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ing Federal law aimed at the preservation of aquatic and marine en- 
vironments. I will not attempt to review for this committee the mag- 
nitude of the problem, nor to remind it that testimony heard by many 
committees of both Houses of the Congress indicates that the danger 
to our living aquatic and marine environments is increasing. 
We believe that there are three main weaknesses to existing Federal 
legislation. First, this legislation reflects an engineering rather than 
an ecological approach to what are ecological problems. Second, 
existing legislation puts the burden of proof on those who would 
protect the environment, and implicitly or explicitly recognizes the 
existence of a “right” to pollute in the absence of a clear and present 
danger to the public. Third, present law places unreasonable burdens 
upon regulatory agencies, and in so doing increases the long-term 
costs of protecting water quality to both users of water and the public. 
Zero Population Growth believs that H.R. 19359 is superior to 
existing legislation in all three regards. First, we applaud the broad 
ecological charge to the Secretary to consider “the overall effect 
on the marine and wildlife ecological balance” of discharges into 
waters. This charge recognizes the complex nature of natural rela- 
tionships and the danger of attempting to engineer water quality 
standards for particular human uses without consideration of ir- 
reversible, progressive degeneration which occurs In aquatic or marine 
environments placed under continual stress. 
We support the provision in section 5C that standards shall be 
set “for the purpose of insuring that no damage to, or loss of, any 
marine life or wildlife or any other resource necessary for the ecologi- 
cal balance of the area ... will result from any such activity.” 
Second, we believe that the bill places a clear burden on those who 
would use our waterways as a dump to establish the safety of the 
proposed practice. The bill permits the Secretary to identify those 
particularly fragile or crucial aquatic environments in which no 
dumping or effluent will be permitted; an example that comes to 
mind are fishery and shellfish spawning grounds along and off the 
Florida coast. 
This burden is further insured by the provision in section 5C that 
“any person, before depositing or discharging such materials in the 
coastal waters of the United States, must present sufficient evidence 
that discharging such materials in the location in which they are to be 
deposited will not endanger the natural environment and ecology 
of those waters.” Att 
I would like to suggest here that this provision should extend 
to navigable as well as coastal waters; there seems to be adequate 
authority elsewhere in the bill for the Secretary himself to establish 
such a requirement, but it would still be preferable to establish a 
common standard for navigable and coastal areas. as 
The bill’s final, and crucial, departure from present Federal legis- 
lation in this area is the simple and straightforward approach of the 
act. Present legislation in the area of water pollution, with the excep- 
tion of oil spills, involves extremely cumbersome and complicated ad- 
ministrative procedures simply to establish standards. This was 
intended, in part, to permit localities to determine the appropriate 
use and level of water quality which they wished to maintain. We | 
knew before this legislation was passed that there are few truly local 
