MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Thursday, a retired U.S. Army Sergeant and others were charged with spying for the Soviets in Europe, Michael Dukakis said Reagan Administration dealings with Panama's Noriega were criminal, Iran and Iraq began formal piece talks in Geneva. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy.
MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary, we lead off with a documentary look [Focus - Dynamic Diplomacy] at the United Nations' new and bigger role as global peace maker, and then our dirty oceans [Focus - Sea of Trouble]. New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg and a top EPA official debate whose job it is to keep the sea waters clean. We close with Amei Wallach's [Essay - Gothic Supreme] look at a medieval treasured first half century.NEWS SUMMARY
MR. MacNeil: A retired U.S. Army Sergeant and seven other people have been arrested in Europe on charges of selling American and NATO secrets to the Soviet Bloc. The ex-Sergeant, identified only as Clyde Lee Conrad, was arrested in Kaiserlauten, West Germany, the location of one of the biggest U.S. military bases in Europe. Conrad served in the army for 20 years and was in charge of a confidential archive. The ring reportedly sold information about U.S. contingency plans for a ground war in Europe against the Soviets. Three of the other suspects were arrested in Sweden, the remaining four in other West European countries. The U.S. command in Europe and the State Department said they had no comment on the alleged spy ringwhich the New York Times reported had been operating for at least 10 years. Judy.
MS. WOODRUFF: Democratic Presidential Nominee Michael Dukakis today jumped on the Reagan Administration for what he called criminal dealings with Panama's leader Gen. Manuel Noriega. Dukakis on the campaign trail in Cleveland also attacked the Administration's so called indifference to the war on drugs, saying it threatens the nation's children and families. But Dukakis reserved his strongest words for the Administration's handling of Noriega.
GOV. MICHAEL DUKAKIS, Democratic Presidential Nominee: And for years while Gen. Noriega was doing business in drugs in Panama, we were doing business with Noriega. My friends, that's criminal. That's criminal. But you tell me how we can ask our children in this country to say no to drugs when we've had an Administration that couldn't say no to Noriega.
MS. WOODRUFF: Dukakis's running mate, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, was booed today when he addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Bentsen told the VFW that Gov. Dukakis is a patriot and can be trusted as a defender of American security. He was warmly received when he arrived and when he finished, but was booed by one group of veterans three times during the speech at the mention of Dukakis's name and once when he mentioned former President Jimmy Carter. On the Republican side, George Bush was in San Antonio today pledging to help minorities by giving tax breaks to businesses that locate in urban and rural enterprise zones. Bush also promised to put some incentive back into the energy business to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and to cut the capital gains tax.
MR. MacNeil: In Geneva, Iran and Iraq began the first face to face talks on a final settlement of their eight year old war. With United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez De Cuellar presiding, the two foreign ministers, Ali Akbar Velayati of Iran and Iraq's Tera Kaziz, met without the customary exchanges or handshakes in diplomatic courtesies. Perez De Cuellar has said that with the two sides deeply mistrustful of each other, the process could take years. While Iran and Iraq have traded charges of the violations of the cease-fire which took effect on Saturday, United Nations observers reported all was quiet. In Lebanon, Israeli air force helicopter gunships today raided suspected Palestinian bases near the Port City of Sidon. Lebanese police said 10 people were wounded in the six minute attack on the PLO base located in a densely populated civilian area.
MS. WOODRUFF: In Poland, riot police broke up work stoppages today in at least three coal mines in the South. Police arrested and marched strike activists through the streets of the City of Jasarbi after a convoy of police forced workers to abandon their occupation of a nearby mine. Witnesses at the mine said police forcibly ejected the miners who linked arms and refused to leave. In Gdansk, the Lenin Shipyard remains closed. According to newsmen who visited that site, Solidarity spokesmen said Lech Walesa and 1300 workers were still occupying the shipyard. The government radio said only a few hundred workers were on strike at the yard and it claimed part of the port had been reopened.
MR. MacNeil: In Burma, the socialist government bowed further to the demands of popular demonstrations and released 11 political prisoners, including the country's top dissident. Jubilant demonstrators took to the streets in Rangoon, chanting "democracy, democracy". Release of the prisoners was one of the key demands of protesters whose demonstrations have toppled two leaders in a month. Yesterday the ruling party promised to consider a referendum on ending one party rule.
