Smoke on the Water: Incineration at Sea and the Birth of a Transatlantic Environmental Movement

n a wintry morning in early December 1983, while at her home in Harlingen, Texas, Sue Ann Fruge received an unexpected phone call.The voice on the line invited her to Washington, DC, to testify before the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries.Surprised and excited, Fruge packed her bags with scientific reports, medical records, pictures, and dozens of letters from fellow citizens of the Lower Rio Grande Valley-just a tiny portion of the material she had collected as coordinator of the Gulf Coast Coalition for Public Health (GCCPH).Fruge's goal was to challenge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) support for and investments in a new method for the disposal of toxic industrial wastes: ocean incineration. 1Ocean or at-sea incineration meant the offshore destruction of the chemical by-products of industry aboard ships equipped with burning chambers and smokestacks.In theory, this process was safe, disposing of tons of poisonous waste at sea, far from inhabited land.In practice, it released tons of dangerous compounds directly into the sea, contaminating the seawaters' biochemical structure and jeopardizing entire coastal communities.It was Fruge's first time in such a high-profile setting as a congressional hearing.