Rob Andrews: “it surprised me to know, a little over a year ago to find that rather significant quantities of chemical weapons and the…”

“it surprised me to know, a little over a year ago to find that rather significant quantities of chemical weapons and the residue of chemical weapons had been dumped off the Atlantic coast at 19 different sites. Now, it is important to understand that this dumping took place before an international treaty prohibited such dumping, so the United States was not in violation of any of its international obligations. And it is important to understand that much of this dumping took place at a time when our own Federal and State laws were either lax or nonexistent with respect to the handling of such materials. The purpose of my amendment is most definitely not to point out any wrongdoing by the Department of Defense or the services. However, it is the purpose of my amendment to do something about the problem and finding out about the scope of the problem. We are talking here about arsenic, mustard gas, other very serious and very lethal substances which have been disposed of off of our coast over a period which dates back as far as World War I and went into the early part of the 1970s. Now, what to do about this question requires a calm, factual analysis. Frankly, there would be one reaction that would say, well, we should just go find where the stuff is and dig it up and do something with it. I am not an expert in this field, but I am enough of an expert to know that that kind of hasty reaction might do a lot more harm than good.…”