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all the material had been dumped at the same point. Moreover, they will 
have 15 days to depurate should dredging take longer and dumping of hot 
material would have to take place at release point No. 1 again. The 15 day 
interval will permit organisms to reduce their body burdens of chemicals 
substantially, if not completely. Macek et al. (1979) analyzed tissue sam- 
ples collected from fish undergoing depuration after aqueous exposure to 
various chemicals. Almost two-thirds of the chemicals tested had a half- 
life of less than one day. This simply means that when fish burdened with 
chemicals were placed in clean water, a minimum of 50% of the chemical 
residues previously detected in the tissues had been eliminated. The re- 
maining third of the compounds had a half-life of less than 7 days. 
The final step is, of course, capping. As dredging continues down the 
Channel where bottom materials are, in this case, known to be clean, the 
capping procedure can be accomplished at each of the buoyed release 
points. 
Environmental Soundness 
This procedure is as environmentally sound as the capping process and has 
the added advantage of permitting some depuration of downstream organisms. 
« 
SPECIAL CARE DISPOSAL AREAS AND SITES 
RATIONALE FOR DEEP OCEAN DISPOSAL 
General 
In many cases deep ocean disposal may present another feasible special care 
measure of the polluted material disposal. In many areas where 
conventional ocean disposal has become an acute problem it is assumed 
