531 
ance of the hearings. But we would really appreciate it if you 
would try to summarize your testimony. 
Let’s start with Mr. Bennett. Welcome. It is good to have you. 
STATEMENT OF D. W. BENNETT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AMERI- 
CAN LITTORAL SOCIETY, AND DR. DANIEL PINDZOLA, PRINCI- 
PAL ENGINEER, FRANKLIN RESEARCH CENTER 
Mr. BENNETT. The statement that I submitted is an effort to try 
to reflect the views of people who use the New York Bight for rec- 
reation or for making a living, commercial fishermen, sport fisher- 
men, recreational divers, swimmers, what have you. 
Our organization is interested in coastal environmental problems 
and our headquarters are at Sandy Hook, so we are proud of the 
fact that our offices are within 16 miles of 80 percent of the sludge 
dumping in the United States, 15 million tons a year of dredged 
spoils and sewer sludge and acid wastes going into the ocean within 
sight of my office. 
The coalition is meeting to show you that we are serious, meet- 
ing this afternoon in North Jersey, tomorrow morning at Point 
Pleasant, and in Red Bank, to get together the fishing cooperatives 
in Belford in the Raritan Bay area and fishing cooperatives at 
Point Pleasant Beach, to consider getting Judge Sofaer’s decision 
into another jurisdiction and see if we can activate some kind of 
injunctive relief against some of the dumping taking place where 
we consider it too close to land. 
We have been active since the late sixties, and we supported the 
deadline in 1981 and support the amendments that you have sub- 
mitted to create the deadline in 1982. We are against ocean dump- 
ing for a number of reasons. We believe that it kills marine life 
and certainly is doing so in the bight; the fact that you can’t find 
the dead animals around is not necessarily proof that it is not hap- 
pening. 
The catch of shellfish and fish in the New York Bight has been 
cut in half since the midseventies, primarily accounted for by a 
catastrophic drop in shellfish landings from $30 million down to 
less than $10, primarily because of the fish kill. It hurts commer- 
cial fishing in the New York Bight and I cite the experience of Ed 
Maliszewski, who runs a boat out of Belford and has been spending 
2 days a week brushing hair out of his net and blowing it out with 
high pressure water, because when he takes the net out in the 
dump sites they are filling up with human hair. It is hard to ex- 
plain to him that sludge dumping does not degrade the environ- 
ment, and also, with boat fishermen, and recreational divers and 
with clammers. 
You have heard and will hear—I guess you won’t any more, be- 
cause this is the end of the hearings—but you have heard a lot 
about the huge assimulative capacity of the ocean, that it is enor- 
mous and if we dump material out there, it seems to go away. Our 
answer is that nothing goes away, particularly in the New York 
Bight, which is not in a sense the ocean. It is more a closed body of 
water than it is an open ocean. 
Our feeling is that it goes away for a while and then it comes 
back and when it comes back, it comes back very hard. One of the 
