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presented later in this chapter. 



WASTE DISPOSAL 



The waters of the estuarine zone have received wastes from the 

 people and industries on their shores ever since the first cities 

 were founded. The economic benefit in the use of estuarine waters 

 for waste disposal has been fully utilized by nearly all indus- 

 tries and communities in the estuarine zone, and only the 

 tremendous capacity of estuarine waters to absorb and remove waste 

 materials has kept the estuarine zone from suffering severe 

 damage from such waste discharges. 



All other uses of the estuarine zone result in the need to 

 dispose of some waste products, and the general practice has been 

 merely to dump them into the water and forget them. Chapter 5 

 discusses the sources and nature of pollutional materials and 

 activities, and how this use of estuarine zone waters can 

 affect other uses. 



The economic benefit of this estuarine use is a real one and it 

 must be considered along with other established uses of the 

 estuarine zone. This benefit can be calculated in terms of the 

 difference between the cost of an advanced degree of waste treat- 

 ment needed when the waste assimilation capacity of the estuarine 



