Congressional bill would fund cleanup of DDT dumped off So Cal coast Play

Tons of deadly DDT poison that was dumped in the ocean about 20 miles from Malibu may get cleaned up. A U.S. congressman from California and a U.S. senator have introduced a bill to start the process.

Half a million barrels of toxic waste were dumped into the ocean between the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Catalina Island after World War II.

The LA Times reports that dozens of ecotoxicologists and marine scientists are trying to fill in key data gaps, and when they investigate one disaster they find many more.

A UC San Diego research team set out to map and identify as many barrels of DDT as possible on the seafloor and ran into a multitude of discarded U.S. military explosives that were dumped during World War II.

Thirteen areas of the Southern California coast were approved by the U.S. government for the dumping of military explosives, radioactive waste and various refinery byproducts, including 3 million metric tons of petroleum waste.

Congressman Salud Carbajal and Senator Alex Padilla are behind the bill. They propose spending $6 million a year to map out the extent of the contamination on the seafloor and track how the poison is spreading through the water and the food web.

If it passes Congress, it would still have to be signed into law by the president.