MS. WOODRUFF: In this country, mixed economic news today. The government reported that the economy grew at a brisk rate last quarter, in spite of the severe shock brought on by the drought. The Commerce Department said the Gross National Product expanded at an annual rate of 3.3 percent. At the same time other numbers released show that inflation accelerated last quarter at its fastest pace in almost six years. Analysts blame that on higher consumer prices for clothing, food and gasoline. That's it for our summary of the day's news. Just ahead on the Newshour, the U.N. as peacemaker, a debate over dirty oceans, and we close with an essayist's look at a half century of medieval art. FOCUS - DYNAMIC DIPLOMACY
MR. MacNeil: As we reported, Iran and Iraq sat down today in Geneva for their first face to face meeting to settle the differences that have caused an estimated 1 million deaths in eight years of war. Presiding over the talks is the Secretary- General of the United Nations, Javier Perez De Cuellar, whose diplomacy backed by Security Council resolutions brought about an Iran/Iraq cease-fire. This success and the UN role in other trouble spots today has brought the world body some unusual praise. Western nations critical of UN shortcomings are focusing on its successes. For a British view of the new attitude, we have this report by David Selz of the BBC.
DAVID SELZ, BBC: The UN was born in June 1945 in San Francisco, a child of World War II. The good fairy did not attend the christening. From the word go, national self-interest blighted the millenial dream and the wish was ever farther to the thought.
UN SPOKESMAN, June 1945: There were many who doubted an agreement could ever be reached by these 50 countries differing so much in race and religion and culture. But these differences were all forgotten in one unshakable unity of determination, to find a way to end wars.
MR. SELZ: The oratory was grand eloquent, the hope vain, familiar UN characteristics down the years. The organization at its New York headquarters became a byword for impotence, notorious for its international bureaucracy of coddled place men, for its biases and profligacy. Even the peacekeeping forces, likely armed and easily trampled on, became suspect as toys of a UN establishment whose career interest lay more in prolonging policing operations than in solving disputes. And yet, with the UN now 43 in rattled middle age, the world has found it needs the old monster, warts and all.
SIR ANTONY PARSONS, Former British UN Ambassador: I think one has to accept first of all the limitations that the UN has no way of actually enforcing its will. It has no effective enforcement mechanism. It is an instrument of persuasion. One has to accept that. But when you get unity in the Security Council, and particularly unity between the five permanent members and within that between the super powers, then you have got very strong powers of persuasion at the UN's disposal.
MR. SELZ: What we have been seeing then after some hefty arm twisting is the last shots being fired in the Gulf War. Iraq has been fighting on its truce, suspicious of Iran's good faith, but now both are agreed to a cease-fire. Iran for its part continued to mobilize the faithful to die at the front, bit it was all a macabre charade. Iran's war effort had cracked. Hence, the stunning show of July 18th, when a year late, Iran unexpectedly announced acceptance of the Security Council Resolution 598.
SIR BRIAN URGUHART, Former UN Undersecretary General: It is much easier for governments in conflict to deal with the Secretary- General, who is no threat to them, who has no great power, or status or anything like that, who is somebody who has been unanimously elected by the entire international community as head of an organization of which they are members, both Iran and Iraq, and who is an honest broker, and I think it's purely as a prestige matter, it's much easier for governments to accede to arrangements and requests which the Secretary-General makes than it is supposing they were made by one or other of the great powers or something like that.
LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER, Former Undersecretary of State: I think the elements are first of all it has to be two countries who are not so powerful that the UN can exercise little influence on them. It has to be in a case such as I think Iran and Iraq will prove to be, one in which both powers probably have reached the end of their rope, want to find a solution or a way to bring about a cease-fire and hopefully then some way of settling their dispute but are incapable of doing it on their own.
MR. SELZ: In 1973, at the end of the Arab/Israeli October War, it was the super powers themselves who found the UN a useful face saver. At one point the Americans and Soviets were on the verge of being sucked into a direct military confrontation along the Suez Canal to underwrite a wobbly cease-fire. A Security Council resolution, for which both were grateful, bailed them out. A UN peacekeeping force did the job for them. Honor was saved.
SIR ANTONY PARSONS, Former British UN Ambassador: Had the two superpowers arrived on that battlefield, we would have been in a very dangerous situation. The UN stepped in with a Security Council resolution which brought about a cease-fire and the interposition of UN peacekeeping forces between the two contestants. This enabled both superpowers to climb down from the rather exposed positions in which they got themselves. And I don't see any other agency but the UN which could have achieved that.
MR. SELZ: The UN peacekeeping force dispatched to South Lebanon by the Security Council in 1978 was handed a mission impossible. If you're not wanted on the spot, the UN task is hopeless. Sandwiched between contemptuous Israelis with their surrogate force of Lebanese gunmen and heavily armed Palestinians, UN troops were to be constantly humiliated. The mandate had been ill defined, the reasons for it suspect. The heady days of Korea when a whole army had fought under the UN banner were long gone. These UN troops were few, their weapons light. For the Irish Force commander of the time, the UN manned through and through, final humiliation came in 1982, when the Israelis invaded Lebanon, sailing through the UN buffer zone as though his troops didn't exist. Unless the parties to a dispute consent, the UN is powerless. Earlier this year, the Greek and Turkish prime ministers previously at odds unexpectedly broke the ice. This meeting of the motherlands has paved the way for Greek and Turkish Cypriot community leaders to get together at UN headquarters on mutual ground later this month. It is another thaw in Soviet/American relations that has transformed the world scene, and because of it, the UN has been in demand to referee a whole raft of negotiations.
