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WATER POLLUTION CONTROL-1966

THURSDAY, MAY 12, 1966

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AIR AND WATER POLLUTION
OF THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC WORKS,

Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 4232, New Senate Office Building, Senator Edmund S. Muskie (chairman

Present: Senators Muskie, Randolph, Harris, Boggs, and Murphy. Senator MUSKIE. The committee will be in order.

For the first time in several days of hearings we are able to get started on time and without any interruptions in sight for the morning. That will be a welcome change.

It is my pleasure this morning to welcome another of my distinguished colleagues who has had a longstanding interest in the field. I am sure that he will be reassured, as we have been, that so many of our colleagues have testified on legislation. It is a reflection of the very great interest in the Senate. I think the number is now approaching 25 Senators who have submitted statements but who have come here to tell us of their concern. When we consider this fact in the light of the fact that there are 48 Senators who cosponsored S. 2947, I hardly think it necessary to wait for the Senate to vote.

So, Senator Yarborough, it is a pleasure to welcome you this morning.

STATEMENT OF HON. RALPH YARBOROUGH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Chairman, and members of this subcommittee, I want to express to you my deep appreciation as a Member of the Senate, not merely for the privilege of appearing here to add my brief statement, but to you and your distinguished colleague from Oklahoma here who have given so much of your time and have come back day after day to hear these witnesses orally. You have heard all we can say. You know this, but I think your coming here and listening to witness after witness shows your knowledge of this great problem, your concern to see that it is cleaned up.

My concern comes partly from age, from having watched the change in the American environment. I remember the days as a boy, when I roamed the woods and we would just stoop down on our hands and knees and drink out of flowing rivers. If a person did that today, he would be drinking poison. He probably would not be around long enough to testify before a committee. In the first place, you could not drink it now, it tastes so bad and smells so horribly.

One disturbing thing, I think, in addition to the rivers, is the pollution of lakes. We have manmade lakes, and put recreation facilities and homes around them. Soon the lakes are too polluted for recreation. We live on the banks of probably the worst smelling river in America. We in the Congress have special duties in addition to our preachment to the Nation. We need to clear up the Potomac River near home.

I am glad we have a subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution that is moving to do something about it. I have the privilege of being a coauthor of S. 2947. I have coauthored or supported bills in the past by the distinguished chairman, the Senator from Maine. I have also supported and coauthored the bills by the distinguished junior Senator from Wisconsin. We had him as a speaker in my home city at Austin, Tex., last fall in the great environmental conference called environment of man.

All over the country there is a great stirring by people wanting to do something about this. It is going to cost money, and when things cost money we meet that great obstacle. I believe this subcommittee has the determination, the drive, the will and know-how to put these bills over and start doing something about a problem which has been talked about for years.

Mr. Chairman, I will ask leave that my statement be printed in full in the record.

Senator MUSKIE. Thank you, Senator Yarborough. You and I can remember the days of the "outhouse." A friend of mine humorously suggested the other day that the pollution problem would not be nearly so severe had we been content with the outhouse rather than moving to the modern bathroom which complicates the personal and private problems on the streams as a whole.

Senator YARBOROUGH. I think Chick Sales ruined the outhouse when he made it an object of humor instead of an object for the benefit of mankind.

Senator MUSKIE. Thank you very much, Senator Yarborough. Your statement will be included in the record.

(Senator Yarborough's prepared statement follows:)

STATEMENT OF HON. RALPH YARBOROUGH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE

OF TEXAS

I would like to begin, Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, by expressing to you my deep appreciation for the opportunity to appear here before you today and testify on legislation that I firmly believe to be a most important factor among those factors that are continually shaping the destiny of our great Nation. The enactment of far reaching, inclusive legislation designed to eliminate the further pollution of our Nation's already over-taxed water supply and to enable America to clean up her rivers, restoring them to their once pure state, may well be THE determining factor in the building of our future. In the days of yore the natural environment of man controlled many of his actions, but this is not the case in the world of today. As man becomes more numerous and his knowledge of science and technology becomes deeper and more profound he in turn becomes the controller of his environment. To say that we have lacked wisdom in the exploitation of our natural resources is merely an allusion to the truth. To simply say, "in the future we must do more about the problem of pollution" is but to fail entirely.

