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in response to that law. The PWSC has been in the forefront of 
things in carrying out the necessary studies. This work has enabled 
us to highlight the pros and cons of the viable land-based alterna- 
tives. I myself also say that this has led us into the question of 
trying to locate the discharges of the heavy metals, Congressman 
Hughes, in particular, and we have done a lot of work in that area 
and our people have spent a lot of money. 
We have found the major contributor of mercury to our system 
and have taken steps to see that they begin to remove it. So much 
has been done. But some of the important findings of those studies 
is the highlighting of those issues and questions for which much 
more work is required in order to make the rational judgments 
which are necessary as part of the process. 
Let me paraphrase some of the questions in the statement. The 
State-Federal regulatory agencies do not know what emission 
standards they would want to apply for sludge incinerators. Of par- 
ticular concern here are the health effects on human beings. The 
State and Federal agencies do not know what materials they are 
even concerned about—that is with reference to their concentra- 
tions in the air which we all breathe, the 3 million people in our 
State as well as the State of New York and Westchester County, 
New York City and Nassau County. 
There is a broader question that has to be addressed. We have 
competing interests by way of the need to build resources recovery 
facilities, to convert powerplants to coal, and to manage the sludge 
using the option of—potentially using the option of thermal de- 
struction. We are all using the same ocean above us, namely the 
air that we all breathe, and these are all competing social inter- 
ests. 
Judgments have to be made as to which provide the greatest 
public benefit while at the same time, protecting the environment. 
There is a great deal of work that must be done by the State and 
Federal governments involved. I should also point out, and this has 
reference to the heavy metals question in particular, the future 
quality of sludge will depend very much on the success or failure of 
the industrial waste pretreatment programs that the operating 
agencies are responsible for implementing. 
We can only make our best judgments today based upon what we 
know today, but some of what we do not know today are what are 
the standards that EPA will impose upon industry by way of pre- 
treatment standards? Or if the decision is made to leave the estab- 
lishment of the standards to the local agencies, we have to know 
that as well. I must say to you that at this moment, the whole 
question of standards for the pretreatment program, which in turn 
translates into a better quality sludge, are simply not known. 
But let me also point out that this illustrates equally clearly the 
fact that we may remove the industrial sludges or concentrated in- 
dustrial waste through the pretreatment program, but we have 
converted the pollution into another problem which has to be man- 
aged and now we get back into the hazardous waste business and 
the solid waste management area, and again, there are many ques- 
tions to be answered. 
I also point out that PVSC as part of its sequence of work, in- 
cluding the construction of watering facilities as a preliminary for 
