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although not as well, I am sure. I really respect you for what you 
are doing, and I know you are on the cutting edge of trying to bal- 
ance a budget and take care of a myriad of problems, and sludge 
just happens to be one of them. 
But we do have a great concern. I represent an area that has the 
second largest industry in New Jersey: Tourism. We have to 
depend upon clean air, clean water, and clean beaches, as you well 
know. It is also an area where we have a large commercial fishery 
industry, that depends upon clean water. The fact of the matter is 
that there are indications that the area is very distressed. 
The New York Bight, the scientists have concluded, is a severely 
distressed area. Even after the Philadelphia dump site, right off 
Cape May, closed for the better part of a year, they found that the 
crabs and the other shellfish, scallops in particular, were deformed. 
They had viruses. The presence of bacteria was quite evident. 
NOAA’s recent studies found that the crabs and lobsters particu- 
larly in the New York Bight area, have major abnormalities. In 
fact, they have managed to simulate that, by using sludge from 
New York City, so we know there is a very direct connection. 
NOAA testified last week that there was bacteria and viruses very 
much in evidence in the marine environment, and the question is, 
What has to happen before we get serious about getting our act to- 
gether in the ocean? 
I know that you pointed to a number of things where you agreed 
with Jacques Cousteau. I did not hear you, however, suggest that 
you agree with him on the storage of these materials. Mr. Cousteau 
made the point that we do not know all the answers, and we may 
not for many years. As we keep adding new substances to our 
sludge, it is becoming more and more difficult to really understand 
what the long-term impact is going to be. His point was that we are 
going to regret one of these days that we did not hold on to that 
material, store it, and perhaps recycle it later, when we know more 
about it. 
Mayor Kocu. I was here when he said that. 
Mr. HuGues. Do you agree with that? 
Mayor Kocu. I agree with the illustrations that he gave, which 
pertained to atomic energy residues and nerve gas residues. You 
put those into cannisters, and you have a limited amount that you 
can deal with. Sludge is with us every single day. So long as you 
have a human being with normal needs, we are going to have 
sludge. The fact is that it is not possible for us to store it, pending 
a technological development, that would allow us to treat the 
stored sludge. 
What we are saying is, if we could put the sludge in barrels, we 
would do it. I said I would take it to my home. It is not possible. 
What we are saying is, when you store it on land, you may con- 
taminate that land. You may contaminate the aquifers. You may 
contaminate the air above it. There has to be a balancing of inter- 
ests, and we have concluded that there could be a greater damage 
from putting sludge on land than there is in continuing to put it in 
the bight. 
Mr. Hucues. Mayor, one of the alternatives that New York City 
was looking at, before they decided to move ahead and challenge 
the EPA in the lawsuit, was the acquiring of some land that would 
