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Nobody, it seems to me, has a right to pollute the waters of our 

 cast — the waters, for that matter, of the interior, but that is another 

 matter. The presumption is that any material capable of polluting does 

 pollute unless unless one of these bodies determines after an appro- 

 priate application and license is applied for that it does not have any 

 polluting effect upon the water to which it can be discharged. 



I think it is extremely necessary that we enact legislation of this 

 sort because along many of our bays — Biscayne Bay, for example, in 

 my area and Mr. Fascell's area is generally referred to as being polluted 

 to the degree that it is not even suitable for bathing. It certainly is not 

 desirable that a great beautiful body of water like that has any con- 

 tamination or any pollution, and that is due to the fact that over the 

 years we have simply poured sewerage and poured these polluting and 

 contaminating properties into this beautiful bay without any regard 

 for the public interest at all. We have also done the same thing for 

 the ocean. 



I don't think anybody particularly is to blame because up until 

 recently we thought it was all right to build an outfall into the ocean 

 with only preliminary treatment of the material that goes into the 

 outfall and therefore is distributed into the ocean. We thought that 

 was just a public dumping ground where you could put anything you 

 wanted to and it was not going to hurt anything or anybody : it was 

 so big and so much water and generally so deep that you could dump 

 anything into the ocean with impunity- 

 It has been many months since I have had the honor to appear 

 here before the committee to talk about the dropping of these weapons 

 into the ocean. Even 2 or 3 years ago nobody would ever have thought 

 of questioning that because our awareness of this ecology problem 

 and contamination and pollution problem had not come to be so acute 

 as it has in the recent past. So I think it perfectly proper to put the 

 burden of proof that it will not harm a public waterway upon who- 

 ever disposes materials into such a waterway that would have some 

 deleterious effect. 



Let me comment on this. In the county of Dade, of which I have 

 the honor to represent a part here, Mr. Fascell a part, Mr. Burke a 

 part, many of our municipalities have these outfall lines out into the 

 ocean where they dump their sewage and those outfall lines have been 

 built at quite a lot of expense — in fact, they have been wrestling with 

 the financial problem of building those outfalls. My understanding is 

 that generally speaking they have only given preliminary treatment 

 to the sewage that has gone through those outfalls and dumped into 

 the ocean. 



I don't know just how our public bodies would be affected by this 

 legislation. While I think it is right in principle, on the other hand, 

 if acting under permissible conceptions and permissible authority in 

 the past, public bodies have done things that have burdened them 

 with debt and they should be required to set up other facilities before 

 they should be permitted to such dumping, why I think the Federal 

 Government ought to help them to make the necessary adjustments 

 to accommodate themselves to the criteria of the present in respect to 

 the pollution of waterways. 



I know we have had sewerage money available. To my regret the 

 administration has reduced the request for such money, perhaps held 



