The State - News from Nov. 19, 1985

All the Rev. Craig Rice wants to accomplish is a little humanitarian outreach, but federal and local officials are not very happy about his idea of dumping 34,000 bottles containing religious messages into the Pacific Ocean. The leader of Current Evangelism Ministries in Lodi has been practicing “bottle evangelism” for 18 years without any interference, but a recent article in a local newspaper caught the attention of some environmentally-minded citizens who called the U.S. Coast Guard to protest the dumping. Rice, 40, who planned to take a 60-foot chartered fishing boat 200 miles out to sea from Sausalito last weekend, was visited by Coast Guard officers, who told him he would be violating federal laws on ocean dumping if he did not get a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency, a process that can take up to three years.