18 



first defense, but I think we probably need to explore other alterna- 

 tives that may, in fact, result in a more definitive outcome. 



Mr. Coble. Dr. Carlton, you mentioned the desirability of heating 

 the water or chemically treating it. Of course, the first thought 

 that comes to my mind is the cost thereof. Do you think the cost 

 would be prohibitive? Or let me hear from you on that. 



Mr. Carlton. There have not been good economic analyses yet 

 on any of these management options, not even for ballast exchange 

 do we have any thorough numbers because of the variety of ships 

 involved. 



One thing we are facing with the application of thermal treat- 

 ment or other kinds of treatment of the water could be that there 

 are a vast variety of ships out there — container ships, passenger 

 ships, tankers, bulk cargo carriers, general cargo carriers — and this 

 means that the costs of management are almost sort of species-spe- 

 cific in many ways for the many kinds of ships. 



Some of these technologies will involve recurrent costs and 

 others could be more or less one-time retrofits. So it is hard to actu- 

 ally put any specific numbers on them. Many of these will be rela- 

 tively costly to get up and gear up to the right level. 



One of the kinds of things that we see for the long haul here 

 would be that in new ship design we would build into vessels some 

 of the best possible technologies, which means that these costs 

 would be part of the entire ship operation, as with any other part 

 of a normal ship operation. 



Mr. Coble. Thank you, lady and gentlemen, for being with us. 

 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Mr. LiPiNSKi. Thank you, Mr. Coble. 



I thought maybe we could fund this entire operation by taxing 

 the ballast water discharge. Would so much per gallon be the way 

 to handle that? 



Mr. Coble. We might want to consider that. 



Mr. LiPiNSKi. I thought you might want to consider that. 



Mr. Taylor? 



Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



In listening to this, I am kind of struck by the analogy of closing 

 the barn door after the horse has already gotten out. After all, the 

 zebra mussel is here, the lamprey eel is here. This has been going 

 on, as your report states, at least since World War II. 



I have two questions. Why the sudden emergence, if this has 

 indeed been going on since World War II, if not before, why the 

 sudden emergence of the lamprey eel? Why the sudden emergence 

 of the zebra mussel? As opposed to why didn't they show up in the 

 1950's; why didn't they show up in the 1960's; or why didn't they 

 show up in the 1970's? 



Second thing is when you talk about 25 million gallons of water 

 to treat, that is not really a great deal of water. I would think a 

 sewage treatment plant in any midsize city puts out 25 million gal- 

 lons of water a day and it is chlorinated at the last stage before it 

 is released into the streams or navigable waters of this country. 

 From what I understsmd, the things you really need to get out of 

 the water, choli and some other things, are killed with that, and I 

 was wondering, I didn't even see that listed as a possible solution. 



