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Seventeen western utilities from Denver to thePacific are working on the problem of removing flyash from their smoke stacks. This problem isinteresting because in the West we have coal witha very low sulphur content, so the obnoxiousproduct of sulfuric acid is not being spewed outon the western people, but at the same time,without the sulphur, the electric precipitators whichremove the fly ash do not work quite as well. Thus,the result is trade off-more fly ash coming outof the smoke stacks than in the East, but withoutthe sulphur. We' re working on the problem of how,with western coals, to remove the fly ash so thatit isn't blown into the air.Another problem is how to take waste paper,which accumulates in tremendous tonnages in anycity, and train microbes to eat it and in so doingcome up with a by-product of protein which would,hopefully, have a composition to make excellentcattle food.On a very similar program, we're using microbes inGuatemala for three industries: coffee, rum andcane sugar, all of which create tremendoustonnages of effluent. We train microbes to digest thateffluent and thereby produce protein that wouldanswer the shortage of their cattle fodder.Concerning the discovery of high oil deposits inNorthern Alaska, the question immediately arises ofhow to transport this vast quantity of oil to theconsuming public of the United States, where it isneeded. One of the most interesting ways, whichwould not upset the environment of the Northland,as a cross-country pipeline might, is to use 500,000ton oil tankers of a new design, capable of breakingthrough the ice barrier and going through theNorthwest Passage, through Canada, and arrivingon the northern coast of New England. Thequestion is where boats of this huge tonnage couldfind ports large enough to handle them. The mostlikely port is Casco Bay, Maine.The practical thing which might prevent thepetroleum companies from going into Casco Bay isthat the bay is already polluted very heavily:we find approximately 24 municipalities and fourpaper pulp companies dumping raw sewage into thebay. If the major oil compani~s were to move in,they might be slapped with the whole bill forcleaning up the entire bay which has been pollutedby a lot of other people.We have been working to design a mechanism ofremote sensing buoys to monitor continuously forhydrocarbons floating by a point in the bay. Thesebuoys would telemeter the data to a central computerwhich would instantly tell us the location of the oiland the chemical fractions, thus pinpointing whetherit was kerosene or crude oil or whatever. Thisdata could tell us who is responsible and who oughtto be fined-because if you don't detect it veryquickly, the wind and currents will blow it over toanother side, and then there would always bethe question of who is the culprit.57