Nixon seeks plan on ocean dumping

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32425, 12 October 1970, Page 10

Nixon seeks plan on ocean dumping

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, October 11. President Nixon has called for an immediate ban on the dumping of poison gas and toxic industrial wastes in the ocean.

He also said that the ocean dumping of other industrial wastes, explosives, sewage sludge and solid wastes such as old car and boat hulks should stop as soon as possible. “Man does not treat the oceans well,” Mr Nixon said in a message to Congress. “He has assumed that their capacity to absorb waste is infinite, and evidence is now accumulating on the damage that he has caused.” Mr Nixon sent Congress a 44-page report of the Environmental Quality Council which detailed damage caused by ocean dumping and suggested a series of strict rules to preserve the seas. “I endorse the council’s recommendations and will submit specific legislative proposals to implement them to the next Congress,” the President said. Eventually, according to the recommendations, dumping of any material in the ocean whatsoever would be prohibited without a permit.

Nerve gas rockets Mr Russell Train, the council chairman, told reporters that the proposed regulations would have prohibited the controversial dumping of 2700 tons of obsolete nerve gas rockets off Cape Kennedy, Florida, last summer. The proposed regulations would directly affect only dumping by United States citizens, businesses and governmental agencies. The council, however, urged the United States to press for international controls supported by global monitoring and research.

Mr Train said that the Administration envisaged enforcing the proposed regulations with “rather substantial civil fines” of perhaps $50,000 a violation. The council noted that 48 million tons of waste were buried at sea in 1968 at 246 sites and the volume was increasing sharply. It said that although ocean dumping was not a serious problem now, it might become pne in a few years unless preventive action were taken.

The report said that ocean dumping of materials “clearly identified as harmful to the marine environment of man” must be prohibited. It said that dumping of materials

that might be harmful should be phased out. “No ocean dumping of chemical warfare materials should be permitted,” the report said. “Biological warfare materials have not been disposed of at sea and should not be in the future.” “In the past we have failed to recognise problems and to take corrective action before they become serious,” the report said. “The resulting signs of environmental degradation are all round us and remedial actions heavily tax our resources.”