August 16, 1966
Page 19493
WATER POLLUTION
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, increasing public attention is being focused on our serious water pollution problems and the need to clean up the Nation's waterways. A recent editorial in Life magazine which strongly endorsed the Senate's unanimous approval of $6 billion Federal share for construction of water pollution control facilities, epitomized this trend in national concern.
In nearly every magazine, newspaper, and other publication, there seems to be an article or editorial on the quality of the Nation's environment and the need to expand the commitment of funds to control environmental contamination.
However, conflicts exist as to the cost of meeting this expanded commitment. The recently released survey of pollution control facilities needs by the Conference of State Sanitary Engineers suggests that only $1 billion per year is necessary to meet the demand for treatment works.
Mr. President, I do not want to see control of water pollution lost in a numbers game. The fact is that really valid information on total costs has not yet been made available and probably will not be until January of 1968 when the report requested by the Senate bill is made available. In the interim, the Senate Public Works Committee has attempted to meet those needs evidenced by information received in hearings throughout the Nation and in Washington. That information indicates that the estimated $20 billion cost is conservative, and the $6 billion Federal share is a minimum.
During our hearings I asked the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, John W. Gardner, and Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall what advice they would give the subcommittee as to how much the Federal investment in water pollution ought to be If they did not need to recognize budgetary restrictions. I think Secretary Udall's response is particularly appropriate. He said:
I know that those closest to the water pollution problem in the country, the members of this subcommittee in particular, have recognized for several years and have been saying publicly that the problem is of such magnitude that the Federal Government would have to make a very big contribution, billions of dollars, in order to lick the problem. I think the administration in its new program in essence agrees with this.
In order to create a better perspective of the demands for pollution control construction funds, I would like to cite a few statistics developed during hearings this year and relate them to the survey of the Conference of State Sanitary Engineers.
The conference reports that the State of New York has a total backlog of municipal waste treatment needs including ancillary facilities of $820,321,000. This figure does not in any way reflect information received by the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution during its hearings on S. 2947.
On April 28, Dr. Hollis Ingraham, representing Governor Rockefeller, testified that the people of the State of New York had approved, by a 4-to-1 margin, a $1 billion bond issue to finance pollution control. Dr. Ingraham had earlier stated:
The barrier is the staggering expense of .overcoming the huge backlog of needed sewage treatment works -- $1.7 billion in New York alone.
Mr. President, Dr. Ingraham is commissioner of health for the State of New York. He has excellent credentials and should know the cost of pollution control for his State. It is therefore apparent to me that the estimates of the Conference of State Sanitary Engineers, with a figure of less than 50 percent of New York's estimated cost and, less than the bonding authorization voted by the people of the State of New York, must be questioned.
If this were the only conflict within the estimates of the Conference I would be inclined to dismiss the point. However, Mr. President, the report is rampant with inconsistency.
A further example is that of the State of Massachusetts. That State is presently considering legislation which would provide for a $100 million bond authorization to finance the State's 30-percent share of the cost of pollution control. The Conference of State Sanitary Engineers estimates the total backlog for Massachusetts to be but $41,557,000. This is less than 15 percent of the estimated $300 million total that Massachusetts is expecting pollution control to cost.
In fact, Mr. President, the conference total is less than the single job of cleaning up the Merrimac River which is estimated at between $68 and $80 million. Senator EDWARD KENNEDY informed the subcommittee this year that, beyond the cost of the Merrimac, it is estimated that cleaning up the Connecticut River in Massachusetts will cost $20 million and the Blackstone River will cost $35 million.
To summarize a few other conflicts, Mr. President, I would cite these examples:
First. Conference estimate of backlog for Ohio is $38,626,000 and yet Mayor Ralph Locher, of Cleveland, estimates his city's cost to be approximately $900 million, or 25 times as great. This does not consider the other major or minor cities of Ohio.
Second. Conference estimate of the backlog for Maryland is $11,860,000 and yet Senator DANIEL BREWSTER, of Maryland, estimated the cost to the city of Baltimore alone as being $48 million.
Third. It is reported that the State of Connecticut will consider legislation next year authorizing $150 million as the State's 30 percent of pollution control. The Conference estimates Connecticut's total backlog to be $39,931,000. This is less than 10 percent of the $500 million estimated by the State.
Mr. President, the cost of pollution control is great. I am afraid no one is prepared to really recognize the full magnitude of the problem. But, if we are to have clean water we, in the Congress, cannot stick our heads in the sand.
Throughout the Nation, communities are under order, via the enforcement process of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, to clean up. They cannot be expected to comply without sufficient help from the Federal Government.
The Senate recognized this on July 13, 1966, by a vote of 90 to 0. 1 hope that this unanimity will prevail and we can get on with the job before the costs increase beyond reach or the rape of our water supply is so complete that damage is irreparable.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the excellent editorial from Life magazine be included at this point in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
OUR AIR AND WATER CAN BE MADE CLEAN
There is a good chance that 1966 will be remembered as the year when Americans finally got fed up with pollution. For 350 years we have poured filth into every body of water that we control and into the air above. Now, voters are proving at the polls that they have had enough. And what's more, they are assuming -- correctly -- that it is technically and financially feasible to do something about pollution problems long considered insoluble.
Last month the Senate passed a water pollution control bill that will cost $6.4 billion over the next five years. The vote was 90 - 0 and there was hardly any debate. At the same time, a companion air pollution bill ($196 million over three years) was passed without a nay.
