182 ; ee 
1 would add a requirement for a continuing evaluation of the actual 
effects of any dumping on the ecology of the designated areas. The 
experience so far, as brought out by the hearings at Sandy Hook, 
demonstrates that such a review is vital to insure that the regulations 
and standards adopted fulfill their intended purpose. 
Innovative and necessary as these bills are, I do not believe that 
they will solve the problem of waste disposal. Simply stated, dumping 
wastes in the ocean is dangerous to human and marine health. But 
depositing these wastes on land is even more hazardous. We are 
left in a quandary and no one has yet devised an acceptable solution 
to the question of what to do with these wastes. We are moving now 
in the direction of tertiary treatment systems in sewage plants, but 
even with such systems, some sludge remains and must be removed. 
What we need in order to overcome the staggering technical chal- 
lenge is a coordinated and concentrated scientific and engineering 
research effort to devise a workable alternative to dumping. This is 
going to cost quite a bit of money, but it will be worth every penny 
of it. We must find a solution, preferably one involving detoxification 
of these wastes and their conversion into beneficial products. We 
need to find this solution soon. Such a program can conveniently be 
included in the legislation you are considering today and I urge you 
to do so. It is one thing to say that some standards must be created — 
and enforced, but quite another to assure that those standards are 
realistically aimed at eliminating the problem. 
Enactment of the legislation you are considering today would be 
a significant step in the difficult and costly national endeavor to 
eliminate all pollution of our coastal waters and to devise and imple- 
ment safe, healthful methods for the disposal of human and industrial 
wastes. I urge your favorable consideration. 
Mr. Chairman, it has been stated previously, the gentleman from 
New York, Mr. Grover, stated the real problem we have, and that is 
what can we do with the wastes. We can urge that we move it farther 
off shore, to get it out of the very dangerous area that it is today, 
but this will eventually contaminate that area, and we can expect that 
it will contaminate back to the shore in a certain number of years. 
We can’t state that there will be no dumping at sea from now on, 
because we have the sludge. It is in tremendous amounts, and we have 
to determine what we will do with it. 
Right now, it is filled with bacteria. It is dangerous, so we can’t just 
pump it somewhere on land. We must devise—and this is a real prob- 
lem in the pollution field. In most areas of water pollution control 
we know what the solution is. We know that if we provide enough 
money to help the towns to build proper sewage treatment plants, we 
can clear up a lot of the polluted waters we have, but we do have the 
scientific knowledge of what must be done, but in this area of the 
sludge, we do not have the technical knowledge. We need a scientific, 
technological breakthrough, as to how we can convert this. 
Perhaps there are a lot of land areas in the United States, down 
South mainly, where the land has been worn out, and had been worn 
out by cotton crops before we learned rotation of crops and such 
things. Perhaps something may be devised where a low grade fertilizer 
from a composting idea might be used, so that this could be spread in 