ALEXI PUDSEROV, Soviet UN Mission: I believe that during maybe two, three, last years, we achieved some important things here in Iran. For example, this Resolution 598, they are all over the United Nations in the Geneva Accord on Afghanistan you've mentioned this role, the activity, activities of the United Nations, in the Middle East which is increasing, which increases too. It's the language we -- Mr. Gorbachev, is our policy of perestroika or glasnost, but first of all, it's language, our conception of new political thinking and our new approach of, approach to the court, to the United Nations.
SIR BRIAN URGUHART, Former UN Undersecretary General: Obviously, a consensus between the two most powerful countries makes an enormous difference to the international climate. It removes one of the main obstacles to the functioning of the UN Security Council which has been haunting it ever since 1945 and I think it does affect the behavior of smaller and less powerful states. If they see that, as it were, the head boys are not fighting each other, but actually cooperating, they are much more likely to take a reasonable view of their own problems.
MR. SELZ: The superpower love-in has been the key to the UN's improved political fortunes and may even save it from bankruptcy. Mr. Gorbachev has agreed to pay off arrears of Soviet UN debt. All it needs now is for Mr. Reagan to follow suit. He has withheld American contributions of more than $1/2 billion. Such has been his antipathy for UN antics. It hasn't stopped him though using the UN to try to end the Gulf war.
LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER: I think the much more interesting question is whether what Mr. Gorbachev has been talking about lately, about his own interest in using the UN more, proves to be the case. And I would suspect if it does, you will find the U.S. sort of in reaction thereto becoming more involved in the UN again, itself. Although, let me hasten to say again I think either new President, Dukakis or Bush, would probably be more prepared to cooperate with the UN than President Reagan.
SIR ANTONY PARSONS: It's a great cliche to say if it didn't exist, one would have to invent it. It hasn't done what it set out to do at the beginning, which was to deter and punish aggression by means of military power and all the rest of it. I don't believe it ever will. But as an instrument of persuasion in a very different world to that which the drafters of the charter envisage, it has done very useful work. I think a lot of people now are alive who would have been dead without it. A lot of wars have actually calmed down which otherwise would be raging and so on and so forth. It's very easy to pick up its failures, but it has had its successes as well. And I think it is indispensable.
MR. SELZ: So here is the UN of today, its future uncertain, begging bowl in hand, whilst paradoxically enjoying a new lease of life. It may not be esteemed, but it is needed, the scapegoat of nations.
MS. WOODRUFF: That report from the BBC. Ahead on the Newshour, a look at our dirty oceans, a debate over whose job it is to keep the sea clean, and a look at 50 years of medieval art. But first this is pledge week on public television We're taking a short break now so that your public television station can ask for your support. That support helps keep programs like this on the air.
MR. MacNeil: For those stations not taking a pledge break, the Newshour continues now with excerpts from Vice President George Bush's speech yesterday at a campaign rally in Los Angeles. In his speech, he referred to a comment made by his Democratic rival earlier in the week. Gov. Michael Dukakis Tuesday defended his veto of a provision that would have made the Pledge of Allegiance mandatory in Massachusetts schools. Dukakis chided Bush for favoring an idea the Supreme Court had ruled unconstitutional. Yesterday Bush fired back and tried to distinguish himself in other ways from the Massachusetts Governor.
