143 



Mr. Weldon. Thank you, Dr. Valent. 



Dr. Edmond, I apologize for your name tag not appropriately in- 

 cluding your title. We apologize, so Dr. Edmond, welcome. 



STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN M. EDMOND, PROFESSOR OF GEO- 

 CHEMISTRY, DEPARTMENT OF EARTH, ATMOSPHERIC AND 

 PLANETARY SCIENCES, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF 

 TECHNOLOGY 



Dr. Edmond. It is a pleasure to be before your panel. I think 

 from the research support you just heard about, there really is no 

 question about the technical feasibility of disposing of these rel- 

 atively benign materials on the sea floor. We can place them accu- 

 rately and one of the bags in this room at 3 miles water depth, rou- 

 tinely. We could stack them up and fill the whole room for you, if 

 you like. So technically, we are extremely capable in terms of oper- 

 ating in the deep sea, largely, as was pointed out earlier, because 

 of the enormous investment the Federal Government has made 

 over the last 50 years in oceanographic research and, of course, 

 anti-submarine warfare. 



The question is, should we, and if you ask that, then you want 

 to look at a cost-benefit analysis. That is to say, we have a large 

 inventory of waste. There is not anybody advocating that we just 

 keep generating waste. Our problem is the inventory that we have 

 right now is enormous, both in place in harbors and then also in 

 essentially uncontrolled landfills. 



The question is, how can we dispose of that in the most benign 

 way in terms of ecological and environmental impact, and I would 

 argue that the place to put it is in the deep sea floor, which is 

 about a third of the area of the planet — there is a lot of room down 

 there — in that it is the lowest energy environment on the planet, 

 so the potential for dispersal of material is minimal, either phys- 

 ically in the water column or by contamination of ground water. 



There is no ground water in the deep sea. It is a static system. 

 There are no storms to speak of. There are no sea gulls to disperse 

 things. There are no children to crawl into the dump site, and you 

 will see, any dump site you go past, you see children. Plus, the 

 standing crop of organisms is very low. 



Now, I have to be careful here. My distinguished colleague and 

 friend, Fred Grassle, has made extremely exciting discoveries about 

 the enormous variety of species that live predominately in the deep 

 sea floor, but you must distinguish between the number of species 

 and the standing crop of live organisms. 



The organic carbon content of the sediments that we are talking 

 about impacting is about a tenth of a percent. Almost all of that 

 carbon is the equivalent of humus in your garden. It is not live. 

 The amount of live carbon in the abyssal sea floor is probably 

 something like 0.05 to 0.01 percent by weight of the sediment. So 

 we are talking about impacting a restricted area, a very restricted 

 area, maybe a square mile of an enormous ecosystem that is rel- 

 atively homogeneous laterally. 



So in terms of environmental damage, I would argue that this is 

 the minimum damage site of any that we could conceivably access 

 economically, and from that point of view, I think we have a great 

 opportunity to use the enormous investment that we made in un- 



