested is the mission of this body. Which is consistent to the Operating Guidelines that youall endorsed or prepared: identifying the impacts, the scope of the scientific studies, and then the adequacy. Now I think it is sometime seems premature to declare the results of science or studies to be dead on arrival, inadequate, failed, and so forth before the results come in. There is a time – this body has been asked by the Congress to evaluate the adequacy of the studies that were done. Perhaps it is premature, as I said, to declare the results quite this early. I keep going back to what appears to be the mission which is current and future as opposed to … Is there additional discussions or questions about the shortnose?

M Rees: Maybe I have said all that needs to be said, but the point is we continue to hear a theme of credibility being questioned. I would just like to point out that, in the holistic view of what is going on here, GPA has already agreed to adopt studies recommended by the SEG, studies that are underway that were developed by people other than GPA, and we are doing them. They will address the issue of the shortnose sturgeon. I am not sure that there is any connection between what is happening and what was said in a letter a couple of months ago that was misstated. I just don’t see the connection.

B Brewton: I will be happy to speak to the connect that Morgan asked for. Morgan, I submit this to you in an atmosphere of respect as well as cooperation here. However, since the group has decided to embark on a study and the committees have identified what needs to be done in that study, and the study has not even started or just barely starting, if at all, it concerns me …

B Dysart: Has it started? It has started. So we need not speculate.

B Brewton: It has started. The data collection has begun on that?

P Wendt: (inaudible) the fieldwork has begun.

B Brewton: The fieldwork has begun.

B Dysart: As reported.

B Brewton: That the chief executive officer for the Georgia Ports Authority would jump ahead and make a misstatement of fact, something that would be, you would not expect until you got to the point of drawing a conclusion for that study and use that statement to respond to Sec. Westphal’s letter and the report which assimilates quite a number of concerns that were previously provided. That concerns me. It concerns me what it means to the credibility of the study. Yes, because the study is primarily being done by GPA contractors and GPA personnel.

M Rees: Not so. Absolutely not so. The shortnose sturgeon is being done by South Carolina DNR. Designed by them. And they are doing it. That is why I don’t see the connection (inaudible).

B Brewton: Let me continue here …

M Rees: Let’s continue with facts.

B Brewton: Is any GPA contractor involved? Is it totally SC DNR?

P Wendt: Well, actually GPA is funding it.

M Rees: Well, we are.

B Brewton: GPA is funding it. I am not calling any person or agency - or anybody’s - credibility into question. I am calling the process that the fact that GPA who is paying for the study has already announced a statement of fact that there might be something that one would expect at the end of the study. That concerns me Morgan and if you can’t understand my concern, I don’t know how to say it any clearer.

M Rees: If that was the case, I could understand. But that is not the case. The case is that the statement to which you are referring to, as I said a minute ago, has nothing to do with the shortnose sturgeon and with what happens in the Tier II process. It was responding to a question.

B Brewton: It has nothing to with the shortnose sturgeon?

M Rees: Let me explain. …to the shortnose sturgeon study that is going on now. It has to do simply with responding to a question raised by Corps Headquarters with respect to statements in the Tier I EIS. To that extent, if you add the word "channel" to the end of that sentence, it would be correct. And we would stand by it. And I have apologized for forgetting to put the word "channel" in there.

B Brewton: Well I think it is a major error Morgan.

M Rees: Well, maybe it was. So I’m not perfect. Shoot me.

B Dysart: Let’s take a short break here. Judy, let’s hear some other people. And we can resume the back and forth.

J Jennings: I don’t know how much we can expect GPA to say. Frankly, (inaudible) your response in your letter to Westphal… your response was pathetic. Having said that, it is insignificant. Because the important thing especially to the EIS and subsequent studies is (inaudible) are there shortnose sturgeon. (inaudible)

P Wendt: Just a minor point, but isn’t the turning basin considered part of the channel? Because if it is, I mean there was evidence (inaudible)

M Rees: Prior, prior to the previous deepening.

P Wendt: Right.

M Rees: And the Tier I EIS goes through (inaudible). In 1991, prior to the previous deepening, there were shortnose sturgeon in the turning basin, and the report says that. Subsequent to that, there is no evidence that we have that there are shortnose sturgeon there. That is a true statement.

J Jennings: Whoa.

B Brewton: Say that again Morgan

J Jennings: Wait a minute. I was not a fan for verbatim until now. You can’t say that. You just can’t say that. Give me a break, guys. Don’t push the limits of credibility here. Do not push the limits of credibility.

Voices: (inaudible)

J Jennings: Got to be more (inaudible). Do not eat your words.

M Rees: The Tier I report indicates that there was no evidence in the channel of shortnose sturgeon.

J Jennings: I realize that is what your Tier I says, Morgan. That is why you are doing a Tier II.

M Rees: Exactly, exactly. And that is why I said to Ben [Brewton], the question was in response to a question raised on the Tier I EIS. It has to do with the Tier I EIS and nothing more. It has nothing to do with plan study. It has nothing to do with the Tier II EIS. It was responding to a question of something we had said in the Tier I EIS. (inaudible) in the Tier I EIS.

B Brewton: What was that based on Morgan? Was that based on a study?

M Rees: I don’t know actually.

B Brewton: If you make the statement, it must have been based on something.

B Ellis: The Tier I EIS (inaudible) in great detail. In fact, Mark Collins, who is pretty much the recognized expert in shortnose sturgeon in this area, gave us all the information, all the information about what he had from previous studies, what he knows from the last deepening until now. It is all characterized in the Tier I EIS.

L Rogers: 20 minutes.

B Ellis: The Tier I EIS is very explicit about where they have been found and what evidence they have. And that was a simple statement on trying to characterize several pages of write-up. Tier I is accurate. Mark Collins basically authored it. He is the one conducting the study now with the SC DNR. He is, by no means, being misled by GPA.

N McIntosh: To go back to Morgan’s incredulous response. What concerned us - I say us – there was a number of people who are reading the original questions from Westphal and awaited the responses from GPA – what struck us as odd and when you are reading this stuff you have to take it at face value – here it was – and we had already been to the SEG meetings for two months and we talked about the shortnose sturgeon study getting cranked up – at the same time the, and shortnose study was prior to the response letter from Marchand, from Doug, to have Doug to come out and say there is no shortnose sturgeon in the river seems like a huge incongruous statement given the fact that here we are working on trying to find them. So what it seems to us was, there is a curtain and GPA was responding to the Corps saying there are no shortnose sturgeon. While on the other side they are working with us, behind the scenes so to speak, looking for the shortnose sturgeon. So we would like to make a bridge over that.

J Jennings: The bridge is the Tier II. Can we just agree to that? The bridge is the Tier II.

M Rees: I don’t know what else to say.

J Jennings: The bridge is the Tier II. Right?

M Rees: Right

J Jennings: The bridge is the Tier II. Can we have consensus on that? The Westphal letter – Morgan you might educate us on Corps procedure. The Westphal letter and GPA’s response to it are soon to be a matter of "put it in the file".

M Rees: If Congress acts on WRDA and it gets passed, it is all overtaken by events. What is really going to happen to all the species involved, to whether this project goes forward or not, depends simply on the Tier II process. Anything that happened subsequent to that is not relevant.

J Jennings: However, everything that happens subsequent to that is very relevant.

M Rees: I’m sorry "prior" to that. I misspoke again.

J Jennings: Okay, prior is irrelevant, and I making that point for you. Subsequent is incredibility relevant. And it will be subject to the same NEPA process as everything else. Isn’t that correct? So any comments you make about shortnose sturgeon in the Tier II EIS will be subject to public comment, review, peer review, etc. All via (inaudible) the process.

M Rees: That is correct.

B Farmer: The letter that has been referred to here – there is some interesting further information in it that might clarify. First of all, in the very first paragraph of what Morgan indicated is accurate. It says the questions and answers provided herein clarify the August 16, 1998 report. (inaudible) the letter does. The second part that is very interesting is that although the paragraph entitled shortnose sturgeon starts out there is no indication of shortnose sturgeon currently existing in the Savannah River, there are five or more other sentences in the paragraph. The next one starts out "however" and it goes on - and I guess the key phrase is - "additional study will be conducted during the design phase to make that determination with regards to shortnose sturgeon." So I think the letter is fair, and it is to clarify what Morgan says Tier I report. Indicates that the Tier I report says there was sturgeon there whatever. However, there it also says this issue will be studied. And that is what is going to happen. So, I don’t see the big issue here. Let’s go on.