We should be doing more at this very moment, we should have done more in the past. In our failure to control the pollution of our streams and rivers we have, in essence, created a monster. The hands and fingers of this monster are the polluted rivers and streams of this nation, infected with a slime of death and decay capable of reaching into our very homes and strangling us

in the unattended filth and waste we ourselves have generated. That we must act immediately is self evident. Also, action to combat the present problem is not nearly enough. Our plans must be designed to reach back into the past and forward into the future. Our neglect of this problem in the past dictates that our programs be corrective as well as preventive in order to insure for us and our posterity a clean and healthy future, perhaps, to insure any future. Programs must be capable of growth, broad encomposing growth, if they are to keep up with the ever increasing problems caused by the growth of population and industry.

Legislation, such as the committee is considering, is a step in the right direction. Increased and extended Federal aid is not only pertinent, it is inevitable in its need for solving the problem of pollution. A vital beginning has been made in the form of the Water Quality Control Act of 1965 but to be effective this beginning must not rest on its laurels. It must, if you will, be nutured and allowed to grow into a suitable combatant capable of defending us from the monster of pollution we have allowed to develop before our very eyes.

Mr. Chairman, your Subcommitee bill, S. 2947, of which I have the privilege to be a cosponsor is designed to amend and improve the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. This bill, if enacted, would remove the appropriation limitation on expenditures for research, investigations, training, and information. It will also increase grants for water pollution control programs from $5 to $10 million per year for a 5-year program beginning in the fiscal year 1968.

Recognizing the inability of some areas to meet the great cost of programs to combat water pollution, the Subcommittee bill provides for increasing the Federal grant to 40 percent of the total cost if the State will contribute at least 30 percent. Also, the dollar ceiling for Federal grants would be removed, thereby removing the limitations presently placed on areas where massive programs of control are required.

S. 2947 reaches even further by inaugurating a long-term low-interest loan program to assist States where State and local funds are not adequate to meet their portion of cost sharing programs. These are bold moves in the right direction but I respectfully submit, Mr. Chairman, that even bolder action may be needed to win our battle with pollution. There are several other bills pending before your Subcommittee one of which, S. 2987, is the Administration's recommendations.

S. 2987 is designed to bring together all the activities aimed at water pollution control in a single basin into a unified and coordinated attack. I believe a combination of the ideas set forth in S. 2947, S. 2987 and other pertinent bills that have been suggested will be determined, in the end as the legislation needed for controlling and eliminating the further desecration of the nation's rivers and streams.

Mr. Chairman, I want to conclude this testimony by commending you and the other members of your Subcommittee for the excellent work you have done thus far. I am sure that your Subcommittee will make an accurate evaluation of the forms of suggested legislation and draft a bill capable of meeting the challenge. I stand ready and willing to endorse, with you, the effective and far reaching legislation that must be enacted if we are to survive the devastating effects pollution is already having on our nation.

Thank you again for this opportunity, Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee. It has indeed been an honor to speak on this most important issue. Senator MUSKIE. We have a distinguished witness from the House of Representatives, who also has had a longstanding interest in this field.

It is a pleasure to welcome Congressman Charles A. Vanik, from Ohio.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES A. VANIK, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO

Representative VANIK. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I have a very brief statement. I want to take this opportunity to speak in support of S. 2947 and the increased Federal participation which it contemplates in connection with the water pollution problem.

However, as presently drawn, this legislation provides no relief which I can foresee for the special problem of the pollution of Lake Erie, which alarmingly threatens to make this large mass of water unfit for use by humans and reduced in value for industrial purposes which require wholesome water.

In my own lifetime observation I have witnessed the degeneration of this once fine body of water-where the fishing only recently flourished as an industry. While organic pollution is still persistent in Lake Erie, the overwhelming pollution consists of billions of gallons of industrial waste dumped into Lake Erie by heavy industries on the River Rouge, the Maumee, the Cuyahoga, the Chagrin, at Erie, Pa., and at Buffalo. The industrial pollutants are infinitely greater than the nonindustrial contribution.

