178 



The other side of the issue is that the question of the contami- 

 nated sediments in our ports needs to be addressed broadly. We 

 need to take a systems approach to contaminated sediments in our 

 ports, looking at the entire system. As has been mentioned, we 

 need to consider remediation technologies, but in the short term, 

 it is more important to look for better approaches to containment 

 of the dredged materials. There are a number of innovative propos- 

 als to contain sediments in our ports at a reasonable cost. 



Mr. Saxton. Thank you. Mr. Edmond. 



Dr. Edmond. I will be in the minority. I think this is an option 

 that is well worth looking into, certainly at the level of paper stud- 

 ies, as they are called, although I do not find them very valuable. 

 I think if you look at the bag technology, it would work. It would 

 be cheap. It would be accurate. I have almost as many Alvin dives 

 as Fred, and when you get down in the submarine with about a 

 couple hundred pounds, you go straight down. We could accurately 

 emplace material on the sea floor using the bag technology. 



We would be taking material from one of the most biologically 

 productive areas in the ocean — remember, the dredged soil is al- 

 ready in the ocean — and putting it in the least biologically produc- 

 tive area, which seems to make sense, doing it at a cost that would 

 be competitive certainly with remediation, and doing it with a sys- 

 tem which could operate on a scale comparable to the problem, 

 which is not only contaminated harbors in this country but world- 

 wide. 



There is an international problem associated with disposal of 

 contaminated soil. Nobody has come up with a good way of doing 

 it. The study that has been funded has been in existence now for 

 what, 7 or 8 years without any real bullet in the hands. It seems 

 to me that this is an option that should be looked at. 



The law is the law and the law can be changed, so the law is 

 not an argument. If it is in the national interest, legislation could 

 be passed. And I think if you think of the problem seriously, as we 

 all do, then there is at the moment no obvious way out that is not 

 going to cost us an arm and a leg. 



Mr. Saxton. Yes, sir, and that is why we had originally sched- 

 uled this hearing today, to begin that process, and we want to do 

 that. 



I am not a scientist, but I come as other members of this panel 

 do at this from a commonsense point of view and from some experi- 

 ence, I might add. Back several decades ago, we had a problem 

 with sewer sludge and we decided that since the sea was such a 

 vast area, that if we just transported it 12 miles off" the tip of Mr. 

 Pallone's district, that it would be out of sight and out of everyone's 

 mind forever. 



We finally decided that that did not work, so we moved it to a 

 site 106 miles off the southern tip of my district and dumped it 

 there for a time, and finally we collectively decided that that did 

 not work, in spite of the fact that the sea is such a vast area. 



So now we are considering the more vast reaches of the ocean be- 

 cause the first two did not work. So from an experience point of 

 view as well as from a commonsense point of view, one of the 

 things that many of us have concluded is that out of sight is not 

 out of mind when it comes to these types of materials. 