D Kyler: Don’t know if this is the perfect time in this meeting to try to address this or not. There was a deferred old business item that had to do with this letter. It was important enough to me that I prepared this note – 400-words or so statement about this. I think you can describe this as tough love or something between us who have problems with this kind of statements and GPA. I think it is in the interest of the process that we are trying to conduct here and the organization of GPA that they become far more sensitive than they are now about the credibility issues that (inaudible) about other things they are trying to sponsor to get accountability (inaudible) report. I would be glad to read this or have it later in a discussion today. But there are some obvious implications about the sincerity and objectivity of the process when contradicting statements are made in any form, in relationship to any question. Regardless to whether they are referring to a previous effort or not, they should be informed by the (inaudible) of the writers at the time the response was made. Some of these comments seem to be at odds with the work of this group here.

B Brewton: Why don’t you go ahead and pass those out. I would like to see it.

D Kyler: I just have a few copies. If you would, I could have more run.

P Wendt: I am not really familiar with the letter, but just taken out context, that one sentence sounds like it might be a little biased. But it sounds like there are sufficient enough qualifiers following that, that explains that statement. I would just like to say that we would probably be just as accurate to say that there is no evidence that they currently do not exist. The point is we just don’t know. And that is the whole (inaudible) study. We just haven’t done any research since the last deepening project. So it is probably most accurate to say that we just do not know whether the sturgeon occur in the vicinity where they have previously been documented.

B Dysart: And that the studies are being done.

P McIntosh: How are GPA’s responses to the Westphal letter used by Congress to grant or not grant authorization of this project?

M Rees: As a matter of process, I don’t believe they are used by Congress other than members themselves are aware of them. They have seen…the Corps will use it in their determination of what to recommend to Congress.

B Brewton: One quick follow up to that. This goes to the core of my concern - no pun intended - about the other Corps. But if this is the information that is being used by Sec. Westphal and the Corps of Engineers, I think it is incumbent upon us all to see that it is as accurate as possible. If there are errors in there, then those need to be corrected. I totally appreciate and concur what Priscilla said – if the answer is we don’t know, then that is what we ought to be saying. We don’t know – we are going to conduct a study to find out. But to have an introductory sentence to that paragraph that makes a flat out statement and is apparently questionable about even when you add the channel, if depending on whether the turning basin is or isn’t in there, concerns me greatly. There’s another similar statement about striped bass that says that deepenings have had no effect on the striped bass population or something to that effort. But anyway, maybe we will get to that agenda item in a minute.

B Dysart (?????): If you want that sentence about the striped bass?

B Brewton: Yeah. It says while there is no indication of any direct impact to the striped bass populations from channel deepening…then it goes on to say Ga. DNR is concerned with deepening (inaudible) bla, bla, could interfere with efforts to restore striped bass. But that first phrase – there is no indication of any direct impact to striped bass populations from channel deepening. And then another statement says no information is available on the cause of the declining populations. I questioned some Ga. DNR people about this, and they tell me that these statements just are not correct. Again, I think it is the same sort of statement that in this letter to Sec. Westphal we are saying there’s no problem, there is no indication. Yet concurrently we supposed to be embarking upon the research to answer these questions. I just think it is inappropriate. I think it needs to be corrected. Again I will use the word credibility. It concerns me that we are simultaneously all here agreeing to study something and find out the answers. Yet, on the other side of the curtain as Neff described, letters are being sent that speak these things as if they were concluded facts. Thank you.

B Dysart: Do you have a final comment on the shortnose sturgeon issue?

D Schaller: Just a question of Mr. Brewton - of whether he has a suspicion that the DNR will manipulate the results of the study that is going on?

B Brewton: I don’t have any suspicion of anything, Dave. My concern is that the old cart before the horse – that we are drawing conclusions before the studies have been completed.

D Schaller: We were commenting on the Tier I submittal.

B Brewton: I don’t see where that makes any difference. You are making a statement.

D Schaller: (inaudible)

B Brewton: You are making a statement of fact in June 1999 that is going to be used by the Assistant Secretary of the Army to make a decision on the feasibility or recommending authorization of this project.

B Dysart: August 1999 this body is trying to move ahead in dealing with potential impacts - which youall have identified and trying to specify what scientific studies are needed so hopefully they can be done so you can then move on to the next box of the diagram of determining at that of whether they were adequate. Now you know, cart before the horse. Perhaps you have got to figure out where is the cart and where is the horse. Your focus - that I keep suggesting - is that would you please focus on designing and specifying the science that is need and perhaps not declare it dead on arrival, failed, or incredible before it is done.

B Brewton: I am not declaring that dead on arrival. What I am questioning that may be dead on arrival is GPA’s use of the outcome of the studies since they are making flat statements of fact and conclusion prior to the studies. Just to clarify what I was saying. So you won’t have to paraphrase or misinterpret it.

B Dysart: Perhaps the record should capture the thought that you do not trust GPA to get consensus (inaudible)

B Brewton: Ben [Dysart], I would like to say that once again you have taken my comment and rephrased it into something that I did not say and I take exception to that. It is inappropriate and you are out of place too.

T Leffek: I make a motion, if I could make such a motion, that we move on with the minutes with this meeting. We looked at Judy’s recommendation, Bill’s recommendation, what Ben Dysart said, what Morgan has said, what David has said. Stick with the response to what was on the table at the time. Maybe there are some statements in there that some us take exception to. It is in the past. It is over and done with. We are here to move forward. (inaudible) which is the Tier II EIS. That is what we are all here to try and come up with. We are trying to get space (?????) at the table to answer these questions. The Tier I was inadequate. I don’t think any of us would disagree with that. It was inadequate and needs to be fleshed out more fully. Let’s do that now. Let’s be proactive and say okay we don’t agree with what was said and we don’t necessarily think that all the information was accurate. Let’s do a better job the second time around. Let’s be proactive and say what holes are there in that report. What holes are there that are going to need to be answered. Let’s tackle that mission. And I put that as a motion on the table that we move forward. Not to denigrate the discussion. I think there are some valid concerns that they brought up. There are some statements in there that some of us take exception with. But it is time to move forward. The bridge is the Tier II EIS. That is what we need to focus on. We need to be proactive. Get the answers so we can all look at the science and make an accurate determination. Whether it is GPA, CEO, ATM, or Stevens Shipping - or anyone else. Let’s get the answers. (inaudible)

B Scanlon: I just want to say that I would like the record to reflect that the business community is in 100% agreement with the Sierra Club.

D Schaller: Maybe as a final thought. Communications, correspondence with the Secretary, is not the exclusive domain of the GPA. Mr. Brewton and anyone who has a concern may correspond directly with Dr. Westphal, and point out to him issues and areas where they think there is some problem. So, feel free.

L Rogers: We have been on this 35 minutes.

B Dysart: Larry says it is 11:30, and we will move on to - how about beach erosion committee? Bill Farmer:

B Farmer: There is a one-page summary of the committee minutes. I will go over that very briefly. Decisions made were as follows: There is a task statement under development by the Georgia Ports Authority which takes the proposed study that was approved by the SEG and merges that material with the remarks provided by the Corps of Engineers, remarks provided by Eric Olsen, consultant to the City of Tybee Island, and also to incorporate into the task statement the recommendation from the committee that the study have peer participation and peer review, which means other experts will participate in some way to accomplish the study. So that is underway. Since the publication of these minutes, the task statement draft has been distributed and is under review, and we hope to bring it back to the SEG at the next meeting. The second part of the minutes has to do with materials presented at the last SEG meeting following the BEC progress report (inaudible) indicating some error may have occurred pertaining to the process of approving or the content of the proposed study. The committee looked into this and concluded that there was no error that occurred, and we noted further that Morgan Rees had been designated by the SEG to study the issue and report back to the SEG. So the next item on the agenda will accomplish that. The other things the committee did was they looked at a draft matrix which matches up the SEG issues that occurred in the Operating Guidelines with what the committees are appearing accomplish. Try to find out what activities may not be assigned yet. That is another item on the agenda coming up later also. Then Stuart Stevens had written a letter to Col. Schmitt of the Corps of Engineers that indicated that the topics of dredging economics should be looked at in order to make that recommendation to the Corps.

B Dysart: Any questions to Bill about the BEC report? Seeing none. Zipped right through that.

L Rogers: Two and a half.

B Dysart: Next is Morgan Rees. And the wording there - contracting process review - those are my words. I don’t know whether SEG tasked Morgan to do this or whether Morgan volunteered or so forth. But I think it was clearly the sense of your group last month that you wanted a through review of the conductive (?????) brought back, laid on the table, and where ever auspices that is. Morgan, (inaudible) report.

