Proceedings of the First International Conference on Waste Disposal in the Marine Environment. University of California, Berkeley, July 22–25, 1959

573 Pages·1960·17.497 MB·English

by  E. A. Pearson (Eds.)

PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON
WASTE DISPOSAL IN THE
MARINE ENVIRONMENT
University of California, Berkeley.
July 22-25, 1959
Edited by
E. A. PEARSON
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1960
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PREFACE
This volume contains the complete texts of papers which were presented
at the First International Conference on Waste Disposal in the Marine
Environment, held at the University of California, Berkeley, California,
between July 22 and July 25, 1959.
Erman A. Pearson, Editor
SPONSORING EXECUTIVE
ORGANIZATIONS COMMITTEE
University of California Chairman:
Sanitary Engineering Research
Erman A. Pearson, Associate
Laboratory, Berkeley,
Professor of Sanitary Engineering,
Institute of Marine Resources,
University of California,
La Jolla
Berkeley
University Extension, Berkeley
California State Water Pollution Paul R. Bonderson, Executive
Control Board Officer, State Water Pollution
Control Board
in cooperation
Lawrence A. Canning, Principal
with Extension Representative,
Engineering and Sciences
World Health Organization Extension, University of
United States Public Health California, Berkeley
Service
United States Fish and Wildlife Kenneth L. Downes, Assistant
Service Head, Engineering and Sciences
National Institutes of Health Extension, University of
National Park Service California, Berkeley
United States Coast and Geodetic
Survey Percy H. McGauhey, Professor
Corps of Engineers, United of Sanitary Engineering and
States Army Director, Sanitary Engineering
University of California School Research Laboratory, University
of Public Health of California, Berkeley
The Hancock Foundation of the
University of Southern J.E„ McKee, Professor of
California Sanitary Engineering, California
The State of California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Departments of:
Richard D. Pomeroy, Consulting
Fish and Game Civil and Chemical Engineer,
Water Resources Pasadena, California
Natural Resources
Public Health
INTRODUCTION
ERMAN A. PEARSON Conference Chairman
Associate Professor of Sanitary Engineering,
University of California, Berkeley, and
Chairman, Research Consulting Board,
State Water Pollution Control Board
Stimulation leading to development of the First International Conference
on Waste Disposal in the Marine Environment was generated by the Submarine
Outfall Research Consulting Board of the California State Water Pollution
Control Board and its Executive Officer.
As early as 1955 the California State Water Pollution Control Board
recognized the need for a coordinated program for evaluating and planning
research relating to waste disposal in marine waters. A report was developed
for the State Board in December 1955 summarizing the factual information
bearing on marine waste disposal and recommending specific areas of
research effort that would develop information needed for the solution of
urgent problems in this field. On the basis of these recommendations, the
State Board decided to concentrate its research efforts on certain specific
aspects of this problem area. In 1956 the State Board engaged a Submarine
Outfall Research Consulting Board, consisting of Erman A. Pearson, Sc.D.,
as Chairman·, Jack E. McKee, Sc.D.; and Richard D. Pomeroy, Ph.D., to
assist Paul R. Bonderson, Executive Officer of the State Board. The function
of the consulting board was to aid the State Board in planning and to act on
behalf of the State Board in guiding the Board 1 s submarine outfall research
program for the purpose of assuring to the maximum extent possible, that:
1. The scientific and technical data obtained from the research
investigations could be interpreted and evaluated by water pollution
control authorities·,
2. The results of said research would be readily applicable to
the practice of ocean outfall disposal of wastes-, and
3. All phases of the submarine outfall research program would be
properly coordinated.
Since 1956, the State Water Pollution Control Board has supported seven
different research investigations amounting to an average annual expenditure
of over #200,000, ranging from a rather complete oceanographic survey of
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2 Waste Disposal in the Marine Environment
the continental shelf area of southern California to the evaluation and
development of laboratory bioassay methods.
Some of the most glaring deficiencies observed by the research consulting
board relative to implementing the desired research program were as follows:
1. A lack of fundamental scientific data bearing on the subject.
2. A great shortage of adequately trained scientists and engineers
needed to work on the basic investigative or research phases of marine
waste disposal problems.