As these pollutants have poured into the lake, they have settled in the lake bottom and remain there, multiplying the destructive effect on new waters passing through the lake. Public Health Service experts have measured the expanded lake bottom area of polluted deoxygenized water which destroys fish life and potability.

One of the causes of the intense pollution of Lake Erie, and the entire Great Lakes area for that matter, results from the near absence of water treatment after use by Great Lakes industries compared with a substantially higher degree of water treatment of waters returned to the rivers and inland waterways. A steel mill or petrochemical industry operating on rivers and streams of inland America does remarkably more to clean up its water than its Great Lakes counterpart.

The fact of the matter is that these industries on the Great Lakes are utilizing industrial water in reckless disregard of its future value and operate at a tremendous and unfair competitive advantage over their counterparts operating in the Ohio Valley.

The problem of Lake Erie pollution is so critical that it demands massive and instant attention before its pollution becomes an utterly hopeless dilemma. All of the funds authorized by your bill would not be sufficient to meet the Lake Erie problem-the cost would probably run into the billions.

Although this legislation removes the limit on any given grant, those in charge of the administration of this act would undoubtedly endeavor to spread these funds to provide a national or regional effect rather than concentrating them on a priority of need.

We face a second problem in connection with your bill. Although this bill contemplates a 30-percent grant, my community is unable to provide its matching resources. Our city treasuries are as deplete as our lake. If the State were induced to contribute one-third of the cost-and there is no prospect that this will soon occur-my community of Cleveland is unable to make its commitment to the gigantic program which would be required.

It would be helpful if this legislation were amended to calculate as a city's contribution not only its own waste treatment expenditure, but also the waste treatment expenditures of industrial users. This would prompt public authorities to insist on the correction of industrial pollution and utilize or develop laws to precipitate pollution controls. With this kind of a provision, incentives would be developed to control industrial as well as public contamination of our fresh waters.

I would also hope that this legislation would embody proposals to develop standards of water use and recovery on an industry-by-industry basis. A steel mill wherever situated uses water in much the same way. The treatment of water after use by a steel mill should be substantially the same whatever the water source and wherever it flows after use. The same principle could be applied to the various petroleum and chemical industries. Standards for industrial use of water would create a uniform, nationwide approach to the problem-and no one industry in any particular place would be singled out for overhead expenses in water purification not undertaken by its competitor. With uniform standards and nationwide compliance, no one plant would have a competitive advantage over its counterpart in the same industry.

Finally, I would urge that this legislation be amplified to provide for demonstration grants free of contribution by State and local subdivisions in special interstate and international waters like Lake Erie. Regardless of what is done hereafter at the source of Lake Erie pollution-very little can be done to eliminate the repollution process which takes place by the spread of polluted matter at the lake bottom. This material must eventually be removed by dredging, forced air, or by recovery vehicles-such as have been recently devised for undersea mining and module recovery. Local funds cannot be dredged from visible tax sources to finance such an undertaking. This kind of a program requires the strong helping hand of the Federal Government. I cannot overstate the desperate nature of the Lake Erie pollution problem-a cancer at the industrial heart of America which threatens the economic future of the entire Midwest.

Senator MUSKIE. Thank you, Congressman, for your thoughtful and pertinent statement and your very helpful suggestions.

On the question of the total amount that would be authorized, it is interesting that there are always two points of view on this. There are those, despite the overwhelming support that S. 2947 has had in these hearings, who think that the bill asks for too much. I agree with you that although the amount that it would authorize is a substantial increase over what we are now doing, that it still falls short of meeting the problem totally.

On the question of treatment of industrial wastes, the bill does provide for demonstration projects to demonstrate the feasibility of constructing waste treatment plants to deal with compatible industrial wastes. I think it is the belief of most members of the committee, if not all, that we ought to strive toward the objective of treatment plants that will deal with both industrial and municipal wastes. I hope that we can move in that direction. This is the reason why the demonstration program is included.

In terms of another point that you made, the Lake Erie and Great Lakes problem is a very severe one requiring urgent attention. Of course, other parts of the country find that they also have very difficult problems. Much as we sympathize with the need of the areas adjacent to the Great Lakes, we cannot ignore the needs of other parts of the country as well. But I do think the Lake Erie problem is one that ought to be a warning to the rest of the country, because of the very great magnitude.

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