OCEAN DUMPING OF WASTE MATERIALS 



MONDAY, APRIL 5, 1971 



House of Eepresentatives, 

 Joint Subcommittees on Oceanography and Fisheries 



AND Wildlife Conservation, 



Washington^ D.G. 



The joint subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m. in room 

 1334, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Alton Lennon (chair- 

 man of the Subcommittee on Oceanography) and Hon. John T>. 

 Dingell (chairman of the Subcommittee on Fisheries and Wildlife 

 Conservation) presiding. 



Mr. Lennon. The Joint Subcommittee on Oceanography and Fish- 

 eries and Wildlife Conservation of the Committee on Merchant 

 Marine and Fisheries are no\v convened. 



This morning these two subcommittees will begin joint hearings on 

 the series of bills designed to regulate the dumping of waste material 

 in our coastal and off-shore waters. 



It seems that no one knows the volume — and I think that is really 

 an understatement — of wastes that have been dumped in the oceans in 

 the past years. In fact, until recently, the question was scarcely asked 

 and then only by an obscure group of scientists, known as ecologists. 



Fortunately, however, in the last few years the entire question of 

 ocean disposal of waste material has been thrust into prominence, and 

 I think appropriately so, by the recently disclosed dumping of nerve 

 gas and oil wastes off the coast of Florida, by the clumping of sewage 

 and other municipal wastes off New York Harbor, and a number of 

 other and similar instances, all of which I am delighted to report 

 were the subject of hearings and investigation by these two subcom- 

 mittees during the 91st Congress. 



In October of 1970, the Council of Environmental Quality, which 

 was created as a result of legislation reported by one of these com- 

 mittees, published an excellent report entitled "Ocean Dumping — A 

 National Policy." That report forms the basis for the hearings we are 

 beginning today, and points up the immediacy and the severity of the 

 problems that we may be creating. 



These problems may perhaps best be exemplified by reference to 

 the international conference held on the Island of Malta last summer, 

 dealing with the necessity of and techniques for protecting the oceans 

 from ill-advised actions by man. One scientist, regrettably but not 

 surprisingly from the United Nations International Atomic Energy 

 Agency, put the problem into a certain perspective by asking at one 

 point if perhaps the highest and best use of the oceans might not 

 be to serve as a dump for man's waste. 



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