3. Inadequate communication between the workers in the field·, the
engineers generally not properly informed about what is known or unknown
about the marine environment·, and most scientific workers in the various
disciplines uninformed as to what the practical engineering and
economic problems are or might be, as well as lacking in specific
scientific background relative to the known characteristics and behavior
of wastes.
The objectives of this Conference, therefore, are to bring together scientists
and engineers concerned about marine waste disposal, to encourage an
exchange of knowledge and experience on an international basis, and to
stimulate research in this broad subject area.
The detailed planning and organization for the Conference has been in the
hands of the Research Consulting Board of the State Water Pollution Control
Board and its Executive Officer, assisted by a Conference Advisory
Committee comprising representatives of interested university, state, and
federal agencies.
Primary sponsorship for the First International Conference on Waste
Disposal in the Marine Environment is as follows:
University of California
Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory, Berkeley
Institute of Marine Resources, LaJolla
University Extension, Berkeley
California State Water Pollution Control Board
In addition to the primary sponsors the following agencies participated in
the financial support for the Conference:
United States Public Health Service
National Institutes of Health
United States Navy
Office of Naval Research
The Corps of Engineers, United States Army, in addition to serving as a
cooperating agency, will make available their San Francisco Bay Model for a
field inspection and working "tracer demonstration" on the last day of the
Conference.
Introduction 3
The following agencies and/or organizations served in a cooperating
manner in the support and planning of the Conference and much credit is due
each for their helpful cooperation:
World Health Organization
United States Fish and Wildlife Service
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
National Park Service
The State of California Departments of
Fish and Game
Natural Resources
Public Health
Water Resources
School of Public Health, University of California
Allan Hancock Foundation, University of Southern
California
Examination of the technical program for this Conference reveals that
the subject of marine disposal of radioactive wastes has been omitted. This
was not an oversight; it was omitted purposely from the program since it
is the plan of the staff of the University of California 1 s Sanitary Engineering
Research Laboratory to hold a Conference on the general subject of Radioactive
Waste Disposal (including marine aspects) in the near future. This Conference
will be chaired by Professor Warren J. Kaufman, who has been conducting
research on many aspects of this problem during the past decade, the major
portion of it at the Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory at Richmond.
Without the valuable assistance and counsel of representatives of the
sponsoring and cooperating agencies and organizations, the plan and program
for this Conference could not have been developed. Also, the gracious
assistance and cooperation of the many program contributors, especially
those from distant lands, is gratefully acknowledged.
It is hoped that the Conference will prove to be both stimulating and
refreshing to the participants who have dedicated at least a portion of their
scholarly efforts to a subject of concern to all society - but generally
studiously avoided - that is, scientifically sound and economic waste disposal,
in this case, disposal in the marine environment.
WELCOMING
ADDRESS
ROGER REVELLE
Director,
Scripps Institution of Oceanography,
university of California, La Jolla
This First International Conference on Waste Disposal in the Marine
Environment is in some sense a milestone, because it marks an organized
recognition ol the intimate relationship between the scientific study of the sea
and man's use of marine resources.
One of the resources of the sea, both actual and potential, is its
availability for the disposal of the waste products of our industrial civilization.
The giant volume of the oceans, the relatively rapid stirring of the ocean
waters by currents and turbulent motions, the opacity of the waters which
covers unsightly accumulations, the facts that the ocean basins are great
holes in the ground and that we, as land mammals tend to think of the oceans
as somehow alien to our normal living, all make it seem logical to us that we
should hide our wastes in the sea. And indeed marine waste disposal would
be logical and proper, were it not for the fact that the oceans contain many
different kinds of resources, some of which may be seriously diminished in
usefulness by the indiscriminate dumping of wastes.
The key word here is "indiscriminate." I am convinced that if due care
is exercised, based on adequate scientific knowledge and with generous
respect for other peoples 1 uses of the oceans, very large amounts of wastes
can be safely disposed of at sea.
