208 
annual allotment for all sewage treatment projects for New York 
State. 
As the City and its consultants proceeded to develop this 
alternative, we experienced growing misgivings, shared by 
scientists at Columbia ripslaersekesy and elsewhere, about the 
wisdom of a land-based alternative for sludge disposal. As 
planning continued, it became clear that the composting under- 
taken in connection with a land-based alternative would merely 
stabilize and partially sterilize sludge material and would not 
remove the heavy metals, carcinogens and toxic organics in the 
sludge. In turn, this posed the clear prospect that spreading 
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such material on land might create more severe environmental 
impacts than ocean disposal, thus trading off one potential en- 
vironmental problem against another, possibly more serious, one. 
Even with all these problems, composting was considered the 
best interim alternative disposal method available because in- 
Ccineration of sludge, or other thermal reduction techniques of 
disposal, posed the prospect of the generation of contaminated 
ash, the atmospheric release of carcinogenic and mutagenic com- 
pounds, the vaporization of heavy metals, and the increase of 
other air pollutant emissions in close proximity to large urban 
areas. Indeed, a portion of these emissions would be deposited 
in the Atlantic Ocean. 