M Rees: I guess I will characterize that as interim report, because I have spent a lot of time talking with a lot of people. But I have not talked to everybody who I think has information relevant to the issue. In fact, there is one person yet that I have not linked up with. There are several people who I have had really lengthy conversations with, and I promised to coordinate what I would report before quoting anybody. I just want to be sure I got it all straight. I can say in an interim report – to recap, there were two letters presented at the previous SEG meeting that brought into question the credibility, the ethics, and the science of what is happening in the BEC meeting. And that was really a shock and surprise to many of us. And that is one of the reasons I volunteered to look into this, because we just can’t have that outcome of the process. The bottom line of what I found out is that, while there were some fairly significant misunderstandings of the process from a number of people, as I said, I talked to 7 or 8 people who have been closely involved in this, and different people have different views. After having talking through all this with everybody except the one person I have yet to speak with, there is no indication of any credibility problems, any ethical problems, or any scientific problems with respect to what the committee is doing and particularly, and I was very specific on this point, with respect to GPA’s involvement. In fact, everybody who rendered an opinion, not everybody did, everybody who did render an opinion said no this was something happened in the committee and happened outside of anything that the GPA was involved in or doing with the slight exception that had to do with a way a series of facts played out. I am just going to read through as I have been able to reconstruct the timeline and the facts. Number one, the BEC did not solicit any proposals at all. The proposals that came into questioned were proposals presented by two individual consultants at the request by two individual members of the BEC, but without a request from the committee itself. Certainly without a request from GPA or anybody else. So there is a general misunderstanding of the term "proposals" and information requested to help the BEC to do their job. In other words, there were two documents put on the table, and they were called proposals. The BEC considered those and determined that neither one individually or both collectively would do the full amount of work that would need to be done to address the beach erosion issues. So BEC asked ATM to develop a technical approach that would cover the entire range of things that need to be done. ATM did that and presented it the BEC for their review, and the committee adopted it and recommended to the SEG at a previous meeting. And frankly, I have lost track – I think it was June, that the technical approach included the scope of work, I have been advised it is not a scope of work, but anyhow, the kinds of work that would need to be done. The kinds of investigations that would need to be done, the technical approach. Also include peer involvement and peer review of the results. So ATM presented that, and that was endorsed and presented to the SEG. There was discussion, as you may recall, discussion at the SEG meeting whether the SEG should or should not allow this recommendation to GPA suggest who the people would be that would do the work. There was an explicit decision made based, I think on the recommendation of the BEC, that the SEG would not recommend any particular consultant to do the work. So the recommendation went to GPA. Then, in order to carry out the recommendation, GPA had its consultant, ATM, to develop a scope of work which was really, actually, the kind of work and process and so forth that would need to be required to do the work. That is where it stands. I asked the question specifically about GPA's and ATM’s role in this, and particularly of the technical people and the unanimous response is that ATM is perfectly capable of doing the work. Whether they do it or not is a different issue. But there was some inference in some of the documents that maybe they didn’t have the scope or the range of technical expertise. But I have not be able to substantiate that, in fact people have said explicitly they are. The scientists involved don’t question ATM’s ability. So that is where we are. The best I can tell, the concerns raised came from two basic misunderstandings. One was the nature of the proposals that were made, the people who made them thought they were coming officially from the SEG and the BEC. There was an expectation on some people’s parts that either the BEC or the SEG would adopt one or the other of those proposals. That was a misunderstanding. The BEC as a group did not understand it that way. GPA was certainly not involved in any of those transactions, so there was no role for GPA to have done anything one way or another in that respect. The other misunderstanding came from whether it is a misstatement of (?????) misunderstanding from one of the BEC meetings that one of the consultants concluded that GPA was not intending to do anything beyond a very narrow examination of the incremental impacts of the channel deepening. That is not a correct impression, whether it was said correctly or not or whether it was understood correctly or not, I couldn’t unravel it. The bottom line is that I think that the Members of the committee will confirm this and that was all clarified at the BEC committee meeting last week. And the scope of what’s to be done by committee, what is to be recommended, and what is to be done by GPA has been fully agreed to, and I think there is no more controversy about it. Since I haven’t talked to everybody yet, I can’t say that with absolute certainly, but that is my sense.

B Dysart: I would like to ask, are there other people who, Members of the committee or people who have been involved in the process who have anything to say…to concur or agree or having anything to add…or disagree with what Morgan said?

S Stevens: I would agree with everything that Morgan just said. That is how it transpired. I would like to add that I believe when we got the first two proposals that one of the reasons that we asked, that the BEC asked, for a third more comprehensive proposal, if you want to call it a proposal, was because the Corps had looked at the first two, and they were lacking on certain things on both of those. I believe that is the case – isn’t that true?

B Farmer: Yes.

S Stevens: So that is one of the reasons we asked for a third more comprehensive look at what needs to be done to study this issue.

M Rees: I guess what I didn’t say along those lines…that all of these steps…one of the criticisms raised was that at one point there was a meeting that was attended only by Tybee and GPA, and some decisions were made. There were some criticisms raised about. It is true that one of the meetings that the only Members of the committee who showed were the Tybee and the GPA folks. But the results of that committee were shared electronically with the rest of the committee, comments requested, and so forth. It wasn’t like anything was being done in secret. That comment earlier about "behind the scenes". There were no "behind the scenes" activity here. I mean everything was open and run through the committee.

B Dysart: Was there anybody else who was directly involved in this, on in the review or whatnot – has anything to add? I think everybody around the table considers this to be a very important topic. As I have said a million times, anything credibility, integrity, good science is absolutely essential and is expected. Anything that raises questions or could need to be dealt with or fixed – anything promotes good things is good. So we really want this clear (inaudible) on the record before this (inaudible). Very important – I think everybody around this table – anything else. I want to know if there is anybody – things as far as factual stuff, knowledge of – first-hand knowledge and so forth, is there anything else that needs to be added to what Morgan and Stuart said at this time?

B Brewton: Two quick questions. One did you talk to the two consultants both of them that wrote the letters?

M Rees: I talked to one of them. The other one I have traded phone calls with – I have not talked with him. I talked to Chuck Watson. Did not talk to Eric Olsen. I did talk to Bill Farmer who employs Eric Olsen. So I think I reflected Eric’s views, but I haven’t talked to him personally, so I can’t claim that…

B Brewton: If there is anything different, will you report that to us next month?

M Rees: Yes.

B Brewton: Second thing, I think the more important thing about this whole event - and Bill Farmer brought this up at the last meeting - and I think it is truly the most important thing. One is having proper procedure in the future for all the committees to deal with this sort of thing. I guess, I think Bill is working on that with some recommendations for others. They may go back to the Operating Guidelines committee. The other question is on the particular proposal. Once ATM and GPA have reworked this scope of work – my understanding is that going to go back to the BEC, they will review it and then make a recommendation back to the SEG based on that newly defined or redefined scope of work?

B Farmer: Yes.

B Brewton: So the committee will review it and this group will get to see it?

B Farmer: Yes.

B Dysart: Is Bill’s one-word response – is that the thing - anybody got to add to that or is that sufficient answer? Make sure on some things when we leave here today that we had a clear understanding, consensus, what have you. Okay?

J Jennings: First a compliment (inaudible) of the leadership of the BEC. It is of note that happens the subject of this particular controversy. But I think it – can it be instructive in that all their guidelines that we will establish for other subcommittee work in the future. For instance, with the economics working group, in coordinating with the Corps, contact with Institute for Water Resource – I made a contact prior to approval from the SEG and prior to approval from GPA. It might have been inappropriate depending on what guidelines we are operating under. Without those guidelines, I am not aware of inappropriate (inaudible) – I’m not. So I think that, having said that, the BEC…its leadership that I very much respect and the controversy (inaudible)

[End Tape 2, Side A and begin Tape 2, Side B]

J Jennings: Does the SEG have any power at all? Maybe that is something that has been established that I missed.

B Dysart: By "power" you are referring to …

J Jennings: Ability to request proposals for work for scope of work or if not, say not. It is a matter of discussion. I don’t know what the answers are. And, having said that, I am not entirely clear on how to conduct myself.

