MARK KING, Corps of Engineers, Regulatory Branch, P.O. Box 1229, Galveston, Texas 77553-1229, USA

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began regulating activities within the nations navigable waterways with the approval of the Rivers and Harbors Act in 1899. In 1972, the Corps, through the Environmental Protection Agency, was given the lead in administering Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. In the past, instream mining operators in the coastal and near-coastal counties of Texas received little resistance in receiving a Department of the Army permit. However, recent modifications of the definition of "discharge of dredged material" and availability of new biological and hydro-geomorphological information often presents a regulatory maze, rather than a regulatory process, to many mining operators.