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Lucent Technologies

Letter from Hennelly to Morris

Lucent Technologies

Bell Labs Innovations


Debra Sabatini Hennelly Lucent Technologies Inc.
Corporate Counsel Room B2180
131 Morristown Road
Basking Ridge, NJ 07920

Telephone 908 630 2810
Facsimile 908 204 8565
Internet Address hennelly@lucent.com

March 28, 1997

By Telecopier and Mail
Dr. Alvin R. Morris
Water Protection Division Region III
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
842 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107-4431

Re: Lucent Technologies/Project XL

Dear Dr. Morris:

We are in receipt of your March 26th letter. It is unfortunate that the Agency will be unable to discuss our proposal on April 1st, as originally scheduled. We had hoped that, by following your suggestion of using "protection" language from EPA's Environmental Leadership Program, we could resolve this issue on or before April 1st. As you know, in order to keep the planning of our demonstration projects in sync with our environmental management system's ("EMS") annual planning cycle, we really needed to resolve this matter quickly. Of course, we expect that this delay will also put off the June 30th deadlines we had originally anticipated on the Interim Participation Agreement ("IPA") and the Final Project Agreement (FPA").

As you know, our schedules in April are difficult to coordinate. In fact, when we first set the April 1st meeting date back in November for our FPA drafting meeting, we only had one or two other dates in April and May that were available to you, Ted Polakowski and me. I understand that you can be available on April 8th, and I have cleared my calendar to meet with you and other appropriate EPA Headquarters officials on that day. Unfortunately Ted will not be able to join us, but we would like to try to resolve this issue sooner, rather than postponing this discussion until May. Please let me know if we can confirm a meeting for April 8th in Washington, D.C.

Finally, there appears to be continued miscommunication regarding the intent behind the IPA. Clearly, the IPA as a discrete document was intended to terminate at the signing of the FPA. However, it was never intended that the fundamental concepts embodied in the IPA would also terminate at the signing of the FPA. The reasonable assurances agreed to by all the parties in the IPA were never intended to be temporary, and could not have been, given that the on-going role of the government stakeholders in the implementation of Lucent Microelectronics' ISO 14001 EMS is a core element of our XL Project. The collective drafts of the FPA, along with the Project Partners' comments and meeting minutes (summarized in the chronology attached to our March 5th letter), clearly indicate that the "ground rules" for the Project-including the concepts embodied in the IPA-were on the table from the very beginning of the Partnership's FPA discussions. It was not until May 1996, several months into the process, that EPA first took the position that, not only would the IPA terminate at the signing of the FPA , but that the Agency's agreement on the assurances contained in the IPA would terminate as well (as position that has not been taken by any other Project Partner).

We hope this issue can finally be put to rest at our meeting in Washington. We have attempted to put history behind us by proposing "protection" language based on EPA's Audit and Disclosure Policy and the Environmental Leadership Program. Please confirm whether we can meet on April 8th to discuss our proposal and, if so, at what time and place. We look forward to EPA's response to our proposed language prior to our meeting.

Thank you for your perseverance.

Sincerely,

Debra Sabatini Hennelly

cc: Project partners

Lisa Lund, EPA


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