Many governments give big industries permission to use the ocean for waste disposal on a grand scale. Off the southwest coast of Indonesia’s West Nusa Tenggara province near Bali, for example, a four-foot-diameter pipe runs from the Batu Hijau copper and gold mine into the Indian Ocean. The pipe spews 160,000 tons a day of a toxic sludge, consisting of heavy metals and pulverized mine cuttings, called tailings, into the ocean.
