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entire future coal liquefaction industry along the coastal areas of the United States 

 adjacent to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. In my judg- 

 ment, such a development, if extensively but prudently implemented, would surely 

 yield immense environmental, economic, social, and defense-related benefits to the 

 United States. 



Again in the interest of brevity, I will here touch only briefly on a few of the most 

 important of these expected benefits. On the whole, the entire future synfuel indus- 

 try, as it is generally envisioned at this time, presently faces profound uncertainties 

 affecting a wide variety of technical, cost, timing, and especially environmental and 

 raw material estimates that relate to the undertaking and the development thereof. 

 The resulting risks, as perceived by many of those in the private sector from whom 

 major capital investment might be sought, are actually much too great for there to 

 be any confidence on the part of the private sector that that industry will soon, if 

 ever, become viable enough commercially to do without permanent Federal subsidi- 

 zation. On the other hand, as has already been indicated above, the crucial differ- 

 ence between that future industry's becoming genuinely viable commerically and its 

 becoming commercially moribund may very weill lie in whether or not a sustained 

 application of the aforementioned new methodology and its parent "oceanic ap- 

 proach" takes place. 



Consider, for example, what benefits would accrue to the entire future coal 

 liquefaction industry through the selection of a site for a proposed commercial 

 direct coal liquefaction plant that would be located in conformity with this new 

 methodology, and more particularly within a few miles of the Atlantic coast. Such a 

 site might be located, say, between Norfolk, Virginia, and Elizabeth City, North 

 Carolina, conveniently close to an established railway connecting those two cities. 

 Bituminous coal from one or more relatively nearby mines could be economically 

 and expeditiously moved by high-volume rail transportation all the way through to 

 the site. While the cost for such transportation could of course be avoided by 

 reverting to the conventional procedure of locating the site very close to a preselect- 

 ed coal mine, it will nevertheless be found, from much broader considerations of 

 commercial viability of the kind pointed out above, that any such additional cost 

 would be overwhelmingly compensated for by many other benefits that would 

 accrue to the proposed project and, through it, to the entire future coal liquefaction 

 industry. 



The most evident of these benefits, for a site thus located within a few miles of 

 the Atlantic coast, would be the immediate availability of any desired quantity of 

 seawater that could be provided by means of one or more large diameter pipelines 

 extending seaward, under Currituck Sound and its outlying sand dunes, out into the 

 open ocean approximately as far as the three-mile limit. The selected offshore 

 source or sources of seawater could be conveniently located near the ocean bottom 

 wherever, by suitable prior assessment, it was determined that neither entrainment 

 (passage of organisms through the proposed plant) nor impingement (impact by fish 

 and other nonentrainable organisms against the pipeline intake structures) would 

 result in significant environmental or economic damage. An important related 

 environmental benefit would result from the fact that, relative to their populations 

 at large, far less significant quantities of aquatic biota would be entrained from the 

 presently contemplated water sources in the open sea than from conventional 

 estuarine or riverine water sources. 



Furthermore, as I have previously indicated, by far the greatest compensating 

 benefit to result from application of this water supply selection methodology is one 

 that ultimately has to be evaluated in terms of its contribution towards conserving 

 the nation's total supply of freshwater. For in this connection the prime importance 

 of any initial application of the presently suggested site selection methodology — 

 whether or not it is the one described above — lies in what it promises will happen if 

 and when it is replicated many times and at many different coastal sites. If, in 

 addition, an early decision were to be reached and announced by the Federal 

 government, to the effect that it would foster the widespread but prudent use of the 

 presently suggested site selection methodology as a guide-line in developing this 

 country's entire future coal liquefaction industry, that small step alone would go far 

 towards immediately dispelling the above mentioned perception by the private 

 sector that the risks involved in capitalizing that industry are prohibitively great. 



In terms of energy conservation, however, it is equally important that, for a 

 coastal site such as the above, the ultimate source of all forms of energy required to 

 operate the entire direct coal liquefaction process, including the collection of neces- 

 sary seawater and the production and collection of necessary hydrogen, electric 

 power, and desalinated seawater, would be ocean wave energy — extracted, convert- 

 ed, and delivered by means of one or more wave energy converters of the kind 

 described in the above cited International Publication No. WO 79/00349. Here, for 



