Prevention of pollution is accomplished in one 

 of two ways: first, and most effective, by reducing 

 the generation of wastes initially; second, by 

 treating wastes after they have occurred but before 

 they enter public waterways. Treatment may be at 

 the source of the pollutants or at some collection 

 point located before the disposal point. 



A third alternative in waste management- 

 managing wastes in the waterways through stream- 

 flow regulation, natural assimilation, dispersion of 

 wastes and other techniques— is classified as clean- 

 up of pollution after it has occurred. 



At present our private economy is geared 

 toward getting goods to the consumer. But, 

 unfortunately, the consumer consumes very little. 

 At most, he transforms it. This panel is of the 

 opinion that this Nation must develop a program 

 which places sufficient responsibility on the pro- 

 ducer, whether it is the producer of insecticides or 

 plastic bottles, to consider the consequences of 

 retrieving his goods once they have reached the 

 consumer. 



The first impulse of municipalities and in- 

 dustry is to use the natural assimilative powers of 



the waterways that flow nearby to process pollut- 

 ants. This procedure has the advantage of initial 

 economy and the backing of tradition. Moreover, 

 there is no way to escape the fact that the coastal 

 zone will have to absorb some pollutants. This 

 leads us to the conclusion that we must preserve as 

 much of the assimilative powers of these water- 

 ways as we can because population and industrial 

 growth alone wUl of necessity impose greater 

 demands on them. Even treatments that remove 

 95 per cent of the pollutants in waste water leave 

 5 per cent to be assimilated, still a very large 

 amount. The assimilative powers of the coastal 

 zone must also be preserved to take care of 

 non-point-source pollutants, and pollutants gener- 

 ated by natural and man-made emergency situa- 

 tions such as hurricanes or inadvertent dumping of 

 toxic materials into coastal waters. 



Pollutants whose origins are not easily traced, 

 the "non-point-source" pollutants, are often intro- 

 duced by agricultural runoffs of fertilizers and 

 pesticides, watercraft discharges, acid mine drain- 

 age, storm runoffs from city streets, and runoffs 

 from animal feed lots. 



Figure 9. Existing and planned nuclear power plants. (Source: Atomic Energy Commission) 



III-58 