B Dysart: Are you suggesting or recommending that somebody assume the responsibility for taking a crack at developing some guidelines for some guidance for committees (inaudible)

J Jennings: I would feel more comfortable. I think we might have a lack of leadership in terms of subcommittees if someone assumes a leadership role without knowing what they can or can’t do. What guidelines they may or may not use to operate under. It like, I mean my committee has no money, so therefore you can conclude it is fairly powerless. I think could be set one way or another. If you could, well, if we could move on that.

M Rees: I would just like to refer back to the Operating Guidelines.

J Jennings: Are they there and I just don’t know it, Morgan?

M Rees: Well, the context is that the SEG is an advisory group, and we wrestled with that language when we developed the guidelines in the first place. This specific instance, among others, this is just my personal note – not speaking on behalf of GPA – I hope that they agree with me but maybe not, but as a government agency – at least when I had my government hat on in my former career, you just legally couldn’t give away some decision authorities. So it was important to us in developing the guideline to make it clear that the SEG was an advisory group. That is where we came out on it. My interpretation of the guidelines would be that it would be consistent with the guidelines that GPA had the ultimate responsibility to make the decision. Having said all that, my hope is that we make them in a way that everybody is comfortable with and not cause any confrontation as a result of that.

J Jennings: My advocacy is not in contrast to that. But my advocacy is that (inaudible) policy that was restated as you might have just done.

B Dysart: Morgan, were you saying that GPA has the responsibility and the authority to do all the business and contracting and so forth and that is not the responsibility of the committees or this body?

J Jennings: I think maybe we need to be a little more refine it in that subcommittees have the ability to make exploratory comments or requests. For instance, when we called, when Richard Hill called Phil Thorpe and said can you do the presentation – it had not come before the SEG, it had not come to GPA. Is that out of line? These are fine lines. Maybe we can say there are latitude for exploratory comments, information, requests. But formal requests for proposals or scopes of work are the venue of GPA. If that is a fact, lets agree on it now. If it is already part of the Operating Guidelines, excuse my ignorance because I am sorry I never read (inaudible).

M Rees: I guess again, in the context of this particular issue, my interpretation again, everybody here we talked through these operating guidelines, had a subcommittee, and we spent a lot of time over the semantics of it. But my interpretation would be that when it comes down to actually spending any money and making any formal or contractual commitments, then the SEG makes recommendations, and the GPA decides what to do. Now, having said that, what we did and I was part of the decision – in asking for the IWR from them – in hindsight, one might have argued that before we made the contact we should have come to the SEG. I would hope that the SEG as a group would have enough trust in the committee chairs to have some latitude of action.

J Jennings: So we agree as a group, but exploratory requests are discretionary of committee chairs. The committee chairs need to be very cognizant of communicating that are making exploratory requests.

M Rees: I could agree with that. I don’t know what the rest …

J Jennings: Subject to approval by the SEG and subject to approval by GPA.

B Farmer: There was the earlier committee called the SEG operating guidelines committee. There were four Members of that, and I was one of them. I have undertaken the preliminary effort to gather some information together and try to request a meeting of the SEG guidelines committee to analyze this now. There are two things I hope to accomplish. One is to clarify the issue that Judy just talked about. That is, as the operating guidelines stand right now, the various committees are at complete liberty to do whatever reasonable to develop their recommendations for scientific studies to be brought to the SEG and so forth. So whether or not that – this latitude (?????) is proper is one issue that I hope to address and bring it back to the committee and then on to the SEG as some modifications to the operating guidelines. The second issue is whether or not all the issues that are identified in the operating guidelines are, in fact, being addressed by the SEG. There has been a matrix developed, and the committee chairmen have been exposed to this and that will be next meeting it is supposed to be brought back to the SEG an identification of what committee is working on what issue – and then what issues are not currently addressed. Then the SEG can decide whether we scratch the issues off, or we develop a committee to address them or whatever. That is an agenda item coming up also.

B Dysart: You are going to be revisiting this about what the committees can do. I presume you will be getting some advice, coordination from GPA, and that you will have something to report back next time.

B Farmer: Hopefully the SEG operating guidelines committee will have something to bring next month. I think, Morgan – are you the chairman?

M Rees: I think I am. I had forgotten about it because I thought we were done. I think I am, and yes – sure.

B Brewton: It was you, me, and Jim Baker I think.

B Farmer: Yes, the Manufacturers Council Harbor Committee.

J Jennings: I was not originally, but I would like to be part of the committee.

M Rees: We will set something up.

B Dysart: The next item on the agenda is the briefing on modeling overview. Hydrodynamic/ water quality mathematical modeling – Bo. How about a five-minute break?

(short break)

B Ellis: …. of the system, it is not an exact replicate. It is a tool that is useful for helping us understand the system, but it is a representation, and all models are somewhat limited. Very important to understand up front what characteristics and relationships you want to capture to make sure you have the right model and that it is going to be able to accurately predict those things that you are interested in. For instance, in this situation, in the deepening, we are very concerned about any of the characteristics that would be depth-dependent. As you move the depth of the channel - alter the depth of the geometry of the channel – how does that effect the different relationships, the factors, the characteristics that the model uses?

Why do we need modeling? Two basic reasons. They allow us to predict the outcome of conditions that we have not experienced, that we are not able to go out and measure. So it is a predictive tool, and in this case, in the deepening project, we are primarily using the modeling to try to predict what if? What if you do certain things to the system to try to predict what the conditions would be. The other thing it allows, it is very expensive to go out and measure ever point in the harbor or in the system that you are interested in. Models allow you to fill in the blanks. If you are accurate within every 1000 feet with the data points and the model has accurately represented the system, then it can fill in the blanks for where you don’t have data at different points in the system. Different types of variable – physical – everybody has seen the architect models of buildings – statistical, political, polls, other types of statistical modeling that are done to try to predict the future and the future decision and empirical models. This is a numerical model that we are working with for the Savannah Harbor. Types of systems that are commonly modeled. Our company works with each one of these systems. We use different models depending on the system. But very typically for water resources and water quality studies, rivers, riverine conditions are modeled, lakes, reservoirs are modeled. Estuaries, which is primarily what we have, where a fresh water river meets the ocean and (inaudible), estuaries are predominately what we are modeling here in the Savannah Harbor – bays and upland areas. Very frequently models are used to predict water resources, hydrologic water quality conditions in these systems. Each one of these systems has unique characteristics that must be considered. Like I said, estuary has to consider fresh water flow from the river upstream as well as the tidal conditions from the ocean (inaudible). This is the hydrologic cycle where you have the ocean, evaporation, clouds, rain on the uplands. Savannah River has a huge drainage basin. Up in the mountains, the rainfall collects in rivers, routed through reservoirs, and finally gets into the Savannah River. A riverine condition that flows down into the estuary where the flow from the freshwater source and the ocean, which is a tidally driven boundary, mixes in this estuary. That is where you see extensive marshes – where you have the estuary.

Do models really provide useful information? How do we use models in our everyday life? If you don’t trust models, I wouldn’t suggest that you go on a flight. Airplanes are used do simulate how airplanes are going to behave in the sky before they ever leave the ground. So you would want to trust that the modeler did a good job before you stepped aboard an airplane. The space shuttle – modeling, extensive modeling conducted to see how the space shuttle is going to behave and where it needs to head and how it is going to get back. Missiles – we probably won’t have won the Gulf War if we hadn’t have accurately modeled what missiles were going to do and knew how they were going to behave under certain conditions. I won’t go into any structure of any significance because models are used to look at the structural aspects of buildings. Sewer systems and water resources and water quality – we model sewer systems that you trust every day and water systems - hydraulic, pipe flow, water treatment, and water supply systems.

What models are being developed specifically for the Savannah Harbor for this project? We have some very basics models. One is basic hydrodynamic and transport model which determines how the flows move. Hydrodynamic means that it slowly simulates the tidal cycles and how the tidal wave moves up into the system, into the estuary. This model is fully capable of representing the hydrodynamics. The transport is to take a conservative substance, you could enter a dye discharge or something into the harbor and it would take that conservative substance through mixing and diffusion and move it through the system. Salinity is one those substances that we are particularly interested in the Savannah Harbor. This model accurately represents the conditions that transport salinity (inaudible).

The other major component of the model that we are doing is the water quality component which takes the basic structure, the current salinity, the physical geometric conditions from the hydrodynamic and transport model and uses it to predict the water quality outcome – the conditions. Primary parameter that we are looking at is dissolved oxygen relating to a water quality concern.

