> The water is going to take all of the people who did it right, and all of the people who did it wrong, and average their actions together into a single number

> The water is going to take all of the people who did it right, and all of the people who did it wrong, and average their actions together into a single number, the amount of contamination. I imagine that batteries, for one, would tend to sink to the bottom of the ocean (if not gulped up by a large animal), and would thus cause highly concentrated local contamination. It would really depend on exactly where the batteries were thrown overboard on how much damage each one caused. Otherwise I agree with what you're saying.