VICE PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH, GOP Presidential Nominee [Los Angeles Yesterday]: There is a profound difference between me and my opponent in this election, a difference not only of policies, but really of fundamental values. And I believe the two most important issues facing our country are jobs and peace. And that's what I will focus on if elected President, and that's what this election is all about, jobs and peace. In the last six years, we've created 17 million new jobs. 90 percent of them are full-time. The majority are in higher paying categories, and we're not creating just good jobs and good wages. We're creating better jobs at better wages and we intend to keep right on doing it The President met with some of us earlier and we reminded me that more Americans are working today, more Americans are at work today than ever before in the history of this country and a greater percentage of the work force is at work than any time in the history of this country, and they're making more money, and they're keeping more of it in their own pockets where it belongs, and instead of spending it, and sending it in to Uncle Sam, I mean, on April 15th, we are going to keep those tax rates down and hold the line on taxes. The Democrats, Democrats probably with that old Carter/Mondale misery index in mind, are running all around the country talking about the Swiss cheese economy. And as I said in New Orleans, that may be how it looks to the three blind mice, but that's not how it looks to the American people. And when they were in charge, it was all holes and no cheese at all. And now we're on the move. And so I have a program to build on what the Reagan/Bush Administration has done. Start with urban and rural enterprise zones, cut the capital gains tax rate to help small businesses get started, keep Congress from regulating business to death and slash the deficit with a flexible freeze on spending and a line item veto for the President. Today we're entering into a new era in American history, era of growth and opportunity, wherever we're strong and hopes are high, that the foundation of our pride, the people's pride, is values, old fashioned American values like family and faith, patriotism, persistence and really a belief in freedom, and I just have to insert something here. Yesterday my opponent came out swinging on of all things the Pledge of Allegiance. And what is it about the Pledge of Allegiance that upsets him so much? The Democratic Legislature, now listen to these facts, the Democratic Legislature in Massachusetts supports it; 10 years ago they required teachers to lead the pledge and that remains the law in Massachusetts today, because the legislature overrode my opponent's veto by an overwhelming vote. I would have signed that bill. Any constitutional question that someone might raise should be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, and Gov. Jim Thompson, who faced a similar choice, made the right choice, signed the same bill, and now it's law in Illinois, and let's face it, my opponent was looking for a reason not to sign that bill. I would have looked for a reason to sign that legislation.
MR. MacNeil: Vice President George Bush at a campaign rally yesterday in Los Angeles. FOCUS - SEA OF TROUBLE
MR. MacNeil: Next tonight we focus on ocean pollution. In the past year, medical waste has floated ashore on beaches, from Maine to Texas. Bacterial contamination from sewage plant break-downs and other sources forced beach closings from New Jersey to San Francisco. Environmentalists warn that the beach closings are a symptom of a national crisis, the contamination of U.S. coastal waters by millions of tons of sewage and ocean dipping. We'll discuss what can be done about our dirty oceans in a moment, but first we take a look at one area hard hit this summer. Tom Bearden reports.
TOM BEARDEN: For New York City beach goers, it has been one of the worst summers in memory. Hypodermic needles, blood vials, and other medical waste have washed up on New York beaches before, but never in the volume seen this summer. Last summer, only one beach was closed for a day. This year, all but one of the city's public beaches have been closed for at least a day. With record breaking temperatures all summer long, beach goers have been understandably upset.
BEACH GOER: It's a disgrace that you can't swim in the ocean today on Long Island.
BEACH GOER: How could this happen? And where, I mean, they should definitely find out where this stuff is coming from.
MR. BEARDEN: Authorities believe the wash-up was caused by illegal dumping. the blood vials give them an idea of the type of medical facility responsible.
BRENDON SEXTON, NYC Department of Sanitation: We have been able we think to isolate the field of inquiry to people who do blood work, blood labs, small clinics, people like that. And the people who do it are a very high risk population who are likely to have hepatitis and AIDS antibodies in their blood and that probably means addicts.
MR. BEARDEN: At the root of the problem is the fact that disposing of medical waste is very expensive. New York doesn't have enough incinerators, so the bulk of the waste has to be trucked hundreds of miles.
BRENDON SEXTON: The prices, as we understand, start at about $400 a ton. That's many thousands per truckload. This is really expensive waste. So there is a real temptation for somebody who is completely irresponsible to just flag down somebody walking by or their nephew or a cousin or something say, here's 20 bucks, get rid of the stuff.
MR. BEARDEN: New York was not the only state to have medical waste wash up on its shores. Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Texas, also experienced problems. In all, New York City authorities found several hundred syringes and several dozen blood vials. They say the few vials with infected blood were the only real health threat, but all the publicity kept thousands of would-be beach goers at home. In Surf City, New Jersey, a resort town south of New York, with no medical waste problem, business was down an estimated 35 to 0 percent.
SPOKESMAN: I personally believe there's been a lot more hype than needles.
MR. BEARDEN: Congress is now considering legislation that would authorize the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate medical waste. At this hearing in Surf City, environmentalists, waste management companies, hospitals and government officials all supported the legislation. Recently, the states of New York and New Jersey announced measures of their own.
GOV. MARIO CUOMO, New York: The purpose is to say to people we will watch you as closely as we can, with the intention of catching and punishing you if you do this thing wrong, because this is a violation against all of us. This is a fundamental sin against our living environment.
MR. BEARDEN: Gov. Cuomo proposed a strict manifest system to track infectious medical waste, a maximum penalty of four years in prison, anda fine of up to $50,000. If there's a silver lining to New York's medical waste problem, it's that it helped awake the American public to more serious threats to coastal waters, huge garbage slicks containing non-biodegradable plastics are now a common occurrence. Raw sewage is frequently dumped in the ocean after heavy rains, because treatment plants can't handle the additional water. Toxic chemicals and agricultural run-off poison fish and plant life. Ironically, the awakening has presented New York with a tide of new problems.
