what's 2 million pounds anyway?

This abomination reminds me once again of a rueful quote from Thomas Merton:

"We all proclaim our love and respect for wild nature, and in the same breath we confess our firm attachment to values that inexorably demand the destruction of the last remnant of wilderness."

Freighters could continue dumping tons of coal and other dry cargo residues into the Great Lakes indefinitely under a proposed U.S. Coast Guard policy.

Federal law and an international treaty prohibit ships from dumping waste into the Great Lakes. But since 1993, an interim policy approved by the Coast Guard and Congress has allowed freighters to wash non-toxic cargo residues off ship decks and into the Great Lakes after leaving port; the practice must be conducted at least five miles offshore.

If the Coast Guard doesn't adopt a new policy by Sept. 8, the current rule expires and the practice known as dry cargo sweeping would be banned.

Freighters dump up to two million pounds of leftover cargo -- iron ore, limestone, salt and coal -- into the lakes annually as part of routine ship cleaning operations that have been used for the past century, according to federal data.

Comments

[sven]

"Abomination" is a good, descriptive word about the practice. So is "obscenity."