We are also using information that is being developed for the upriver basin model that the EPA and EPD are doing. They have not finished this model, but they are actively underway and they will be providing the output of that model to our upstream boundary condition for the Savannah Harbor model. The lower Savannah River estuary – that is the model that is currently underway. I want to point out though that the upstream boundary condition above the (inaudible) is 40 or 50 miles upstream at the Clyo Gauging Station. That is the point in the river where you are no longer tidally influenced. We have to go that far up the river to be able to deal with the effects of the tidal range in the Savannah Harbor.

Like I said, some work that is going in the harbor. I don’t really want to go into a lot of details. The basis model system that is used by EPA that they are working on, we will take some of the output from this work and plug it into the work for this project. But the model that’s primarily being used to model the estuary is (chopped off at the top) is called WQ Map. This is a user friendly, Windows based, GIS based, water resource and water quality model that uses a variety of components to look at various input sources, geographic information – I said this is all GIS based and you can put a lot of information in through defining XYZ coordinates. The environmental data, the best data, temperatures, salinity wedge, (inaudible), wave conditions in the harbor. You can also look at various discharges – industrial, municipal loading, hydrologic models that can tie into this. This would be the upstream model that is being done by EPA that would use some of these models to look at run-off and upstream conditions based on those models and even nutrient loading into the system.

Historically the very basic component of the hydrodynamic model is called BF Grid. The question is how does the model see the river? You and I look at the river differently than the model. When we are up in an airplane, we see the system. We see the shoreline, we see the surrounding marshes, and depending on low or high tide, we see the elevation or size of the channel. The model only sees the river what we tell it to see. That is why it is important to understand the characteristics, to have the right parts and pieces in there, the right relationships. The model is limited to what we tell it. This particular WQ Map sees the river in a particular way – like I said, 3-D, fully 3-D, and because of the depth dependent characteristics of this system, the salinity wedge that everybody talks about, and the marshes – the overflow into the marshes are only flooded when the tide is rising. It is important to use a 3-D model. It is boundary fitted. This particular modeling package uses a boundary fitted condition which means it curves with the system, there aren’t straight edges. Many models use the straight lines, but this is boundary fitted, sigma stretched (?). The 3-D chopped into grids you’ll see in a second, horizontally and every grid is 10 layers deep. Those layers stretch with tide. As the tide rises or falls, those individual layers expand or shrink to fit the system. It is very good fit for an estuary and it is a terrific system as you will see.

This is the windows (inaudible) a little bit, simulation a little later on. The way the model sees the Savannah Harbor, this is the tide gate area right here, this is where the Back River takes off to the Front River. The Front River and the Back River and all the little major side channels are chopped into these grids, the boundary fitting means the grids don’t have to be liner, they can curve and fit the shape of the estuary.

Another component in presentation for this model, these are depths, depth key. The boundary areas are the deeper areas of the channel. The lighter areas are the shallower, this is the Back River. The model sees the depths we plug into it. All of the depths for the model developed in the Tier I EIS were based on a recent survey at that time. That is what this is right here.

B Brewton: Quick clarification – is there a single sampling point per cell that you show there?

B Ellis: There are various sampling spots all through the system, not one per cell.

B Brewton: Okay.

B Ellis: But every cell is a homogeneous mixture. It basically gives you one salinity factor, one D.O. reading in that cell. You have to chop into an appropriate number of cells…(inaudible)

B Brewton: What are the size of those cells?

B Ellis: It various, generally every 1000 feet or so. The main portions of the river are chopped up. You could go a lot longer than that when you are not interested in a refine solution of the model in a particular area.

B Brewton: Are you using all of those types of inputs into this model or is that just a generic assortment of inputs?

B Ellis: That is a general – the modeler has to chop it up into an appropriate number of cells. That is done by the modeler. The data that is used to calibrate is – at least for this summer’s field data collection – has been determined by the …

B Brewton: I was talking about all the input sources, you know, we talked about run off, municipal discharges, etc. all of them. Is that just something specific to this project, or is that just a general list of inputs?

B Ellis: That is a general list of inputs that can be used by WQ Map very easily without adapting the model codes, and we are using most - just about - all of those things that are listed.

B Brewton: Thank you.

B Ellis: What makes the model useful? Why should we trust this model or any model? The primary – and Ben you just raised the question –thing that you want done – like our modeler’s say there is nothing that screws up a good model like data. It is easy to go out and put together a model or come up with a nice looking presentation, but it is adequate amount of data that makes the model useful and allows you to trust the outcome of the that, of the results of the model. And it is applied within the specifications for which it was designed for. This model has been thought out, it has been thought through. The questions, the concerns, that D.O., chloride, salinity primarily there are on the table and how deepening would effect them were thought through as the model task statement was development.

The other thing is critical review by outside modelers. We have assembled within the MTRG, I think I have said this before, one of the top group of experts, modeling experts, that do this day-in and day-out in the country. This is a top-notch group of the top EPA guys, the Corps, Waterways Experiment Station. These guys are very, very well recognized modelers looking at this, commenting on the modeling. Also want to point out that the data set being collected this summer, even though there was a very extensive data set collected in ’97, I am going to show you in a second a simulation of the model, the salinity model that was developed in the Tier I EIS. We are redoing that one. One of the most extensive data sets this summer – already underway. Our field crews are out in the river right now. Our monitoring stations have been established. We have got one of the largest data sets for this type of system that I know of on the East Coast. Second to only Chesapeake Bay.

Very quickly, people have asked how the simulation of the model, how this model presents itself. I want to go through a quick simulation of conditions. Very quickly – I will go ahead a run this. We are looking at salinity conditions. Over here you see the lighter colors are the fresher water, the green-blue is ocean water. You can see the ocean boundary out here. I not sure with the complete system, but you can see the tidal effect. This section view up here is a section view that I cut – you can’t see the dash line very well – but it starts up at the top of the navigation channel, where the deepening is looking at, just above the Kings Island Turning Basin, and goes down through river front to a point right about the branch to the Back River. This section view is looking at 3-D. What the system is seeing as far as salinity concentrations, the blue is fresh water, the (inaudible) area in the Front River and the Back River at time is fresh, at times is brackish. The gray and light blue areas range from .5 ppts to 5 ppts. Starting to get to the darker blue band of salinity that is 5 parts per thousand at this leading edge. The true wedge is further back here. What I want to point out is we started the simulation in a Springtime condition. It is moving through, you can’t see the dates – they are chopped off, but it is moving through…this is actual based on data collected back in 1997, moving into a neap tide condition where you have less energy in the system. You will notice in the section view that the wedge is more well defined and you will see it is more stratified. That is one of the toughest things we had to capture in the Tier I EIS modeling. The 3-D and the being able to model the marshes, the volumes of water that moves into the upstream parts of the system, enable us to accurately represent the change from a more mixed condition where you see the colors are a lot more mixed, and vertically straight up and down. Now you see the wedge during a neap condition more well defined. We would call this more of a stratified condition. It is running through, it has a couple more days to run through this. Any questions while it is running?

B Brewton: Bo, I don’t know if you can cover this now or somewhere before you finish – the prior project models, I know there was some criticism or problems with those – what I would like to ask is generally what was the problem, how far off were the predictions vs. results and what have you done in the model that is being proposed – worked on here – to address those kinds of concerns?

B Ellis: This model that you are seeing, that I know of, was widely accepted by all the reviewers. It was primarily reviewed by the Resource Agencies. Resource Agencies all agreed that this was a good, appropriate representation of the system for salinity and was able to accurately predict down to the depths that we were looking at. The D.O. model was a more simple model. It was a relative change type of model and not as comprehensive as we are doing in the Tier II EIS. We are making refinements to the salinity model based on some inputs that we obtained, but not really because of deficiencies. This was calibrated (inaudible).

B Brewton: I’m not talking about this, I was talking about the modeling prior.

B Ellis: That's what this is

B Brewton: This is what this is. Okay.

B Ellis: This is the simulation of the existing condition model. You see the model right here, the different little grids – we have a measurement – a model measurement that was used to put that together here. That the end of the neap tide condition where you get this stratification, which is important to salinity movement and to dissolved oxygen.

Male Voice: Where is that point?

B Ellis: This section? This section here runs from the top of the Kings Island Turning Basin down to right about just up above where the Back River meets the Front River.

Male Voice: What flow conditions were there when this was run?

B Ellis: It ranged, I think, from 8 to 9,000 cfs up at the boundary. Let me …

B Brewton (((?????))) (((this was attributed to Bo))) : When you finish this I need you to clarify my question I asked you a minute ago.

