Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea: Public Ideas ... - IMO

Knowledge-Based Regime Analysis 65
Arctic and tropical waters, let alone the consequences of effluent disposal
and accidental pollution in them.” (Harwood 1971) Two years later, it was
obvious that there still was a great gap in scientific knowledge about pollution
of the seas. “Despite broad general consensus about the contaminants
which represent the greatest threat of global pollution,” said the head
of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1973,
“knowledge of their full extent, their fate and their impact on the ocean
ecosystem is scanty at best” (Newman 1973). 18 This lack of knowledge did
not, however, dampen regulatory policy making.
The question of whether available knowledge of water and marine pollution
could guide, and should guide, policy making had already been raised
before the CEQ issued its report on ocean dumping. The scientific basis of
a proposal to control waterways, included in the 37-point program presented
at the first “Message on the Environment” in February of 1970, had
been received with skepticism. Under this plan, rivers and lakes were
assumed to have a capacity to absorb waste without becoming polluted
(technically known, as already mentioned, as the assimilative capacity), and
through fair allocation of this capacity among all industrial and municipal
sources precise limits on the amount of waste dumped into a river or lake
would be assigned. 19 But the Nixon administration’s proposal, which
allowed waste discharges but would avoid pollution, did not have the full
consent of the Congress. Influential legislators disagreed with, in Representative
John Dingell’s words, “some of the industrial and municipal folks who
have ideas we should utilize the streams and lakes and oceans up to their
assimilative capacity.” 20 The newly created EPA did not intend to base its
policy on the assimilative capacity concept and seemed generally very reluctant
about market-based and other approaches that might have been interpreted
as favoring selling “licenses to pollute” (Wilson 1980, p. 376). 21
Concerns were also expressed about the state of the art in this field. “We
just don’t know enough about a river’s assimilative capacity,” objected one
Senate water expert. “The best route is no dumping at all, but that’s not what
Nixon seemed to say.” (“Pollution: The Battle Plan,” Newsweek, February
23, 1970)
The CEQ report on ocean dumping actually acknowledged that existing
knowledge of ocean pollution was either rudimentary or, in fact, did not
exist. 22 It had, in addition, been impossible to separate the effects of ocean
dumping from the broader issue of ocean pollution. The Council on