It's a Sea of Troubles

And so the secret is out and this invisible time bomb is what our ancestors have left us with. And it's still ticking. Edison Carter

THE FOURTH Jaws movie came out this summer, and the culprit was a living undersea menace which terrorized beachgoers.

But there was another menace in this Summer of '87--a silent, inanimate menace which has terrorized the East Coast.

Consider the facts:

--In Egg Harbor Township, N.J., a large fecal deposit closes down a stretch of water for several days.

--On Long Beach Island, N.J., a mile-long strip of supposedly "red-bagged" hospital waste, including used hypodermic needles, washes up on shore, closing down a national park for four days.

--Around Asbury Park, N.J., an oil and tar slick washes ashore, closing the beach for one day of the usually profitable Labor Day weekend.

--Atlantic City beaches are closed by fouled water, a sewage leak is suspected.

--At Ocean City, N.J., more waste, including stacks of money, come ashore over a period of about a week.

--Oxygen levels in Long Island Sound are revealed to be lower now than at any time since they have been keeping records.

--Bottle-nose dolphins beach themselves by the dozens due to what one researcher calls a defect in the immune system, immediately creating suspicion that a form of AIDS is responsible.

--Throughout the summer people complain about constricted throats, burning eyes, and skin rashes after swimming on New York and New Jersey beaches.

TRASH is making headlines, and no, Rona Barrett is not scoring higher ratings. I'm talking about the stuff we don't want any more. Millions of tons of waste--garbage, platics, hazardous waste, and even radioactive material--are produced by Americans every day. And the typical person doesn't even think he's contributing to a problem when tossing a croissant wrapper in a waste basket.

But only a decade and a half ago, the nation's conscience was raised tremendously regarding the environment. Pollution became a buzzword in the days of conservation, ecology, and the Clean Water Act. Incidentally, one of the most important facets of the movement was severely curtailing dumping into the oceans.

Nowadays, ocean dumping is illegal in 19 of the 21 states with coastlines. But the two lone exceptions, New York and New Jersey, also have some of the largest private trash hauling companies in the nation.

In the heat of competition, New York and New Jersey haulers slash rates, by hiring non-union labor, and dump trash from all over the nation into the ocean to beat landfill or incineration fees. Simple economics.

THE HIDDEN costs of these economics are no longer hard to see, or smell or feel. It almost seems that the battles waged for the environment in the '70's don't mean much to anyone anymore.

It was Jacques Cousteau who predicted that if nothing was done to preserve the oceans then the world will be unlivable in 20 years. That was 1975. Twelve years have gone by already. There may not even be another eight to go.