B Ellis: This has the whole, (inaudible), basically the shoreline. Just to give you an idea, our boundary is way up here. The Clyo boundary is way up here and we get fresh water flows that are recorded daily at the Clyo gauging stations and the Savannah River is very riverine through this portion, but it is tidally influenced. The big tidal influence and the tidal fluctuations are down here in the estuary where we are primarily concerned about (inaudible).

B Brewton: My earlier question is not about the existing condition model for the current project, but the old model and the prior deepening project that predicted vs. actual which it was (inaudible) when I was asking what cause of that problem in that model in what this model does to address the problem.

B Ellis: That was done by the Corps, and I don’t want to go into a lot of detail. But one thing that learned from taking out the tide gate is that the conditions in the Front River changed quite a bit as a result of taking out the tide gate and that the stratification completely changed. They modeled a condition where it was well mixed and didn’t capture the full stratification that started to occur after the tide gate was taken out of operation. So it was not necessarily a deficiency with the model. The model did a fairly good job with what it was given. It was just a very short data set and didn’t take it through that whole tidal cycle. This was back in the 80’s. This was before this type of technology was available.

B Brewton: Right. Certainly.

B Dysart: Are there any other questions?

B Brewton: Yeah. I think we gave Morgan a big round of applause for his overheads.

S Stevens: In your D.O. modeling part of this, I think you indicated loading on the river? Is that correct? Does that anticipate any future loading questions?

B Ellis: This, Stuart? We are looking non-point, (inaudible) loading, S.O.D. (((??????))) loading. There are a number of loading parameters that are used in the model. Are you talking about future discharges?

S Stevens: Yeah. Point source or non-point.

B Ellis: Not that I know of.

S Stevens: Okay. So your modeler has probably taken into account in the future additional loading (inaudible) current conditions.

B Ellis: It is capable of entering any future discharge. We have permitted which the industries typically discharge well below their permit levels. We have the perfect conditions and we are able to simulate if everybody was discharging at full permit conditions. In actuality it is usually well below that. Right now we don’t have any future discharges I know of identified that we can plug in. But you could easily plug it in.

S Stevens: Does that make a question in your modeling on D.O. – would you be using the worst-case scenario – that is, all of the permitted discharges at their permitted rates?

B Ellis: We have not established … we are able to do that with the model. The tools are capable, but we have not established the critical conditions for application of the model right now.

S Stevens: Okay.

B Ellis: Right now, the MTRG has recommended to you what data needs to be collected, how the model needs to be calibrated. The next step will be to decide how it should be applied. That really involves more than just the MTRG to establish those critical conditions.

L Rogers: By the same token, did the model establish the full seasonal marsh load or the minimum or an average for marsh loading?

B Ellis: We are doing some work this summer. It really varies with rain, when the rains occur, whether it is high tide, low tide – very, very difficult. I not suggesting that we are completely modeling all of that. We are doing some work to try to characterize what the loading off the marsh is. We’ll be while we are out there and use that information however we can. But again, in the application, we haven’t even started talking about how that information will be used.

S Stevens: To follow-up then, and maybe just answer that one a different way. What measures are you taking to validate the model that you are developing?

B Ellis: A lot of people talk about "calibration" and "validation" and, if you have a short data set that you were calibrating to, you would definitely want to validate to other points in time, other conditions that you… What we are taking is a long, 3-month data set that we will calibrate for that entire time frame. So that is your calibration and validation. We are also going to have the previous data set. So we have a number of data sets to be able to calibrate, validate, all that.

Wes Woolf: What is the previous data set?

B Ellis: In 1997, for the development of this Tier I EIS model, there was a 2-1/2 month data collection effort.

W Wolfe: I am involved in another modeling stakeholder process from the - well the - Tri-State Water Wars, and the data set there is from 1939 to 1993. And so I believe the modeling stats (((?????))) seem a little bit - does not seem very long to me.

B Ellis: This is complete… this is not complete, but every extensive coverage of the harbor. We have got data, tidal data, data up at Clyo at the upstream boundary for 100 years. The Corps and USGS, we have all that data and we are using all that historical data. But we are calibrating this tool to a very extensive data set. Measuring points for salinity, pH, turbidity, D.O., a number of things at many, many points in the river. That what I am talking about. A three-month …so the model will not only have to be correct at the outside boundary. It is to be able to accurately represent what is going on in all those interior areas where we have data. All the results at every major point where you collect the data will be compared to the data that is collected to see how accurately it performs.

R Mikell (????????): How will the model be used for the…to relate to the freshwater marsh succession? The same model?

B Ellis: No, we haven’t really decided that. The salinity and the salinity in the marshes – we are recording salinity in the river for the model and up in the marshes to be able to predict what the relationship is and that would be used by any vegetative study that we used before. That hasn’t been completely thought through.

R Mikell (??????): But it will be the basic, the basic tool to make those assumptions?

B Ellis: Correct. The Corps and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife have an existing succession model that was used. Basically, relationship from that study were used in the Tier I EIS, and we are doing some work now with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife to try to refine that work. We haven’t talked about, again we haven’t talked about, how the model is going to be applied to any the conditions.

B Brewton: (inaudible) said a little earlier, and one of the primary differences between this and models from earlier projects is going to be the extent and number of data collection points.

B Ellis: And the tools.

B Brewton: I understand. Mathematical model has come a long way.

B Ellis: Come a long way.

B Brewton: Like every other technology. But on the number of data points for these various tasks, the salinity, chlorides, D.O., and so forth, what is the range of the number of data points? The smallest and the largest for the different tasks. I just trying to get, you know, are we sampling 10 places in the river, or a 1000 places in the river, or …

B Ellis: We have permanently installed, during that period, over 20 places where we are recording top and bottom measurements. At every minute it is taking a reading. Okay, so thousands of data points at that one location. We are also going by boat, dropping meters over the side, and collecting additional data in between all those points to cover other areas.

B Brewton: So 26 points and then additional …

B Ellis: Thousands of data points.

B Brewton: Some of those are physically at the same geographic location. (inaudible)

B Ellis: Those stations are somewhere between 20 and 30.

B Brewton: Okay. One that is for encompassing what length of the harbor. How many miles?

B Ellis: From Fort Pulaski up above the upstream boundary to Abercorn Creek.

B Brewton: Which is about how many miles?

B Ellis: 30 something.

B Brewton: Okay. So less than one point per mile.

B Ellis: Most of them are below I-95.

B Brewton: And that – how many cells do you have on here, grid?

B Ellis: Thousands.

B Brewton: Thousands of them. And those 25–30 points are accurate with the other information you have? You still do a pretty good job of making these predictions?

B Ellis: They are gauging some of the grids. I know they are doing some work to refine the grid structure.

B Brewton: Okay, thanks.

B Ellis: That is primarily above I-95 and Clyo(????????) which wasn’t really looked at thoroughly (inaudible).

B Farmer: Did you follow the results of the mitigation actions?

B Ellis: Yes, but with certain limitations. You can do a lot of what if once you have the model.

S Stevens: Do the mathematics of this model allow you to do statistics (inaudible) confidence levels of your results?

B Ellis: Yes. Based on comparison with the data. We have, the MTRG has already specified how they want the model presented, the model calibration, presented with …compared to the data. All will be presented in modeling reports.

J Jennings: This is not my original question, but as a follow-up Stuart’s question. What is your confidence level?

B Ellis: You look and see how well it predicts, or how well it… You can narrow down … you have curves of what your model is showing for a particular point in the system where you collect the data. You compare how the model does with the data.

B Brewton: That number won’t be determined until after you complete data collection and run it and compare it, right?

B Ellis: Right.

J Jennings: So do you have any projections on confidence level?

B Ellis: No.

J Jennings: But the reason I wanted (inaudible) talking about data from the Corps from 1950. I am just curious is that (inaudible) is that why you are interested in (inaudible)

B Ellis: No, that is the striped bass issue – is interested in…

J Jennings: (inaudible) salinity (inaudible) issue. Oh, it is not, (inaudible)

B Ellis: We would still look at all that, but the model would be changed to try to represent the 1950’s condition to try to see what the flow conditions were in the Back River to help the striped bass study.

J Jennings: So you would be a little more (inaudible)

B Ellis: That would be (inaudible) trying to see – fill in the holes. We have some data points from the 50’s, and we have all of the geometry. So if the model is good for the existing geometry, then it should be good to change the geometry within certain limits, and then we could see based on the historical flow data, tide data, what the flow conditions probably were in the Back River at that time.

J Jennings: So, it is part validation and part predicted?