No people, even Americans, are literally consumers. We are users. We eat things, wear them, operate them or burn them. We change their form, then pour them into the air as smoke and fumes, or funnel them into sewers that lead to the rivers we are killing and the lakes that are becoming mammoth cesspools.
There might be some logic to the fouling of our environment if air and water somehow appeared from mystically pure sources, flowed past us once, and disappeared, to be replaced by fresh supplies. Alas, there is just so much air above the earth and water on its surface. We cannot create more -- but can only find ways to use it more sensibly.
New Yorkers, during the drought of the past five years, became suddenly aware of the waste inherent in foul waters. While emergency drought regulations silenced many air conditioners, browned lawns to straw and banished water glasses from restaurant tables, the Hudson River was daily carrying 11 billion gallons of undrinkable, uncleanable water past the city and dumping it into the ocean. There was no real drought in New York last year. There was plenty of water but pollution had made it unusable.
We have always been able to find new sources of pure water, but those days are about over. Right now we use 400 billion gallons daily, 57% of all that is available. By the end of the century, we will be using 900 billion gallons a day -- far more than the total supply. We will have to reuse all of our water, perhaps a dozen times over in major cities.
Air pollution is perhaps more dangerous than filthy water, if for no other reason than that it is not so obvious. With the classic exception of Los Angeles, where a fluke of climate makes the problem visible, most of the poisons we breathe cannot be seen. Los Angeles may get the attention, but New York City, on an area basis, actually pumps eight times as much junk into its air.
Some pollutants lead a double life, first fouling the air, then filtering into water systems and food crops. Donald E. Carr, in his book Death of the Sweet Waters, points out that six billion pounds of lead have been burned and spread over the country since lead alkyls were first added to gasoline as an anti-knock measure in 1923 -- and that the concentration of lead in the blood of Americans is 100 times normal. It should be remembered that lead compounds were favorite poisons of the ancient Romans.
The political muscle that is developing from the outrage over pollution has had scattered but notable success across the country. It helped elect William Scranton to the governorship of Pennsylvania, when he supported tough controls on strip mining operations that pour mine acids into the state's streams. Detergent makers were forced to find new formulas when housewives found their tapwater running with a built-in foaming head.
New York voters last year supported by a four-to-one ratio (the largest margin ever on a spending measure) a referendum that would allow the state to spend $1.7 billion of their money to clean up the Hudson. Californians have pushed so hard for control of air pollution that the federal government has decided to use California standards for the mandatory smog-control devices that will be built into all American cars starting in 1968.
But while the states are reacting to the demands of their citizens with isolated pollution controls, they are not moving fast enough even to keep up with the yearly increase in pollution that we face.
On water pollution, the Senate measure is the only likely means for catching up -- and eventually getting ahead of the problem of pollution. The bill does not suggest bypassing the states by offering federal money to do the bulk of the job. Instead, it would provide 30% of the cost of sewage treatment plants, with the states and local governments paying the rest. In a sense, the bill would jog the states into leadership by offering to pay 50% of construction costs when several states agree to work together with local agencies to clean up a river system that cuts across their boundaries.
The amount of money involved in the new bill -- $6.4 billion spread over the next five years -- is a measure not of pork barreling but of the size of the job that has to be done. Most estimates of the cost of cleaning up our streams and lakes -- not to some idyllic level of purity that would allow us to drink from any of them, but simply to the point where the water will continually be usable by people or industry -- come to over $40 billion. The Senate bill would put the federal government in readiness to do its share. But the money would not be spent until the states and local units agreed that theirs was really the major responsibility.
The air pollution bill matches many of the provisions of the water bill. Its price tag is lower -- $196 million -- but it also recognizes that the chief federal role is to stir local action, to provide a rational set of standards and to ensure training and research in long neglected fields.
It is unfortunate that the Senate bills did not include a provision suggested by many experts in the field -- the so-called "Ruhr Plan." The heaviest concentration of industry and population in West Germany lies along the Ruhr River. Users of its water are allowed to dump refuse back into the river but they are charged a stiff fee for each pound of pollution they add to the stream. As a result, the Ruhr's waters are almost pure enough to drink throughout the length of the industrial basin.
Many industries in America have long argued that they cannot afford effective pollution controls -- and remain competitive. That view won't sit well with the American taxpayers who are now faced with the $40 billion bill for cleaning up past pollution. No businessman expects to get his plant buildings for nothing -- or the raw materials that go into his product. Neither should he expect somebody else to clean up -- or try and live with -- the refuse of his manufacturing process.
The air and water pollution bills are expected to come to the floor of the House later this month. Despite their expense, they should be passed. There are rivers that can be saved if we act now, and lakes that could be made fit for swimming again -- and for all of us, perhaps a few years added to our lives if the air we breathe can be made less poisonous.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, before concluding my remarks, I would like to correct one misconception created by the Life magazine editorial.
In referring to the pollution control program instituted on the Ruhr River in Germany the editorial states:
Users of its water are allowed to dump refuse back into the river -- but they are charged a stiff fee for each pound of pollution they add to the stream.
The Ruhr experience has all too often been confused, a confusion which has resulted. in the "effluent charge" or "license to pollute" controversy.
In fact evidence developed during the natural resources mission to Germany, in which I participated, is to the contrary. There is no "license to pollute" the Ruhr River. The report to the President regarding that mission clarified this point and I would like to quote from that report:
These fees are based on quantity and strength of the waste and are a means to defray the cost of cleaning waste, for the intention is that all wastes will be treated.