243 



1970, Public Law 91-224, 33 U.S. 1161, states that an owner or operator of a ves- 

 sel "from which oil is knowingly discharged" shall be assessed a civil penality. 

 Similarly the Water Pollution and Control Act Amendments of 1972, Public Law 

 92-500, 33 U.S. 1251 et seq., provides a similar penalty only upon the "owner or 

 operator" of a vessel and then only when the discharge is done "'knowingly". 



The important fact is that both of these recent statutes do not impose any civil 

 or criminal penalty upon individuals for the prohibited discharge of oil. Al- 

 though the Oil Pollution Act of 1961, which S. 1067 seeks to amend, imposes lia- 

 bility upon a person, MEBA submits that such liability should be confined to the 

 shipowner and not to the licensed officer. And even if the licensed oflScer is at 

 fault, he can properly be punished by the Coast Guard by virtue of its authority 

 to impose upon him economic death through the loss of his license which will 

 preclude him from any employment as a marine engineer. 



There are countless situations in which a discharge of oil or oily mixture could 

 occur without fault on the part of a licensed marine engineer. The primary cause 

 of such a discharge could be faulty or inadequate equipment installed and con- 

 tinued in operation by the shipowner or operator. And in many instances, the mal- 

 function of such e<iuipment is latent and cannot be readily discovered by the 

 resjwnsible ship's personnel. Further, as I have pointed out, the discharge of oil 

 or oily mixture simply cannot be avoided becau.se vessels are deliberately de- 

 signed and constructed, with the approval of governmental regulatory agencies, in 

 a fashion which makes it impossible to prevent some leakage or spillage of oil. 

 To impose statutory i)enalties, both criminal and civil, upon individuals for such 

 a possibility, together with the double jeopardy in which they are placed by the 

 risk of a loss of a Coast Guard license, is imfair. inequitable and unjust. 



It is the position of MEBA that the remedies available to the United States 

 Coast Guard in imixising a possible loss of license upon a marine engineer are 

 more than suflicient. The civil and criminal penalties of the Oil Pollution Act 

 of 1961 and of S. 1067 should not be applied to or imposed upon such individuals. 

 The possible penalties UY*on licensed marine engineers in my opinion constitutes 

 the kind of cruel and unusual punishment which is abhorrent to our society. The 

 ultimate sufferers of such harsh civil and criminal i)enalties are the wives and 

 children of those marine engineers whose very economic existence depends 

 ujion the ability of the head of the family to earn a living and support his wife 

 and cliildren. 



"We request that such provisions be deleted from S. 1067 and from the Oil 

 Pollution Act of 1961. 



Statement of Cakmen F. Guarixo, Commissioner, Philadelphia Watee 



Department 



My name is Carmen F. Guarino, and I am commissioner of the city of Phila- 

 delphia Water Department. My statement concerns the city's current practice of 

 controlled disjmsal of digested sewage sludge in the Atlantic Ocean. 



When Philadelphia was disposing digested sludge on the continental shelf at a 

 site 13. S nautical miles due east of Cape Henlopen. Delaware, newspaper articles 

 liad frequently mentioned that Philadelphia's practice of ocean disposal was to 

 the detriment of the marine environment and had created a "dead sea". My 

 statement will .show that this is not the case, but was rather a reaction based 

 uiKin misinformation or hypotheses without factual data. 



In general, there is the misconception that digested sludge contains debris, 

 such as orange crates and milk cartons, and is the cause of, oil slicks and tar- 

 like deposits on the beaches of our country. This is simply not true. 



The city's digested sludge, for example, is not like raw sludge or industrial 

 waste. Our municipal sludge has been treated by an anaerobic and aei-obic 

 process over a minimum of 25 days and the organic material has been metabolized 

 and converted into relatively stable, innocuous residues combined with water. 

 With this in mind, the impact of digested municipal sludge can be considered 

 in the ocean's ecology. 



Fnv a i>eriod of twelve years, the city had barged approximated 2,000 000 

 gallons of digested sludge, about every five days, to the ocean site east of Cape 

 Henelopen. This .sludge was 90% purely water, about 5% inert material, such 

 as, sand and dirt, and about 5% stabilized organic matter. In effect, each barge 

 load contained about 100,000 gallons of organic nutrients beneficial to the oceans 

 ecology. 



