At the 1972 session of the General Assembly of Virginia, the Virginia Port Authority was directed to consider the need for a future disposal site convenient to the Hampton Roads area at which spoil and other waste materials from dredging, port development, and other activities can be disposed of safely and conveniently.

In response to House Resolution No. 136, the Virginia Port Authority in December 1972, recognizing that the scope of the study and subsequent selection of the site to be recommended would affect many agencies and areas of Virginia, requested the Commonwealth's Secretary of Commerce and Resources to consider a joint State agency to examine dredge spoil disposal in the Hampton Roads area.

In January 1973, the Secretary of Commerce and Resources designated the following agencies to serve on a Craney Island Task Force: Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries, Division of Industrial Development, Division of State Planning and Community Affairs, Governor's Council on the Environment, Marine Resources Commission, State Water Control Board, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and Virginia Port Authority. (Attorney General - legal consultant)

Inasmuch as the U. S. Corps of Engineers was authorized on 20 June 1969 by Congress to review the Corps of Engineers' Study of the Hampton Roads Harbor Channels, and this review has included extensive studies toward replacing the existing Craney Island Disposal Area when it has been filled to design capacity, and additionally, recent Federal legislation requires State financial participation in development of any future sites to contain dredging spoils, the Craney Island Task Force defined its general objectives as:

• Review and evaluate each of the feasible alternatives identified by the Army Corps of Engineers (COE) and any other approaches that the task force considers to merit study, as they affect the environment, development within the area, and other pertinent criteria.

• Recommend a site or a combination of sites for the future disposal area, and identify the procedure that the State should follow in fulfilling its obligations to the COE in the development of the site(s).

The report of the Craney Island Task Force was submitted to the Secretary of Commerce and Resources for the Commonwealth in September 1973. This report of the Virginia Port Authority is the consensus of findings and recommendations of the multi-State agency task force, and the full task force report is attached as an appendix for ready reference.