119 



■Conjr- 

 A tan 



JonEr 



Env 



men al Protection Agency official in 

 charge ol determining the risks of chs 

 posing o( sludge, pui it in a recent 

 interview rjy loss, ocean clumping 

 1 had become taboo, about .is politically 

 incorrect as any disposal of waste can 

 be Maybe n w.ts .1 good thing thai 

 happencc Maybe not Bui it was not 

 decided on ihe merits Congress acted 



1 da 



Those whn 

 irguc tf-ai tw 

 vrong They 



upr> 



•d ih< 



bai 





the 1 



Dc 



at ocean dumping 

 lal bilN get passed 

 Always when they 



"You lake cue of emergencies first 

 n life and m politics." said Senator 

 Prank R l.autcnbcrg. the New Jersey 

 ho was a leader in the fight 

 to end ocean dumping 



Senator Lauicubcrg agreed thai sew 

 age overflows pose a sei ious health 

 risk, but he added "Sludge dumping 

 was the equivalent of a tnc we could 

 put oui Jusi because you have earth- 

 quakes on ihe horizon doesn't mean 

 you should lei the fire rage " 



Mr Lauicnbcrg asserted that it was 

 not as clear in 1988 as it 15 today that 

 storm sewers, not oce 



ere 



blan 



for 



of 



npm 



ash 



that appeared on ihe beaches 

 did agiee that the barges heading out 

 to sea provided an image that was too 

 i useful 10 ignore 



"There is simply a point when you 

 I have to look at the broader picture," he 

 j said "When we passed the law, it was 

 J at the height of a couple of ugly sea- 

 l sons The waste may not have been a 

 direct result of the ocean dumping, bui 

 it did alert people to the fact that we 

 need 10 stop pouring garbage into the 

 ocean." 



Unsavory Practice 



Where to Put 

 A City's Sludge 



Few people are genuinely unhappy 

 about the demise ol a practice in which 

 1.5 billion-gallons of distilled sewage 

 sludge was dumped each day 106 miles 

 off the coast of New Jersey. Even those 

 who say n makes sense to consider 

 using ihe deep sea to store dangerous 

 wastes acknowledge that the sludge 

 was beginning to find its way into the 

 food chain on ihe ocean floor. 



And while most industrial waste, 

 heavy meials and dangerous contami- 

 nants were removed from the sludge 

 belorc ii was dumped in the ocean, it 

 was never possible to extract all the 

 poisons found in a huge sewage system 



For decades. New York dropped its 

 sludge .only 12 miles off the coast — 

 turning vast aquatic reaches into home 

 to nothing but slime Environmental- 

 ists fought for years to end ocean 

 dumping. As a compromise, the Fed- 

 eral Government decided to permit 



New York and several ncighoormg cn- 

 ics in stud us clumping to the edge of 

 the continental shelf, wheic E P A offi- 

 cials s.ud .t would do no harm 



Out even at IOC miles, where there is 

 no scientific proof that waste disposal 



nig of waste has proven to be less than 

 ideal Although researchers fust 

 thought sludgr dumped there would 

 never reach ihr bottom of the tit/can. 



Hut scientists argue that 11 may be 

 just as troublesome to dump the sludge 

 anywhere else Sludge in landfills can 

 seep into ground water Even benefi- 

 cial uses, hkc turning sewage to fertil- 

 iser, costs miliums ." processing and 

 shipping 



Whatever the ancillary benefits the 

 ocean clumping \-><\» may have offered ( 

 n also cost New Yuik a great deal of 

 money And many officials now say 

 that money could have been put 10 far 

 belter use by trying to resolve the more 

 complicated — and pressing — dilem- 

 ma caused by combined sewer over- 

 Hows 



Am 1 sad that we no longer dump 

 sludge in the Atlantic Ocean"* Absolute- 

 ly not.'' said Albert F Appleion. com- 

 missioner of New York City's Depart- 

 ment of Environmental Protection. He 

 has made clean water a major focus of 

 his tenure "In a perfect world we 

 simply wouldn't dump our waste at 

 sea. But is that how I would have spent 

 our next $2 billion' Never in a million 

 years." 



