193 
(The statement follows :) 
STATEMENT OF Hon. ABNER J. MIKVA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE 
STATE OF ILLINOIS 
Mr. Dingell, members of this distinguished subcommittee, I am grateful for 
this opportunity to testify before you. Let me get right to the point. 
Recent studies indicate that man may be well on the way toward irreversibly 
destroying all ocean life. We now use as dumps for sewage, dredging, contami- 
nated food, toxic chemicals, chemical warfare agents, sulphuric acid, arsenic, and 
countless other articles, one hundred and twenty-three areas off of our Atlantic, 
Gulf, and Pacific Coasts. Of the forty-nine dumps off the populous East Coast, 
eleven are used for dredge spoils, nine for industrial wastes, two for sewage, 
eleven for radioactive wastes, and sixteen for explosives. Already, one area has 
been so badly misused that all oxygen in the water has been exhausted and the 
thick pollutants prevent light from penetrating to renourish the plants which 
could have rectified the situation. 
Perhaps the most infamous example of this hideous destruction of our environ- 
ment is the New York Bight. A fifteen month intensive study of the New York 
Bight conducted by the United States Marine Laboratory at Sandy Hook, indi- 
eates that the.cumulative result of forty years of dumping has been to severely 
unbalance the marine ecology of the area and to make many parts of the bay 
absolutely uninhabitable for marine life. Devoid of significant marine life, the 
New York Bight is accurately referred to by many as “The Dead Sea.” 
The prevalence of disease and contamination, which not only threatens the 
Atlantic coastal fisheries, but also gravely endangers public health, was indicated 
by studies made on this area. More than a dozen species of fish captured in the 
befouled area of the Bight were suffering from a disease known as fin rot. Lobsters 
and crabs exposed under laboratory conditions to the same pollutants as are 
pouring daily into the Bight, developed a fouling of their bronchial chambers 
and gills. The test animals all perished within three to four days. A report re- 
cently prepared by M. Grant Gross, Research Oceanographer at the Marine 
Sciences Center, State University of New York at Stony Brook, warns of high 
concentrations of a number of toxic and cancer causing elements. If these ele- 
ments enter or have entered the food chain, we are faced with a serious hazard 
to public health. Studies conducted by a group of scientists under the direction 
of the Smithsonian Institution substantiate these terrible conclusions. 
Immediate steps must be taken to ameliorate if not to reverse this deplorable 
and dangerous condition. It is for this reason that I wholeheartedly endorse three 
bills which would put into effect the steps necessary to reduce the level of 
contaminants in the New York Bight, and would constitute an effective pre- 
liminary action in the fight just beginning to retrieve our oceans from a terrible 
fate. 
My first preference would be for a bill which establishes a blanket ban on 
dumping of potentially harmful foreign matter into the oceans. H.R. 18454, in- 
troduced by our colleague from Massachusetts (Mr. Harrington) and now pend- 
ing before this Subcommittee, and an identical bill of which I am a co-sponsor 
(H.R. 18592), would be a first step toward providing such protection. It would 
prohibit, under regulations and standards formulated by the Secretary of the 
Interior, dumping of “all industrial wastes, sludge, spoil, and all other materials 
that might be harmful to the wildlife or wildlife resources or to the ecology” 
in the coastal waters of the United States. The bill would put the burden where 
it should be—on the dumper—to show that the foreign matter which he intends 
to dump in our coastal waters is not harmful to marine ecology. 
Indeed, Mr. Chairman, I would like to see this Subcommittee go even beyond 
the ban in H.R. 18454, sweeping as that seems to us today. I would like to see 
a bill which prohibits dumping of deleterious matter by U.S. citizens or U.S. 
owned or registered vessels—in shore, by anyone subject to U.S. jurisdiction— 
in any ocean or sea anywhere in the world. Such a bill could be based not on our 
interest in preserving the purity of our coastal waters, but on our jurisdiction 
over the actions of our citizens and vessels on the high seas. We would be say- 
ing, in effect, to American citizens and to ships owned by our citizens or flying 
our flag: “No matter where you are sailing around the globe, you shall not dump 
into the ocean any deleterious substance.” 
