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Mr. Hughes. Mr. Forsythe, round two. 



Mr. Forsythe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Mr. Hughes. You are recognized for 5 minutes. 



Mr. Forsythe. On page 3 of your testimony you indicate that not 

 all pollutants from the lower Hudson-Raritan Estuary are washed 

 into the bight. You indicate that only 20 percent of the petroleum 

 hydrocarbons entering the estuary are washed into the bight. What 

 happens to the rest of them? 



Mr. Kamlet. Well, a significant amount of particularly particle- 

 borne contaminants gets trapped in the estuary itself. 



Mr. Forsythe. I am referring to the petroleum hydrocarbons. 



Mr. Kamlet. That is right. Much of the petroleum hydrocarbons 

 and other pollutants that are problems in the New York Bight are 

 associated with suspended particles that come down the Hudson- 

 Raritan Rivers and those particles tend to settle out in the area of 

 the estuary. Many settle out within the New York Harbor complex 

 and contribute to the need to periodically dredge those harbor 

 areas. So they never directly enter the bight. 



The point I was making on page 3 is that there is a certain 

 amount of double accounting that has been done in some of the 

 earlier estimates of contributions of different contaminants by the 

 various sources to the bight apex in the sense that petroleum hy- 

 drocarbons or other things that are deposited in the harbor and 

 then are dredged and that dredged material is then ocean dumped 

 in the bight, you count it — both sources have been counted in the 

 computation of contributions. 



The direct dredged material inputs and also the indirect intro- 

 ductions into the rivers are counted. 



I think if one made the adjustment that you are suggesting in 

 your question there would be a reduction of the total loading to the 

 bight and therefore you would increase the proportionate contribu- 

 tion of each contaminant of direct ocean dumping both sewage 

 sludge and dredged material. 



That is one of the reasons we feel that the statistics presented, 

 particularly the 1976 evaluations, understate the relative signifi- 

 cance of direct ocean dumping inputs of both sewage sludge and 

 dredge material. 



Mr. Forsythe. On the same page you indicate that the contami- 

 nants in ocean-dumped sewage sludge are more biologically availa- 

 ble than those of other sources. Would you elaborate on that? 



Mr. Kamlet. Yes, I refer primarily to heavy metals as opposed to 

 organic contaminants. The Corps of Engineers through its dredged 

 material research program of dredge material — and this is con- 

 firmed by others not associated with the corps — have rather per- 

 suasively demonstrated that a very large proportion of the heavy 

 metals associated with dredged material are very tightly bound 

 within the crystalline sediment matrix of the basic sand, silt, or 

 clay that constitutes dredge material as opposed to being man-de- 

 rived contamination that was subsequently added. 



Those metals tend to remain tightly bound to the sediment parti- 

 cles and are effectively not available for biological uptake or for 

 contamination of the environment. 



So I think to make across-the-board comparisons of the total 

 heavy metal content of dredged material with the total heavy 



