text: The Army Corps of Engineers will lose more than half the inspectors responsible for monitoring illegal dumping into New York Harbor and for keeping the harbor's major navigation lanes clear, senior officials of the corps said yesterday.
  The officials said that no other state or Federal agency would take over these responsibilities and that they would have to rely on increased public cooperation in reporting harbor hazards.
  The cuts, which will go into effect on Sept. 26, came after the Federal Office of Management and Budget ordered the Army agency to reduce costs. They will result in the transfer, retirement or laying off of 14 of the 26 inspectors who work primarily in New York Harbor.
  The corps now operates five boats within a 25-mile radius of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. At least one boat is always on patrol, day and night, seven days a week, according to John Zammit, chief of operations for the corps for the New York district. Hours Reduced for Boats
  After the cutbacks, Mr. Zammit said, the corps will reduce the number of boats in operation to two or three, which will operate only from 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. and only on weekdays.Continue reading the main story
  ''It will reduce our capabilities,'' said John J. Marazzo, the chief harbor supervisor. ''We will have no capabilities to monitor and be a deterrent. We suspect there will be some problems in the navigation lanes on Saturdays and Sundays.''
  Edwin L. Dale Jr., a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, confirmed that his office had ordered the manpower and budget reductions, but he said the corps had been instructed to ''carry them out with the least possible damage to services.'' The choice of where to make the cuts ''is their decision and not ours,'' he said.
  Senior officials in the Reagan Administration said they thought the corps was reducing vital services and then complaining publicly in attempts to get the decision overturned. Down 'to the Bare Bones'
  But Mr. Zammit, of the Corps of Engineers, said he had to curtail the inspection program because prior manpower reductions had already reduced his agency ''to the bare bones.'' With the cooperation of the public, he said, the inspectors will become more efficient.
  ''It's nice to have 1,000 policemen on every block, but we just can't have them,'' Mr. Zammit said. The inspectors - the law enforcement arm of the corps - have jurisdiction ''over everything in New York Harbor except what flows from the sewers,'' said Victor P. Quaranta, supervisor of inspections for the corps in New York Harbor.
  In addition to insuring that dredgers dump in approved places, the inspectors check building permits and navigation channels and hoist sunken boats and recovered debris in navigation channels. They also try to prevent encroachment on New York waterways by construction companies.
  Last year the corps issued 250 citations for violations of various anti-pollution and navigation laws. They also gave hundreds of oral warnings. Not Informed of Decision
  The State Environmental Conservation Department, which has jurisdiction over all waterways within the state and the ocean and bays within a three-mile limit, has not yet been officially informed of the decision by the Army Corps of Engineers.
  ''I would be very reluctant to comment until I see the corps announcement,'' said Terry Agriss, the regional director of the state agency.
  Manpower reductions similar to those in New York are occurring throughout the Corps of Engineers, which will cut its employment rolls by more than 2,200 people this year, according to Warren J. Pippin, a Washington-based spokesman for the corps.
  ''Everybody is in pretty much the same situtation,'' said Edward A. Greene, another spokesman for the corps. ''So they all have to do pretty much the same thing.''
  Spokesmen for the New York district civil works division of the corps said its budget would be cut this year by at least 35 percent, from $705,000 in the 1982 fiscal year, to $461,000 in the 1983 fiscal year. Corps officials in New York said they expected further cuts in coming years. Long Line of Cutbacks
  The latest reductions in the responsibilities of the corps are only the most recent in a long line of cutbacks. In 1952, when the corps took over the job of patrolling New York Harbor from the Navy, it had 60 inspectors plying the harbor's waters on three boats.
  The corps, which was founded in 1775, currently has at least one boat on patrol around the clock and two during business hours. After the manpower reductions, however, it will have to make do with the same number of boats as in 1952.
  ''It's a 24-hour-a-day harbor and not an eight-hour-a-day harbor,'' said one inspector. ''It's a seven-day-a-week harbor and not a fiveday-a-week harbor. I can't agree that we're going to be more efficient. Most big violations are picked up when people don't think we're working.''
  But Mr. Zammit, who devised the new patrol program, said he doubted that dredging companies would dump illegally because ''people have been educated to environmental concerns.''
  ''They don't have an incentive,'' he said. ''It's not that we're abandoning ship. We still have a cadre on the waterway. We're just going to become more efficient.''
  ''It make me feel very sad,'' said Mr. Quaranta, who joined the harbor patrol in the early 1970's as an inspector trainee and rose to become the unit's supervisor.
  ''You become very close because your life depends on the other guys,'' he said. ''All the captains are becoming deck hands.''Continue reading the main story