REP. JAMES FLORIO, [D] New Jersey: Sludge, industrial acids, the refuge of an uncaring, seemingly uncaring generation have made our ocean or threatened to make our ocean into a large septic tank.
MR. BEARDEN: New Jersey Congressman James Florio didn't mention New York by name at this hearing, but it was clearly one of the culprits he had in mind. New York City has been dumping the sludge residue from its sewage treatment plants in the ocean for years. Divers who explore near the dump site say the marine life has been severely affected.
MR. BEARDEN: What about fish life?
BOB HAYES, Diving Instructor: Very sparse, no lobsters, no fish. We see an occasional fish there, but nothing like you see when you're in the sand areas. There's no flat fish, a few black fish, that's about it.
MR. BEARDEN: Eleven years ago, Congress banned all ocean dumping, forcing a hundred municipalities to find alternative disposal methods. But New York City and eight other communities went to court and worked out a deal that allowed them to continue. They agreed to stop dumping at a site 12 miles offshore and move to a new site 106 miles at sea, where the sludge would pose no threat to coastal waters. The victory angered a lot of Congressmen.
REP. WILLIAM HUGHES, [D] New Jersey: We made it clear in 1977, when we passed the Ocean Dumping Act amendments, that we wanted to phase out the harmful sewage sludge dumping.
MR. BEARDEN: Since then, New York has invested almost 30 million dollars in barges to carry its sludge to sea. This mother ship made her first trip to the new site just nine months ago, but New York was living on borrowed time. Two weeks ago, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to ban dumping as of 1992, and the House is expected to do the same. Bowing to the political reality, New York has finally agreed to stop, although it says it needs more time to find alternatives.
HARVEY SCHULTZ, NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection: We expect to have 50 percent of our sludge out of the ocean by 1995, and the remainder of it by 1998.
MR. BEARDEN: The political surrender leaves unresolved the scientific debate which has been going on for years, whether or not treated sludge is harmful to the ocean. The city and the Environmental Protection Agency say it is not.
HARVEY SCHULTZ: So it's our representation to you confirmed by a federal agency which is our regulator that the sludge we are now disposing out there has a content of metals or chemicals which is within the safe ranges.
MR. BEARDEN: Many environmentalists disagree.
MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER, Environmental Defense Fund: Neither the city nor the EPA has any idea what happens to the metals and other toxic chemicals in the sludge once they're at the bottom of the ocean. These chemicals are neuro toxins and they accumulate in the fish and plants that live on the bottom. And once they get into the ocean, we have no idea where those substances go. All we do know is this, that they're poisonous to living things.
MR. BEARDEN: In the next few years, New York will have to choose between two alternatives, buying the sludge and disposing of it on land or incinerating it. Both options run the risk of more pollution, but environmentalists say there is no choice. 100 million Americans now living within 50 miles of the seashore. The ability of coastal waters to absorb their waste has just about reached its limit.
MR. MacNeil: Now two views on the causes and solutions for the problems we've just seen. Jack Moore is the Acting Deputy Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency. Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey is on the Environment & Public Works Committee, and is Chairman of the Environmental Oversight Subcommittee. He has sponsored bills to require the EPA to track medical waste and to end all ocean dumping of sludge by 1991.
MR. MacNeil: Senator, on the medical waste first, what would your bill accomplish?
SEN. FRANK LAUTENBERG, [D] New Jersey: Well, my bill would set up a demonstration program for three states, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, to track medical waste from the generator through the transporter to the disposer, so that there would be a manifest required to show exactly what happened with that waste, because what's happening now, it's getting away from us. We have no idea where these things are going, except when we see them on the beaches and the ocean. So this is going to force the EPA as a precursor to a national manifesting system.
MR. MacNeil: Mr. Moore, is the EPA willing to track medical waste, to be forced to track medical waste?
JACK MOORE, Environmental Protection Agency: Well, as the Administrator has said, there's no question that this is an issue that causes outrages based on what has been seen on the beaches and, in fact, we support the legislation that's passed the Senate in the last couple of weeks.
MR. MacNeil: Why hasn't the EPA been tracking or someone tracking medical waste up till now?
MR. MOORE: Well, the sense has been that as it relates to a lot of the medical waste the concern is one more social outrage and it being reprehensible as opposed to being a direct threat to health based on bacteria or viruses that are in it, and the feeling is that some of the other priority of wastes, whether they be toxic chemical wastes or municipal dumps, they were a higher priority for attention within the agency before we get to this, given that a number of the states and municipalities had been trying to get a reasonable handle on the medical waste issue with our assistance.
