190 
The early explorers found this very hard to get through. So, they 
used to go south of it. This has been in the ocean since the memory 
of man runneth not to the contrary. It is still there. 
I am not so concerned about some of the stuff that goes into the 
ocean. I am concerned about most things that go into the ocean that 
are lethal. 
One of the reasons I have come here to testify, is a bill that is being 
put in to contro] the deposit of mercury products in the ocean. This 
is lethal. I am also concerned with the deposit of atomic wastes in 
the ocean. 
It may be interesting, Mr. Dellenback, to know that by the time 
the Committee on Oceanography—I think you, Mr. Chairman, were 
on it at that time—got through hearing the Atomic Energy Commis- 
sion’s position on disposal of atomic wastes on the Atlantic and gulf 
coasts, they were going to file one on the disposal of wastes on the 
Pacific coast. You had nine or 12 States interested in the Atlantic and 
gulf, some of which are great fishing States and some of which are 
not. There was not very much concern. But when we broke into some 
of the things that had taken place on the Pacific coast where we had 
only three States, all of which were pretty well established as fishing 
States, they got together and interposed objections to the filmg of a 
report on the disposal of atomic wastes in the Pacific Ocean, and to 
this day the Atomic Energy Commission has never filed a plan or 
report for doing it. They have taken another tack. 
Mr. Dineewy. That is one of the few times the Atomic Energy 
Commission has backed off, to the best of my recollection. 
Mr. Mitier. They have backed off. What do they do now? They 
take this stuff on the Pacific coast into Death Valley and bury it in 
an area where there has been no seismic history for years, and make 
a great graveyard to bury it. This is perhaps where it should be. 
Yet at Hanford, in Washington, it poses a great problem because 
you have hot wastes in tanks, some of them 8 feet thick, concrete 
tanks, in which this stuff is being stored, and we have not found 
out yet how we are to get rid of it. Somebody said pour it out on 
the desert and let the sun evaporate it, but you deposit everything 
that is in it on the desert and then where are you? Or you put it into 
an old mine. The first thing you know, you find evidences of it maybe 
hundreds of miles away in underground water. So, you are caught 
ina trap. 
The whole waste disposal problem is one which is of prime im- 
portance. I agree that it should be handled on an international basis. 
We should have a lot of other things on the international basis 
where it comes to the ocean, but we have never succeeded in getting 
cooperation. 
As a member of this committee I was sent as an observer to the 
last conventional in Geneva on the Law of the Sea. We lost out by 
one vote. There is no law of the sea today. Up to that time, everyone 
accepted the 3-mile limit. The 3-mile limit had no real basis to it. 
It was as far as a muzzle-loading cannon could shoot offshore. So, 
when you got beyond that range, you established the 3-mile limit. 
We made compromises as to the 12-mile limit. To apply the 12-mile 
limit to the Pacific Northwest would shut off and make some of the 
finest salmon fishing grounds, inland lakes controllable by Canada. 