But, for a variety of reasons, such care and respect may be difficult to
maintain. The insidious nature of pollution of the aquatic environment often
makes it hard to demonstrate that any harm is being done until too late. The
fact that the waters and most of their resources are not private property but
are the common property of a large community (in the case of the high seas,
the whole world) means that what is everyone's business often becomes no
one's business. The fact that a short range economic benefit can often be
gained by marine disposal, while many of the other potential marine resources
are only partially developed, is often used as a socially effective argument
for careless or destructive disposal.
Some of the conflicts between different uses of marine resources can be
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Waste Disposal in the Marine Environment 5
resolved by more adequate scientific knowledge, which is often capable of
indicating that supposed problems really do not exist, and frequently suggests
the basis of technical improvements that can make the uses of different
resources compatible. There will always remain cases where incompatibility
exists, and hard decisions have to be made. Here also, scientific knowledge
is essential in order that decisions can be made on the basis of information
rather than emotion.
I note that the agenda of your Conference does not include any discussion
of the disposal of radioactive wastes, yet this type of disposal presents some
of the most serious problems that will face our society over the next fifty
years. We are at the threshold of an incredible growth of the peaceful uses
of atomic energy, and the amounts of artifically radioactive materials that
will have tobe disposed of in the future are far greater than all those produced
to date by testing nuclear weapons. Particularly for low level wastes,
careful consideration will have to be given to ocean disposal, especially for
countries with small, densely populated land areas and long seacoasts. The
proceedings of your Conference will certainly be helpful for this set of
problems, however. Everything we learn about the disposal of other types of
wastes will help us to know what to do with artificially radioactive materials.
Biologists and oceanographers, when making recommendations about
waste disposal into the marine environment, often tend to pile safety factors
upon safety factors to arrive at a quite unrealistic result. I believe this is a
thoroughly unfortunate practice, not only because it is unscientific but, more
important, because the resulting recommendations are unconvincing. Where
uncertainties exist because of inadequate knowledge, a conservative position
should be chosen; that is, one that may err on the side of protection of other
resources. But each assumption and each step in the calculations should be
fully described, so that an impartial reader may make an independent evalua­
tion. My welcoming advice, therefore, to this Conference is: Be scientists,
don!t be special pleaders.
FIXED AND CHANGING VALVES IN
OCEAN DISPOSAL OF
SEWAGE AND WASTES
A M RAWN
General Manager Emeritus, Los Angeles
County Sanitation Districts, and
Chairman, California State Water
Pollution Control Board
Some thirty years ago, the subject of this Conference would have been
reduced to much simpler definition and proportions. Indeed, if this meeting
had been held in 1930, or a little before, the "Marine Environment" wouldn't
have been given much, if any, thought. Discussion would have centered on
much narrower objectives, principal among which would probably have been;
(1) the anticipated size and extent of a sewage field over an operating ocean
outfall, and (2) how to prevent the sewage field from reaching nearby shore
waters.
And so it may be of some interest and advantage, as a preliminary to the
learned discussions which will follow mine, to discuss briefly, as to ocean
disposal of sewage plant effluent: (1) What is the stake in this operation? (2)
What were the pioneer accomplishments in this direction? and (3) What lies
ahead in the use of this economical sanitary achievement?
The great economy inherent in the discharge of urban sewage and
industrial wastes into nearshore water for final disposal is apparent to all
who will investigate. It is doubly apparent to those charged with the
responsibility of disposing of such wastes without excessive cost to the
public or menace to public health. If the ocean, or one of its arms, can be
reached with a sewer outfall, within the bounds of economy, the grim spectre
of an expensive complete treatment plant grows dimmer and dimmer and
dimmer until it fades entirely and, to the great satisfaction of those who have
to gather funds for the public budget, as well as they (you and I) who have to
pay the bill, the good old ocean does the job for free.
And small wonder that we look to the sea for this assist. Its vast area
and volume, its oxygen-laden waters, its lack of potability or usefulness for
domestic and most industrial purposes, present an unlimited and most
attractive reservoir for waste assimilation.
To be able to relegate the entire job of secondary sewage treatment to a
few holes in the end of a submarine pipe and the final disposal of the effluent
to the mass of water into which the fluid is jetted, and to accomplish this
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