MR. MacNeil: You mean you think the medical waste wasn't as dangerous to people as the other toxic wastes you've made a higher priority, is that --
MR. MOORE: Right. The Congress in legislation it has passed clearly set out a rather formidable time schedule for addressing all forms of waste, infectious waste or medical waste being but one of those forms. And it's just a matter of being able to systematically address those and clearly medical waste or infectious waste is a subset of that medical waste. The time has come.
MR. MacNeil: Why hasn't, in your view has the EPA not been tracking medical waste up to now?
SEN. LAUTENBERG: Well, what you hear now is just as outrageous as EPA's neglect and Jack Moore will forgive me I know. They've had the authority to do this since 1976, and neglected to do so. And instead of coming to the Congress, if there was a doubt about their authority, and asking us for the enabling legislation to get them on with it, they chose to wait until we pushed them against the wall. Yes, the EPA Administrator did endorse our legislation, but to suggest that this isn't as dangerous as something else, does that mean that they're spending all of the agency's resources monitoring something else, baloney. What they're doing is just letting this stuff fly until it became such an issue they could no longer hide from it. That's been the problem with the agency. There are a lot of good people but they just haven't done the job they had to. Now talking about harmful effects, what does it mean when you see businesses closing and you people losing millions perhaps billions of dollars? The New Jersey shore, for instance, is a major part of our economy. People are driven away. I just flew on an airplane. The man sitting next to me, said I always used to go to the New Jersey shore for my summer, spend time at Long Beach. He said, I wouldn't go this year. And that happens in thousands, perhaps millions of cases.
MR. MacNeil: Mr. Moore, what do you say to that charge that the EPA has just been letting this drift?
MR. MOORE: Well, I don't think that that's the case at all. We've got a clear record of giving a very large amount, a substantial assistance to the states and others in understanding and coming to grips with this. I think what we're seeing on New Jersey or New York's shores so clearly this summer is also symptomatic of two other major problems. One of those problems is this continued degradation of our near coastal shorelines of one sort or another, and the second one is we've got to come to grips with waste in general, not just toxic chemical waste produced by industry, which certainly is deserving of attention and has been receiving attention, but we've got to come to grips with waste disposal in general, whether it be sludge as was pointed out in your program earlier, or just municipal dumps one way or the other.
MR. MacNeil: Well, so that we can keep this coherent, let's just talk about medical waste for a moment, then we'll come on to sludge in a moment. What should be done with dangerous medical waste, and whose responsibility is it to do it in the EPA's view?
MR. MOORE: Well, clearly one needs to identify where all these sources of medical waste are coming from that are deserving of priority attention. Just because a medical facility is generating some source of waste does not suggest that all of that waste is deserving of priority attention or special disposal. There clearly are subsets of that waste that are deserving of special attention.
MR. MacNeil: What should happen to them?
MR. MOORE: We need to identify that we probably need to ensure that there is a practice in place that tracks that material either within the site which is being generated to proper disposal, or if it's an off site disposal, such as being trucked to an incinerator maybe at another state or something like that, to make sure that it is being sent and disposed of where we think it's going?
MR. MacNeil: What do you think should be done with dangerous medical waste?
SEN. LAUTENBERG: Well, first of all, we're arguing about what's dangerous. Would Mr. Moore be content to say that those vials, blood vials, syringes, hypodermic needles aren't dangerous? Perhaps under the most technical of definitions, you might not walk away with a disease, but --
MR. MacNeil: You mean you don't need to spend any more time finding out what's dangerous?
SEN. LAUTENBERG: Of course. I mean, it's driven people away from the beaches. There's a story about a young woman from New Jersey who lay down in the sand was pricked in the shoulder by a hypodermic needle. It scared the devil out of her. She went back. Why should a day at the beach be followed by a day at the testing laboratory, at the doctor's office? We've had this debate long enough. The problem with EPA is that they have had this authority all along and they just haven't gotten on it.
MR. MacNeil: What do you the EPA could do right now?
SEN. LAUTENBERG: Right now they're going to be forced to do it via a Congressional mandate and that is to establish a system per our law that will fine people who don't report their disposal of these wastes and prepare for us, the Congress, so that we can enact national legislation a system for manifesting this stuff, as they say, from cradle to grave.
MR. MacNeil: And with this legislation pending, Mr. Moore, what is the EPA doing right now about the medical waste?
MR. MOORE: Well, we clearly have been very active in the Senator's own neighborhood working with the States of New York and New Jersey in a manifest system that they have put together in trying to find the sources of the illegal disposal probably that has resulted in the polluting of New Jersey's shores. I also need to I think respond to a comment the Senator made. There's no question but what if you find blood vials or syringes or something like that on a beach that we don't have to debate as to whether or not that is the type of waste that needs to be paid attention to, but I'm not sure that a manifest system should also get so far down as to tongue depressors used in a doctor's office or something like that. There's probably a fair amount of medical waste that could be handled in the way we handle much of our standard municipal waste. We need to make the segregation between the two or we'll create a special system for waste that clearly is overkill.
