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These wastes are of every conceivable nature, and in many areas 
their discharge has resulted in total destruction of the ecology of the 
immediate area of deposit. There are estuaries along the Nation’s coasts 
which once supported thriving industries providing food and suste- 
nance for many thousands. Wastes in the form of sewage, chemicals, 
metallic scrap and many, many other forms are beginning to fill up 
the margins of the sea. Anyone who has crossed the ocean in recent 
years has been able to determine with his own eyes, that waste products 
are beginning to spread over the entire sea. 
It has been estimated that 414 million tons of sludge is being dumped 
into the east coast waters every year, and in the future this will surely 
increase. How long can the ocean absorb it? The bottom of the mar- 
ginal seas are becoming covered with a slimy sludge which is slowly 
destroying all forms of aquatic life. Water which nature draws from 
the seas to fall in the form of rain which supports all life on land is 
now being found to be corrosive, with traces of elements harmful to 
vegetation and to animal life and which is deposited on the land to be 
found in the food we eat. Think of it, the very food we eat is in danger 
of being contaminated by the presence of corrosive and radioactive 
elements which we must consume to sustain life. 
We have been faced recently, and will I am sure be so confronted 
increasingly in the future, with an emergency in the form of the im- 
mediate need to discard dangerous chemicals, the end products of the 
chemical and biological warfare research efforts of the military. Their 
existence, of course, is a dangerous thing but their final disposal is of 
even greater importance. 
The recent proposal to dump these substances into the ocean was and 
should have been objected to by many concerned people. The final 
disposition, made necessary by the critical stage in which they existed, 
means that these hazardous substances are now in the ocean. What 
effect they will have on their present environment is unknown. How 
far their effects will spread is in question. How long whatever effects 
they have will last is yet to be determined. But surely they constitute 
a present and probably future danger to the marine life of some con- 
siderable area. 
This circumstance, repeated many times in the future, would repre- 
sent tomy minda horrible prospect. 
It is to avoid such situations that these two bills are addressed. 
H.R. 18913 is directed specifically at military materials which might 
be disposed of in the sea or the navigable waters of the Nation. The 
purpose of military material is to destroy, and this characteristic is 
certainly not lost when it is no longer desired or serves any useful 
purpose. This bill would require a certificate to be issued by the Coun- 
cil on Environmental Quality before any such disposal. Discharge of 
any munition, or any chemical, biological, or radiological substance 
would be subject to regulation and any conditions or limitations which 
the Council may specify. 
This means that there would be control at least to the extent that 
the best knowledge as to the effects of such substances will be utilized 
in determining the where and when of disposal or that alternative 
means of disposal will have been explored and perhaps hopefully 
adopted. 