B Ellis: It is time tested. Using an accepted tool to look back and see what happened under certain conditions.

L Rogers: Just a technical question, Bo. The testing locations, are you using anchored sods (????????) units?

B Ellis: We are using a number of types of stations. But these are typical water quality stations. They are anchored at the bottom and, depending on where they are in either the navigation channel…What we are doing is collecting our data every week. So we have to anchor them, we have ways of keeping meters on the bottom, and let other ones float up with the tide. So they are all not just fixed locations. Some move with the tide and measure depths wherever they are. We have corks that have to come up to the surface where we can link, we can go in and collect the data every several days, every week or so. You want to check and make sure it is working properly, and you are getting the appropriate amount of data. So every installation depending on the physical constrains, where it tied down, and what ships might be coming though have a different anchorage.

L Rogers: Right.

B Ellis: We have got a system where we…because you don’t want to leave them, especially in a salty environment, out for weeks at a time and risk loosing data, we are swapping them out every week. We are rotating in newly served instruments – put those back in place. We have a full time dive crew that is working here around the clock to serve all these.

S Stevens: I’d like to make a statement about how – what an enormous effort that is. We are right now gearing up to do some summer work – coast line – and the individual units are $12-20,000 just for one unit. So that kind of work is extremely expensive.

B Ellis: We’ve got all the state-of-the-art flow measuring, current measuring, water quality measuring stations out in the river.

J Jennings: Do you (inaudible) make use of the data as part of the dredging (inaudible)?

B Ellis: We will be for this summer because we want to know as much about what was going on at the time (inaudible). So the Corps gets most of that information. They are out monitoring during dredging. It is not part of our task statement to use that data in our calibration. We don’t have as much confidence in that data as we do our own data in other words. But we will be taking it to try to understand the system. We have a very strict QA-QC (inaudible) for all the data (inaudible). And if it doesn’t fall within our confidence for the data (inaudible).

B Dysart: Do you have anything you would like to say covering MTRG. Is there anything…

B Ellis: We haven’t done anything in a month.

B Dysart: Can’t argue with that. Okay. It is now 13 minutes until 1:00. If you haven't done anything in a month, I presume you are not invoicing…

B Ellis: (inaudible)

B Dysart: Okay, other – old business – I would ask Ben [Brewton] to - what we added to the records there - which of the four items (inaudible) that have your name on it, what would you like to do first?

B Brewton: Well it looks like more people were interested in dealing with this Westphal’s letter, and other points in that. I would certainly defer the other things to next month, but I think David Kyler said that he had something prepared, no matter, I be glad to defer.

B Dysart: Well, why don’t you kick that off and what, what are your questions there?

D Kyler: Don’t you want me to read my (inaudible) letter, my prepared statement rather this issue of accuracy of record keeping. I would encourage anybody who wants to make a statement that they anticipate about an issue (inaudible) meeting and prepare a statement. One way to guarantee it is in there according to the way it (inaudible). So in all this, just take a minute or so, so put them on tape. Statements made by GPA in the second enclosure to Mr. Marchand’s June letter to Dr. Westphal, Assistant Sec. of the Army for Civil Works with attachment entitled "Supplemental Information in Support of the Feasibility of Deepening Savannah Harbor," April 1999" …

Male Voice: Speak up, David, excuse me.

D Kyler: It is dated April 1999 and attached to a letter of June 9, 1999. These statements are very troubling. This is not only because GPA presumes conclusiveness of information that is still being developed, but because their claims are at extreme odds with assessment in the Tier I EIS, as incomplete and inadequate as this document is, as well as many comments made in response to the draft EIS - now, with minor revisions, ‘Tier I’ - by well-qualified agency staff and members of the public. I cite reference to the Southern Environmental Law Center letter to Westphal commenting on their observations about some of these same problems. There are plenty of copies here if people want to see it. Furthermore, GPA’s denial of significant and highly probable impacts of the project in this "supplemental information" suggests that they believe some of the most fundamental issues of the SEG agenda to be negligible or non-existent. From the enclosure of April 1999 in Mr. Marchand’s letter the Corps of Engineers, it can be inferred that GPA is deliberately misrepresenting critical cause and effect relationships and impacts related to the proposed project. Statements about the project’s impacts on striped bass and sturgeon are especially flagrant and some other things relating to D.O. that did not say but which are in the correspondence cited. With statements of this kind being made by GPA as part of the official correspondence about the project signed by the executive director, how are participants in the SEG process supposed to take the promise of a ‘good faith effort’ seriously? In fact – the SEG process aside – how can GPA be expected to be accountable to the public for more subtle and complex assessment and mitigation of their proposed project - consistent with WRDA and NEPA requirements - when they make formal statements denying known impact relationships and represent information as conclusive while related analysis is still be generated? Basic credibility issues are raised by GPA making such statements while conducting the SEG process which is allegedly intended to promote broad and objective assessment of the project. This is my opinion.

B Dysart: Thank you for bringing your opinion here today. Okay – Morgan.

M Rees: I would like to suggest – we have been through this discussion a lot. Not just today, but at other meetings about events that have happened in the past, Tier I and all that. And the last thing I want to do is try to push those aside and say they are not relevant, because I agree they are relevant in many respects in terms of where we go from here. At the same time, I sense, this is just my sense, that most of the people here have probably heard enough about that. What I would like to do is offer the opportunity to talk about these issues at whatever length is required to work through them. We may eventually agree to disagree, which is really is how the Tier II process got started. We had agreed to disagree on a lot of these points and constructed the Tier II process to avoid this very kind of disagreement happening in the future. So, in that context, that the Tier II and the SEG is process is something different from what went on before in terms of reaching closure on the issues but not pushing these issues from the historic perspective, off to the side, I would just like to make a suggestion and make an offer that whatever extent you want to work through these and meet as a, say, historic issue resolution committee, if you will, we would be glad to do that. If the rest of the folks here want to focus on other prospective issues, we will deal with the retrospective issues to whatever extent you want.

B Dysart: Ben [Brewton].

B Brewton: Appreciate that, Morgan, and I will definitely take you up on that. However, I have to make a statement and ask a question here. I see these things being continually characterized, I think mis-characterized is a more appropriate word, as things from the past, living in the past, let’s move forward, let’s get on with the business. My understanding is that the very letter that we are talking about, in question, report from GPA dated June 9, is on the desk of the Asst. Sec. of Army Civil Works Joseph Westphal, for a decision to be made on a recommendation, I assume that is the Chief’s Report and Record of Decision that we have heard referred to before, nevertheless whatever it is technically called, that is a decision that as I understand it has not yet been made – is in the process of being made and is being made based on those documents. So I would think this – Dan, can you…?

Dan Parrott: There is supplemental information that the Corps of Engineers is preparing to go along with the information ….

B Brewton: I understand that is not exclusively the only thing they look at. But nonetheless, that is GPA’s last statement on that and acknowledged here today that there was at least some error or misstatement. Now, Morgan, I don’t mean to beat up on you about a mistake. I make plenty of them, we all do. The thing I am disturbed about is when I asked if there was a clarifying or corrective letter going to be issued, I didn’t hear a very clear answer to that and it seems to me that those sort of clarifications and corrections need to be made not by me or somebody else as Dave Schaller indicated, but by the people who wrote the letter if indeed you now know that it is in error. If we cannot get that done, it does give me question about the whole process here. We are trying to move forward and that is decision that is yet to be made and hardly think it is fair to characterize it as a past issue. I would like to see the Corps of Engineers have the best, most accurate information available in order to make that decision. I just wonder if…I’ll close with these two questions for right now: (1) Is indeed that information part of what is on the desk of Sec. Westphal to make that decision and (2) Would GPA be willing to wait until of these studies are actually concluded. That is to withdraw their request for immediate authorization and wait until some of these studies are concluded and we do have more authoritative information before they seek authorization? Go back to you.

M Rees: I can’t say much more than noted, because I certainly, as you realize I’m sure and David as well, I am not in a position to say whether GPA is willing to withdraw its request for authorization. I would suspect - totally unauthorized status by GPA - but it won’t surprise me in the least if the answer was no. But we are not in position to make that kind of statement. In order to … Pardon me?

B Brewton: I was just going to say the other half of my question was – am I correct in that this is the part of the information that secretary Westphal issues and to make his decision?

M Rees: The letter that we sent him?

B Brewton: Yeah.

