The Nation - News from Nov. 19, 1987

America’s coastal waters from Cape Cod to California are growing more polluted each year, and soon it will be too late to reverse the tide, a marine scientist warned Congress. “If we don’t do it now, the cost for turning it around in five or 10 years from now will be so exorbitant we won’t be able to do it,” said George R. Hampson, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution. Hampson, state officials, environmentalists and coastal-state lawmakers painted a bleak picture of the state of the oceans at a House subcommittee hearing. The ocean experts called for more funding for pollution research and control.