234 



I think there are lots of possibilities for turning deficits into benefits 

 in these situations. 



Mr. Keith. I thank you and Dr. Fye for those observations. It is a 

 subject of great interest in my district, where we have both a fossil 

 fuel plant and a nuclear plant onshore, and occasionally I get corres- 

 pondence with reference to the side effects these plants produce. 



Speaking of pollutants, we were advised recently in a memorandum 

 that the Woods Hole and other oceanographic authorities had more 

 or less sanctioned the disposal of chemical and biological warfare ref- 

 use as currently carried out off our Continental Shelf. Would you 

 care to comment on that. Dr. Fye ? 



Dr. Fye. Yes, Mr. Keith. I did have the opportunity yesterday after- 

 noon, after you informed me of the position stated in that memo- 

 randum, to explore what had happened within my institution. There 

 has been no institutional support of that idea. One of our senior scien- 

 tists, Mr. Fuglister, participated in a group of experts in advising the 

 Army on the matter. I talked with him at length since he had been 

 there and had heard the full story. 



I would not be prepared to pass judgment on the wisdom of dispos- 

 ing of this material at sea provided it is done in a reasonable location. 

 We do recognize that the oceans are our biggest and in many ways our 

 best dumping ground. It is quite properly a question of where the waste 

 material eventually shows up. 



The important thing we must be sure to undertake in any such situa- 

 tion is to research the total problem adequately so that an optimum 

 location can be chosen. There are places in the oceans where things can 

 be buried where the currents are low, the upwelling of water is low, 

 the overturning from bottom to top is low, and where dissipation can 

 occur within a time that is sufficient to make this an appropriate thing 

 to do. 



Actually Mr. Fuglister told me that he was not very comfortable 

 about the location that is proposed. In his opinion they are a little too 

 close to the Continental Shelf, too close to the Gulf Stream and the 

 fishing grounds. They happen to be about 50 miles from the particular 

 location off the edge of the stream we call station D. We have been 

 instrumenting that particular spot of the deep ocean for 4 or 5 years. 



On the other hand, he said he couldn't find anything really overly 

 hazardous about that, providing everything worked the way the plan 

 said it would. 



My position on this would be, first of all, that disposal in the ocean 

 can be done successfully provided there has been proper study of the 

 problem. With proper investigation a suitable location can be chosen. I 

 would not have an Opinion on the particular location that is proposed 

 at the moment off New Jersey. I don't have the chemical information 

 available concerning the hydrolysis of these particular gases into 

 essentially safe byproducts. 



Mr. Keith. It would seem to me that this is a very good argument 

 for the creation of such an agency as we are discussing this morning. 

 I think this proposed agency would be the proper authorithy to look 

 at the plan, give its approval, and suggest locations that might be 

 best. It could regulate the circumstances under which it was done, and 

 catalog what has gone into the oceans in these various locations. It is 

 another reason for us, it seems to me, to look with favor on the estab- 

 lishment of NOAA. 



