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hearing, which deals with the disposal of waste on the ocean floor. 

 In 1988, Congress passed legislation that banned the ocean dump- 

 ing of waste at sea. In that same year, the New Jersey State Legis- 

 lature enacted our State's ocean dumping ban. Dumping at sea was 

 a threat to our marine environment and to the health and economic 

 well-being of those who are dependent upon coastal resources. It 

 was the main reason I decided to run for Congress. 



It is hard for me to believe that just over 15 years ago, there 

 were more than 400 industries and municipalities which had per- 

 mits or were seeking permits to dump waste in the ocean. Just 7 

 years ago, washups of sewage sludge and medical waste on the 

 New Jersey Shore forced closures and scared tourists away to the 

 point where we lost some $3 billion in potential revenue in the 

 State of New Jersey. 



However, thanks to the ocean dumping ban in 1993, New Jer- 

 sey's coastal regions received about 14 million overnight visitors 

 who spent some $10.3 billion and helped create over 171,000 jobs. 

 I only mention that to show how important ocean water quality is 

 to the New Jersey Shore. 



Despite all the progress we have made on ocean protection and 

 the clear policy statement of Congress on ocean dumping, in 1992, 

 as was mentioned before, in the Merchant Marine Committee, our 

 former colleague. Bill Hughes, our current chairman, Jim Saxton, 

 and myself found ourselves fighting a backdoor attempt to reopen 

 the ocean dumping ban. That year, advocates of a technology called 

 deep ocean isolation sought to authorize the use of the ocean floor 

 as a landfill. Clearly, they were reopening the ocean dumping ban 

 even for research purposes and that would have represented a re- 

 treat from the strong action that Congress took in 1988 and from 

 efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle our society's wastes. 



Today, we are once again faced with an attack on one of the most 

 important environmental laws by a group of people who seem in- 

 tent on dumping wastes at sea. Late yesterday, I found out that 

 supporters of ocean dumping succeeded in getting a provision in 

 the Commerce, Justice, and State conference report that we are 

 going to vote on today that would have the Federal Government 

 spend taxpayer dollars to develop a demonstration project on deep 

 ocean isolation of waste. This language was not in the House Com- 

 merce report. It was not in the Senate Commerce report. But sud- 

 denly, mysteriously, it is in the conference report that we are going 

 to vote on today without any opportunity to take that out of the 

 conference report. 



Deep ocean isolation and this tethered container technology in 

 particular has already been specifically rejected by the Department 

 of Commerce as not only unsafe but antithetical to U.S. and inter- 

 national law regarding the dumping of waste at sea. In addition, 

 the Naval Research Lab has already analyzed the technology and 

 in January of this year deemed it unacceptable. 



I hope my colleagues will take full advantage of this hearing to 

 join me in expressing their outrage over the appropriators' actions 

 and their efforts to go behind the back of our subcommittee to re- 

 open the issue of ocean dumping. This is not the first time in this 

 Congress that appropriation bills have been used to deal with 



