502 
Mr. Hucues. I have most of the coast. We don’t have any in my 
district and I don’t know of any other coastal communities that are 
participants. 
Mr. ForsyTHE. Would the gentleman yield? I think the impact 
particularly for Passaic Valley is that they look to the harbor and 
the waterways of the Passaic Valley, which if not coastal, are get- 
ting right close. 
Mr. HuGues. I thank my colleague for that contribution. 
You know, I really am sympathetic to the problems that some of 
our sister cities in northern New Jersey have. I know it is a tre- 
mendous dilemma. I know that the authorities have been wrestling 
with this issue for some time because of the political and the eco- 
nomic and other problems that exist. I know that one of the au- 
thorities endeavored to float a bond issue to develop land-based al- 
ternatives particularly recycling facilities and that was rejected, 
because of the tremendous economic problems that exist among 
other. 
But you know, Lee, the thing that concerns us is that in my 
region we hosted a major commercial fishing industry and our com- 
munities are also the sites of a multibillion-dollar tourist economy 
that depends upon clean water and clean air and clean beaches. 
And when you look at some of the experts and their testimony de- 
scribing what is happening in the New York apex with skin rot, 
gill erosion, skin tumors, parasitic infections, microbial infections, 
chemical contamination, bacteria found in shellfish and other sea- 
food and marine organisms in increasing amounts and their pres- 
ence being there even a year or so after we have closed down dump 
sites, you can understand our concern. 
Mr. Whites. Well, Congressman, I almost every summer get to 
Avalon and I love it and I eat seafood there too, so you are hitting 
me right where I live. 
Mr. HuGues. I suspect you would not eat the seafood however if 
you thought that it might be contaminated. 
Mr. Waite. I certainly would not and what I would want to do is 
find out what contaminated it. If you take sludge out of the ocean 
and the seafood still is contaminated, have you not done anything? 
Really our pitch is we have been looking at the New York Bight 
for a long time. I am not a scientist. Like you, I am a lawyer. I 
listen to the scientific people and sometimes they can twist me one 
way or the other, but our finding is that the scientific community 
generally believes, I think there is a consensus, we say so in our 
statement, that we have not proven the case. 
As I say, sludge is not sludge. Sometimes it has to be treated in a 
certain way with some of the metals removed to make it less offen- 
sive, and less hostile to ourselves. 
Mr. HuGues. Well, I don’t want to dispute you, but the scientific 
community does not suggest that. The scientific community has es- 
tablished that there is a very direct relationship to many of the 
hard metals and other substances that are found in the sludge that 
is being dumped in the New York Bight area and the substances 
which are harmful found in the marine organisms in the seafood. 
In fact, they have simulated that in laboratory tests. Just this 
past week NOAA was before this committee and described some of 
the direct relationships between some of the disfigurations, the bac- 