M Rees: That is part of the record that he will use. Also the SELC letter is part of the record. And every other piece of correspondence is part of the record. It is not just this letter. There are letters from South Carolina, from the DHEC and from the DNR, from Georgia DNR…you have seen the record …

B Brewton: I’m saying, I think it would be appropriate if y'all…(tape ends)

[End Tape 2, Side A and begin Tape 2, Side B]

M Rees: … figure out, number one, if it is appropriate to make a correction because people observed here that, in the context of the paragraph, they are not troubled by what was said. Other people are troubled. So we need to sort through that – see whether it makes sense to make the correction. I will be glad to talk to you about that.

J Jennings: Just a little information – do you know the latest on WRDA?

M Rees: No I don’t – well, I don’t know the latest. The latest I heard is that the conference committee members were appointed and have met and have worked through a number of the features of WRDA and have agreed on them. I don’t know this personally – only from the newspaper articles I saw. I haven’t heard through the Corps or anybody I know in Congress. But newspaper articles report that the Savannah project was going to the conference committee, the conference committee had agreed to. But that the conference committee hadn’t concluded its work.

J Jennings: Okay, that is the staff – that’s staff.

M Rees: No, it is the members, this conference committee.

J Jennings: (inaudible)

M Rees: Again, I am only reporting what I read in the newspaper (inaudible)

J Jennings: And information said the same as well. It is the same and also (inaudible) that the Savannah project is there just as it was in 1998 – identical.

M Rees: I do not that the committee – conference committee - has not completed their work…

L Rogers: We have 10 minutes on that issue.

B Dysart: David, do you have a closing comment?

D Kyler: Question.

B Dysart: Or a wishful comment?

D Kyler: That’s hopeful. I really trying, not trying any cheap shots here and not trying to play dumb (inaudible). (inaudible) statement. This is not an inaccurate portrayal of the whole process. I been puzzled about this from the very get go about the conditional authorization in Congress. Reading from a statement from the thing just cited – April (??????) 99 Supplemental Information – second paragraph says: GPA has examined the issues raised and finds that the fundamental feasibility of the requested authorization i.e. a channel up to and including 48 feet remains strong. Well, as I understand it, up to and including 48 feet includes nothing. I mean 42 feet which we are at now, up to 48 feet – feasibility of that remains strong. Well, to me the analogy I thought of on the way up here is this is like an organization for devout agnostics seeking a tax reduction as a religious organization. I think it is feasible to do nothing and yet it is also it is – and it is feasible – we feel strongly that it is feasible to do six feet more as well? What is feasible? You know, what …

Female Voice: I think that (inaudible)

D Kyler: What I mean, to seek authorization on a basis of a strong belief and nothing under six feet, it just baffles me. I do not understand how you can strongly believe in nothing or something.

B Brewton (??????????): To read from GPA report.

B Dysart: Is there, … Morgan.

M Rees: I would just like to invite David [Kyler] to sit down and talk about that. There is not only a really thick stack of reports and comments and so forth that go into this summary, but also there is some history that may or maynot be written that would, might be helpful to talk about. But I really think it goes beyond the forum that we are in here. I would be more than happy to sit down and talk through all that with you and see if it makes any sense to you. It may not –you may come next month and say well, we sat and talked and it still doesn’t make any sense. But I would like to have that opportunity to talk about the whole project and the whole study and not take a sentence that I would characterize as being taken out of context. Maybe to you it is not and I need to learn why not. I would suggest – my gut reaction to what you said - it really is taken out of context and I could be – you know – furious about your having done that. But I understand – very complex process. But I, the only way to work through that is to sit down and talk about it. I am more than willing to do that.

B Brewton: So … May I? Morgan, it seems like what adds a lot of volatility and contensiousness to this whole process is the fact that we are not sitting, you know, while we are sitting down and talking about it, letters are going off and decisions are being made. If there was some way we could put that process on pause, I think everyone would have a much higher comfort level of sitting down and talking about this. But, I appreciate your offer and I'm going to take you up on it to sit down and talk about some of these things. But the truth is, by the time we finish talking about them, even if you find yourself in agreement with me, it is highly possible that Sec. Westphal will have already made a decision by that point. So that is where we have a little bit of a problem here.

M Rees: Well, and part of the sitting down and talking about is why – my perspective again this is very personal – not GPA’s position – but my perspective is that whole notion of what we did with respect to the Sec. Westphal letter is not inconsistent with anything that is going on here. You assert that it is, I think that it isn’t. So we need to talk about that. Why is it or why isn’t it? I honestly don’t see that there is anything inconsistent with the commitments we have made to the SEG or to each of you individually with what we did in the Westphal letter. I do wish that I had Priscilla as an editor of that letter, and I would have said that particular sentence better. But I didn’t, so now I am sorry. But I still don’t see that inconsistent with the objective here and why we are at this table.

B Brewton: (inaudible) bring it to the SEG for comment before you send it in.

(widespread laughter)

M Rees: If it takes as long as some of these discussions, I don’t know.

(widespread laughter)

B Brewton: I think you could get right down to that Morgan.

B Dysart: Maybe that would be good practice for developing consensus on the program of scientific studies that …. Larry has done such a good job, we might give him a – let him try again next time.

L Rogers: You promised me that I wouldn’t have to.

(widespread laughter)

B Dysart: It is 5 minutes after 1:00, and I see no cards up. I always leave here trying to figure out how I can be a little more responsive next time. I know that – since Judy has complained about her issues being rolled ahead month after month, I presume she will at head of the list next time. Chris Schuberth beat me up very badly many, many months ago. That is how beach erosion got to be at the top of the list. I will have to figure out a better way – figure out what goes on the top of the list without getting beaten up the month before.

J Jennings: I would like to say something. If you will comment on this. I think September, would September being particularly timely place to do the D.O., TMDL discussions. Would there be a point?

B Ellis: It is an on-going issue.

J Jennings: It is an on-going issue, but …

B Ellis: No better than now or October that I can see.

B Dysart: Sounds like a yes to me. One thing that Cathy is supposed to remind me that an error was made on the date for the proposed September meeting. That is supposed to be the 14^th instead of the 7^th. So 14^th , do you have a location on that?

C Vaughn: This room. Coastal Georgia Center was not available.

B Dysart: This room.

B Brewton: It will be the second Tuesday.

B Dysart: Yes, the second Tuesday. Cathy suggested that the for the people who schedule on ahead to go ahead and put October 5 down unless there is some kind of holiday that gets involved there.

B Brewton: Will that be back at the Coastal Center?

C Vaughn: Either room is available on that date. I haven’t confirmed it either one. Both are available.

B Dysart: Does it seem like the acoustics are better for recording?

C Vaughn: I will make sure that the table is not seated underneath the showers here.

(widespread laughter)

B Brewton: Was there any significance to the people who were seated under that?

C Vaughn: I didn’t place anybody. Just happened that way

B Brewton: At least there is a place close by to get something to eat.

B Dysart: One thing, one small thing here – request to get a sense of whether there would be interest in a port facility tour in conjunction with a future SEG meeting. I presume that would be before or after, not in lieu of, the SEG.

M Rees: What was that again, I missed that.

B Dysart: A port facility tour

D Schaller: Ben [Dysart], I just make the offer to the SEG. I had in mind, when I thought about it, that we would quit at 12:00, get you a box lunch and bus, and we will go take a look at the Garden City facilities, if anyone wants to do that.

S Stevens: If David is buying lunch, I want to go.

(widespread laughter)

B Dysart: You made a persuasive argument, David. Everybody is looking for a free lunch. Would you want to consider that next time, October?

B Brewton: Some time cooler might be better.

Voice: Maybe October.

B Dysart: Why don’t we revisit this. What I sense is, yes, there would be interest, particularly if there were buses and free lunch (laughter). (inaudible) and October would be the earliest possible time we would want to do it.

B Brewton: I just got a message from Patty McIntosh who has to leave. She said her issue that she had put on here about the oxygenation system that is under consideration or proposed – she would please ask that be given a high priority at the next meeting if it's (inaudible)

J Jennings: It has been on the agenda for quite some time – it gets rolled.

B Dysart: The "detrimental" I think she added that, so it is kind of D.O., kind of a cluster.

B Brewton: Yeah, this is specifically about the –one of the proposed mitigation systems for the D.O. issue.

B Dysart: Since everybody is heading toward the door, (widespread laughter) I will presume that we have got consensus that we have made good progress – that we got through the agenda reasonably well. I think trying to time things, (inaudible) things, focus things, has been helpful. I appreciate your being here. I will see you next time.

Voice: I would like to thank Larry

Voices…….

[Adjourned shortly after 1:00 pm]

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