MR. MacNeil: How long will it be before there's a system in place which would discourage illegal disposers from putting into the ocean so it can come up on the beaches?
MR. MOORE: Well, I think clearly what one needs is a clearer definition as to what is needed to be closely controlled, cradle to grave, as the Senator says, and also to have a strong penalty policy built in that, indeed, if somebody wants to flaunt the laws, that the penalties that are associated with that will serve as a deterrent.
MR. MacNeil: How long should the Congress expect that should take?
SEN. LAUTENBERG: Well, we think within six months there ought to be a system in place to do this. The definition of what constitutes medical waste is very clear. You know, we're talking about syringes, hypodermics, those kinds of blood vials, et cetera, so it doesn't need a perfect definition and identification of every product in order to make sure that this stuff is not thrown in the ocean. How would Jack Moore feel if the tongue depressor that floated down the beach wound up in his two year old's mouth or something of that nature?
MR. MacNeil: Mr. Moore, is that right, is six months a reasonable time for the EPA to make these definitions and get a system in place?
MR. MOORE: It's probably pretty heroic to get a regulation promulgated, draw comment on it, and then go final within a six month period of time. You normally allow a 90 day comment period once you put your proposal out and then you've got to review those comments, modify your original idea before you go forward. I'd say that being very realistic, getting any regulation in place in six months, whether it be medical waste or anything else, is probably bordering on the unrealistic. More likely, twelve months, nine months, if everything went right.
MR. MacNeil: Sen. Lautenberg, let's move on to the sludge for the remainder of our time. What would the legislation you have sponsored do on sludge disposal?
SEN. LAUTENBERG: Well, it would end all ocean dumping of sludge by the end of 1991.
MR. MacNeil: Just to be clear, because this is a national program, where does ocean dumping of sludge occur besides off New York?
SEN. LAUTENBERG: It's done off New York, New Jersey, and there some sludge, some raw sewage, being dumped up in Boston, but sludge, the residual, after sanitary water treatment, is now dumped off the coast of New Jersey, 106 miles out to sea, but it affects the entire Eastern seaboard. I mean, people say that --
MR. MacNeil: And you would say no more after 1991?
SEN. LAUTENBERG: Right. December '91. And by the way, there has been an ocean closure law on the books since 1977.
MR. MacNeil: The law that New York City got an exemption from.
SEN. LAUTENBERG: Exactly.
MR. MacNeil: Right. Does the EPA support this legislation, Mr. Moore?
MR. MOORE: Yes. I think we can't lose sight of the fact that we've made great progress in sludge dumping being terminated based on aggressive enforcement against many cities having to go to court, so that we can now say, as we've said here today, that the only remaining place is Boston, which is in a remediation mode, or the 106 mile site that's now off of New York and New Jersey, which only persists because of the court intervening on behalf of the City of New York.
MR. MacNeil: What do you say to the man from the sanitation department in New York who was in our videotape report who said that the EPA believes that this sludge, the metals in this sludge are not dangerous and that it is safe to dump them in the ocean?
MR. MOORE: It has been and remains the policy of this agency that, indeed, the quicker we get out of the ocean dumping business, the better off we'll all be well served. It may well be that in the dumping that is occurring right now, there is no immediate evidence of acute toxicity on some of the bioder in the area, but clearly we can't appear to be associated, because we don't believe it, with the fact that there's no long-term consequences. We need to get out of the ocean dumping business. We support legislation that would mandate in 1991.
MR. MacNeil: What do people do instead of dumping it in the ocean, Senator?
SEN. LAUTENBERG: The same thing that 100 communities have done since that law was put into place, the same thing that inland communities do, what do they do, they don't truck it to the ocean. There's incineration, there's composting. There's other creative ideas that can be lent to get rid of this and other communities, thousands of communities across this country get rid of it other ways and we're just going to have to insist that New York, who has constantly fought the battle on this, does what she has to, and the communities in New Jersey as well.
MR. MacNeil: So really the purpose of your legislation is to make Boston hurry up on cleaning up its harbor and make New York stop dumping its waste 106 miles off the ocean, is that it?
SEN. LAUTENBERG: The purpose of my legislation with medical wastes and other things that we've enacted, passed through the Congress, is to stop spoiling our oceans. And sludge dumping is one of the most serious violations. There's a lot of toxic material. There 's evidence of fin rot. There's evidence of burns through the shells of shellfish. There's evidence, anecdotal evidence, that fish quantities are being reduced substantially. There's enough out there to say, listen, we have to stop abusing our ocean and turning it into the largest septic tank in the world.
MR. MacNeil: Mr. Moore, you said at the beginning this is just part of a larger problem of disposing of all kinds of waste in this country. Whose responsibility is to solve that problem from your point of view?