Other Solutions 



A Victory 

 Draws Questions 



Tough new laws passed since the 

 mess of 1988 govern the disposal of 

 medical wasle So syringes and intra- 

 venous bags no longer show up on 

 beaches with much frequency And 

 Coast Guard boats now skim coastal 

 waters for other visible debris. But the 

 levels of microscopic organisms that 

 the E.P.A. considers harmful to hu- 

 mans and fish — the real problem — 

 are no less serious than they have ever 

 been. 



"When environmentalists see a prob- 

 lem they tend to say, 'Let's have a total 

 solution,'" Mr. Appleion said. "They 

 don't say, 'How much bang can we get 

 for our buck' 1 They don't say, Where 

 is the garbage going to go if it isn't in 

 the ocean'' " ' 



Mr. Appleion certainly considers 

 himself an environmentalist. But he 

 and many others like him say the 

 movement risks us credibility by plac- 

 ing so much emphasis on crowd-pleas- 

 ing maneuvers like the ban on ocean 

 dumping. 



San 



v r cr 



Ihe 



ich, 



al Re 



project 

 De- 



fense Council who worked for the c 

 dumping ban. couniorod .-..- "Envlron- 



Micmahsis have a huge agenda We 

 rant su around and calculate what 

 percentage of a problem will any par- 



they i 



little Mow charts is dumping sludge 

 woisc than burning garbage? Is money 

 spent on recycling better than moncv 

 spent on clean water? There aren't 

 answers 10 those questions So when we 

 have the opportunity to improve the 

 environment we go for it And the 

 Ocean Dumping Ban Act was a great 

 opportunity " 



Ms Saiikovuch says she now focuses 

 much of her attention on (he problem of 

 combined sewers But she said she sees 

 nothing wrong with using the images of 

 to help ban dumping — even 

 though the two problems wcie not con- 



ctcd 

 A victory for the cnvnonmcni is a, 



:tory for the environment,"' she said.! 



Bui 11 is not completely clear that a 

 ban on dumping was such an environ- 

 nal triumph. The negative effects 

 of burying sludge close to the shores 

 : been documented with precision. 

 But the dangers of dumping u in dcep- 

 r water arc less clear 



Studies have shown that sludge de- 

 posited I0G miles out does reach the 

 ocean floor and, in the words of Dr. 

 Frederick Grassle, director of the 

 Rutgers Institute of Marine and Coast- 

 al Sciences, "it has a minute but meas- 

 urable impact on the deep-sea ecosys- 

 tem." However. Dr. Grassle also said 

 that health risks from the dumping 

 appeared to be minimal — primarily 

 because the ocean rapidly diluted the 

 /astc below dangerous concentrations. 



Some researchers have proposed the 

 nearly lifeless plains at the bottom of 

 the oceans as a relatively inexpensive, 

 and safe, disposal site for sludge. They 

 argue that al the deepest levels of the 

 sea — several hundred miles away 

 from any coastline and under nearly 

 16.000 feet of water — the sludge will 

 rest undisturbed and harmless. 

 Short-Sighted Proposal? 



However, many environmentalists 

 nd some scientists view the research 

 proposals for deep-sea burial of sludge 

 as short-sighted. 



"It will take 10 seconds of logic and 

 J10 million to prove that this loo will 

 have adverse effects on the environ- 

 u," said Dr. Elliott A. Norse, a 

 ■inc ecologist who is chief scientist . 

 for the Center for Marine Conserva- 



Bul John Edmond, proTessor of 

 hemical oceanography al the Massa- 

 chusetts Institute of Technology, said: 

 "There are going to be impacts on our 

 society of anything we throw away. 

 That includes ocean dumping. But 

 there is a real crisis in land disposal of 

 our waste, and we have acted to ban 

 even the consideration of ocean dump- 

 "g 



"Even if we don't use the upper 

 >ccan — and perhaps we should not — 

 ■vc should think aboul the sea floor. But 

 people are so errjotional about "these 

 ics that they can hardly see or think 

 light" 



