532 
thing that we have been proposing is instead of there being dump 
sites identified as a 12-mile site or 106-mile site, that if there is to 
be any ocean dumping in the interim before these phaseouts, that 
that should be located in bodies of water, rather than specific loca- 
tions. 
The oceanographers find there are discrete bodies of water which 
move in certain directions at certain times of the year. 
I can also point out that point where the 106-mile site has been 
designated by EPA as the result of a court case that we brought 
about 4 years ago, so that 106-mile site is available if the area 
needs to be moved from the 12-mile site. 
There is a great deal of argument that ocean dumping saves 
money and our question is, whose money? It’s very difficult to pin 
down the value of a commercial fishery or to show how much of it 
might be damaged, which is really the main problem. 
Whenever you speak of ocean dumping and sludge as a primary 
part or a major part of the contamination in the New York Bight, 
there is the constant litany that it’s not that, it’s the river runoff 
or the material coming out of the Hudson River or East River. And 
no matter where you turn there always seems to be somebody who 
is pointing at another source that you should work at first. 
It’s been our opinion for a long time that the easiest, the best, 
the first step to cleaning up the bight is to start to cut down on and 
get rid of the sewer sludge particularly because it is contained at 
one point. 
We see how silly it is to talk hundreds of thousands of dollars to 
collect it in a pot and then put it in a tanker and then truck it out 
to a 12-mile site and then free it again. If it’s contained, keep it 
contained. 
It would probably be very difficult to measure the impact of 
moving the sludge from 12 miles to 106 or moving it out of the 
ocean, but it’s an easy first step to take to start cleaning of the 
bight. It’s a place where hundreds of thousands of people use for 
recreation and for making a living. 
I mentioned in my testimony on the last page some suggestions 
for tightening the amendment language. I won’t go over them now, 
except to say that on page 2, line 24, it reads that “Congress finds 
that the reasonable use of the ocean as a receptacle of society’s 
waste. . .”; we dislike the terminology that the ocean is a recepta- 
cle because that to me connotes that it is something that will hold 
something or contain it. 
The ocean doesn’t contain it and that’s the problem. It spreads it. 
Ocean dumping is not only the dilution of pollutants but the 
spreading of toxics, and I think the term “receptacle” is a bad one. 
We say don’t dump in the ocean; let each waste stay with that 
one’s responsibility to have, to hold and to treat, and that dumping 
is not treatment. This is disposal and we need to treat the material 
and not simply throw it into the ocean. 
Mr. ForsyTHE. Thank you, Mr. Bennett. 
Dr. Pindzola. 