MR. MOORE: Well it's quite clear that the responsibility has got to be broadly shared. Clearly, EPA has a role, probably has a major leadership role in this country, in areas like this, but it's going to take more than an EPA to solve this. It's going to take state, municipality, and it's going to take changes in the citizenry's habits in this country to really get the handle on waste disposal that we're talking about. We're the most throw away society that's ever existed on this earth and frankly, we've got to change our ways of having everything in one hand and then out through the disposal, out of sight, out of mind. We just are running out of space.
MR. MacNeil: Whose responsibility is it, Senator?
MR. MOORE: Some sharing but it's largely the federal government's responsibility. States and municipalities don't have the ability to deal with these things. They can find a site, they can find a process, but the federal government has to carry its share and the EPA Administrator the other day for instance said that we need $76 billion more of sewage construction in this country. The federal government has to take a lead role. The problems that we now see come years of neglect. And you'll forgive me, it's this Administration that's been neglectful.
MR. MacNeil: We have to end it there. Mr. Moore, thank you for joining us from Washington. Sen. Lautenberg in New York. ESSAY - GOTHIC SUPREME
MS. WOODRUFF: Finally tonight, New York News Day Art Critic Amei Wallach has some thoughts about The Cloisters, a museum where time almost stands still.
AMEI WALLACH: This herb garden on a rocky crag, high above the Hudson River, is the only place in American where the 20th century meets the 12th. The George Washington Bridge just visible through the trees represents the 20th century, proof positive that engineering can be beautiful. And The Cloisters is a stand-in for three centuries of the Middle Ages beginning with the 12th. Ever since it opened in 1938 as the Metropolitan Museum's uptown branch for medieval art, The Cloisters has pleased the eye, twanged at the heart strings, and taught us a thing or two. This year, it celebrates its 50th jubilee. And it's actually begun to earn its patina of old age. There's hardly a reason in the world why The Cloisters should have worked The popery of ancient ecclesiastical detail, a limestone chapel from Spain, iron door decorations from La Moge, a carved Madonna from Strassberg, and marble columns from the Pyrenees is knitted together by a mad medley of turrets, towers, tile roof, and high broad terraces, but somehow it works brilliantly. Through beautiful objects artfully displayed, it manages to recreate a contemplative world in which monks at prayer strolled cloistered walks. It was born in a time that produced Colonial Williamsburg too, a time when it seemed perfectly fine to pretend that a reconstruction was the real thing and that we could regild the past like a movie set. You can almost agree as you wander the stone corridors, under beamed ceilings to taped Gregorian chants, stopping perhaps to peruse the columbine and buttercups in a stained glass window from fourteenth century Normandy. And you get some inkling of the difference in attitude that caused a sculptor at the height of the Middle Ages to emphasize the majesty, distanceand power of God in the stiff, angular folds of the robe that clothe the Virgin and Child from Burgundy, while a descendant chose to undulate St. Christopher's robes with freedom of movement and approachable humanity as the Renaissance began to erupt in the fifteen century. These days the pink marble apes at The Cloisters would have been enclosed in steel and glass to announce to the world that this is a museum after all and not real life and that we know the difference between that time and ours. It won't be too long though before our ways seem as quaintly incomprehensible as the ways of 50 years ago. The Cloisters was bought with $600,000 of Rockefeller money and greatly enriched with Rockefeller gifts, including the Unicorn tapestries, but it really owes its life to the frenzied obsession of a sculptor named George Gray Barnard who was a great deal more famous in his day than he is in ours. In need of money, he scavanged stone by stone throughout Europe, pestering farmers for their latest finds. He found face down a tomb effigy of a knight that was used as a bridge. He discovered a limestone relief of St. Hubert and the Stag in the wall of a pig sty. He wasn't always successful in selling his unfashionable finds. And after a time he didn't want to. He brought his pile of stones and statues home and in 1914 opened his gothic collection to the public. When he sold it to Rockefeller, it moved to four of the fifty-six acres Rockefeller had bought along the Hudson River and presented to the City of New York, the Ft. Triumph Park. Rockefeller had bought the Palisades on the opposite side of the river too to preserve the view and the illusion that time stands still. It doesn't of course, even for The Cloisters. RECAP
MS. WOODRUFF: Once again the main stories of this Thursday, in West Germany, a retired U.S. Army sergeant and seven others were charged with selling American and NATO secrets to the Soviet Bloc, Democratic Presidential Nominee Michael Dukakis accused the Reagan Administration of criminal dealings with Panama's leader Gen. Manuel Noriega, and Republican Candidate George Bush promised to help minorities by giving tax breaks to businesses which locate in urban and rural enterprise zones. Good night, Robin.
MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the Newshour tonight, and we'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.
