438 



gram which considers ocean disposal of these materials relative to 

 land disposal. 



Mr. Studds. You say from time to time you had indication that 

 people are more interested than they have been in the past. 



What kinds of people? Who, to be precise? 



Dr. Mattson. Well, I think it is not in the nature of communica- 

 tions from people telling us, here is something we would like you to 

 permit. It is just watching the mood of the Nation and particularly 

 States who now have shallow land burial facilities within their 

 boundaries. Shallow land burial is not a popular waste disposal 

 option in this country today. 



Mr. Studds. I understand that. 



But is the lack of precision in response to my question because 

 you cannot be more precise or because you do not wish to be? 



Dr. Mattson. There isn't anything more precise to say. There is 

 nobody specifically saying to us we intend to dump low-level radio- 

 active waste in the ocean, so please get on with your permitting 

 program; nobody has said that, other than the Navy, and they have 

 not said it in those words. They have said that they have the 

 alternative of ocean dumping under consideration. 



Mr. Studds. In other words, you would have us believe this is 

 actually a situation in which a Federal agency is looking toward 

 the future with a good deal of political sophistication. 



I think that is what you are saying. I think that is commendable 

 if that is the case. 



You were saying to us on page 11 of that sentence, which I 

 quoted to you, that your current resources are inadequate both to 

 monitor past dumping and to continue the development of the 

 future regulations, as I understand it. 



If that is the case and if your resources remain inadequate to do 

 both the way you would like to do them, would you think that the 

 monitoring would be a higher priority, that is, monitoring what 

 has already been dumped? 



Dr. Mattson. It is my technical judgment, and one widely agreed 

 upon outside of EPA in the scientific community, that those previ- 

 ously dumped wastes portend no harm to man or to the marine 

 environment. So to monitor them for public health reasons is not of 

 a high priority today nor has it been in the past. The thing that 

 has pushed us to a position of support for public health monitoring 

 for the old dump sites is the difficulty people have in accepting the 

 technical judgment, and the small amount of monitoring we have 

 already done as proof that there has been no public health impact. 



Mr. Studds. Do you really believe your retrieval of three drums 

 out of many thousands constitutes proof of that? 



Dr. Mattson. No, sir, that is not what I said. I said it has been 

 our technical judgment based on an understanding of what materi- 

 als were dumped and where they were dumped and how long ago 

 they were dumped and our interpretation of the less than encyclo- 

 pedic data that we have already collected, that there has been no 

 harm from that past radioactive dumping. 



Mr. Studds. That is not what you just said. As I understand 

 what you are now saying is that you have yet to detect any harm. 

 That is not the same thing as saying we have proved that there has 

 been no harm. 



