FOR RELEASE: April 12, 1995                   CONTACT: Lee Scurry
                                                   (202) 208-3983
                                                   Barney Congdon
                                                   (504) 736-2595

                MMS AND CORPS OF ENGINEERS COOPERATE ON 
                    FLORIDA BEACH NOURISHMENT PROJECT
                                    
                                    
     The U.S. Department of Interior's Minerals Management
Service (MMS) has signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to promote interagency
cooperation on a Florida beach nourishment project, MMS officials
announced today.

     The MOA is the first such agreement signed under an October
1994 amendment to the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Lands Act,
which provides the Secretary of the Interior the authority to
negotiate agreements for use of sand, gravel and shell resources
located on federal offshore lands for projects of public benefit. 
The law allows the Department to enter into an MOA with other
federal agencies involved and negotiate a noncompetitive lease
with the appropriate state or local government agency.  Prior to
the Amendment, rights to the sand, gravel and shell resources
could only be transferred by a competitive leasing process
similar to that used for OCS gas and oil resources.

     This project will provide sand for nourishment of about
seven miles of beaches from Atlantic Beach to Jacksonville Beach,
FL.  Previous work identified the need for 1.24 million cubic
yards of sand on the federal OCS located approximately seven to
eight miles off Florida's coast.

     "This MOA signifies the importance of interagency teamwork
and the role of MMS to assess and provide access to federal sand
resources needed for control of coastal erosion," said MMS
Director Cynthia Quarterman.  "But this is just the first of two
steps -- required under the new law -- toward implementing this
important shore protection project.  The next required step is
the signing of a noncompetitive lease between MMS and either the
state or the local government.

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     "We have kept the State of Florida and the City of
Jacksonville informed on the status of this process and are
working diligently with them to develop and issue a
noncompetitive lease as soon as possible," Quarterman added. 
"The end result will mark a new level of cooperation between the
federal government and Floridians."

     MMS and Florida are also involved in a cooperative effort to
identify OCS sand resources that could be used for beach
nourishment along Florida's east coast, south of Cape Canaveral.

     MMS is the federal agency that manages the nation's natural
gas, oil and other mineral resources on the OCS, and collects and
disburses about $4 billion yearly in revenues from offshore
federal mineral leases and from onshore mineral leases on federal
and Indian lands.

                                  --MMS--