Week's Watch

Each year New Jersey beaches are swept by a "red tide" of tiny organisms that redden the sea, give swimmers rashes and threaten the shore area's ecology and economy. Health officials trace this phenomenon to the "dead sea" outside New York Harbor, a region devoid of marine life where barges routinely dump the city's garbage and sludge (treated sewage). To worsen matters. New Jersey itself dumps sludge offshore, and so does Pennsylvania.

Last week New Jersey Governor William T. Cahill took drastic action. He signed a bill that could force his state's dumpers to move as far out as the continental shelf--in some places 100 miles offshore. The bill poses some complex problems. It may cost sludge-barge operators more than $50 million a year for oceangoing tugs and crews. It will not stop New York City and Philadelphia from continuing to dump their own muck into New Jersey waters. Nor will Cahill's suggested limit help the Atlantic, which is already partially polluted. Still, his move is likely to end a grim impasse and even clean up some filthy beaches. As he put it: "We must realize that we can no longer throw our wastes away because there is no 'away.' "

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Though no tankers have foundered around Bermuda, there are ominous signs of growing oil pollution in the area. For one, the island's famous pink beaches are now marred by traces of tar. Another sign shows up in studies made by David Wingate, a government conservationist. In 1968, he found oil clotting the underfeathers of 1 in every 100 longtails, a graceful sea bird that breeds in Bermuda. This year the ratio rose to 1 in 4. Wingate believes that floating particles of tar-perhaps caused by tankers pumping, out their tanks, smear the birds as they sit on the water. Since longtails die if oil sticks to their wings or is eaten in preening, their numbers are declining.

But Wingate also reports a bright spot amid the goo. The Bermuda cahow, a rare marine bird supposedly doomed by pesticides flushed into the ocean, is apparently staging a comeback. This year the world's last 24 pairs of cahows have produced twelve healthy chicks. A likely reason, Wingate thinks, might be that the rising tide of floating tar is at least temporarily absorbing the harmful pesticides.

In most states, gasoline taxes build roads--inviting more cars, more taxes, more roads and so on. Oregon has a different idea. In the nation's most anti-"growth" state, where bumper stickers proclaim SAVE OREGON FOR OREGONIANS, the legislature has just passed a bill that would channel 1% of all state gas-tax revenues into building bicycle lanes and footpaths. These paths would be built along highways, streets and in parks. The bill also says that the state may restrict paths to nonmotorized vehicles. If Governor Tom McCall signs the bill into law, Oregon's biennial budget will include about $2.6 million for pedalers and pedestrians. Last week the U.S. Transportation Department promised to supplement state funds for bike-path construction, hiking Oregon's potential two-year take to as much as $4.9 million. -

Anyone who lives near a paper mill knows that smell--a rotten-egg, spoiled-cabbage stink that pours forth when wood pulp is cooked to produce paper. Now, thanks to a small industrial furnace company's work in Muskegon, Mich., the awful stink may be on the way out.

The secret is an afterburner developed by the Blu-Surf Division of Hayes-Albion Co. of Jackson, Mich., and installed on a stack of the S.D. Warren Co., a paper mill whose emissions have long irritated Muskegon residents. Paper mills smell because they emit sulfide and methyl-mercaptan gases. Instead of venting those gases into the air, the destinking system sends them into a special furnace fed by pressurized air and natural gas. The fumes are then forced through a flame that burns at 1350DEG F., which is the oxidation point of the sulfides and mercaptans. The resultant oxides are virtually odorless.

The afterburner system is far cheaper than conventional antismell devices: $60,000 for the S.D. Warren installation, says a company spokesman, v. about $1 million to $1.5 million for a rotary kiln of the same operating capacity. It also works.

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