CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE
May 24, 1967
Page 13746
LYNDON B. JOHNSON AND WATER FOR PEACE AND PROGRESS
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, this is an auspicious week for the United States, for world progress and cooperation. Yesterday, the first International Water for Peace Conference convened. An estimated 5,000 delegates -- administrators, officials, technicians, and diplomats -- from more than 90 nations are meeting to discuss the use and preservation of one of man's most precious resources -- water.
It is a day when another of President Johnson's dreams take a giant step toward reality. It was just a year and a half ago that the President said to a group attending a desalting conference here in Washington:
The earth's water belongs to mankind. Together we must find ways to make certain that every nation has its fair share and that there is really enough of it for all mankind.
The President backed up his statement with a promise:
We will join in a massive cooperative international effort to find solutions to man's water problems.
The Water for Peace Conference which grew out of that promise goes beyond the exchange of technical data. It is a conference aimed at formulating international water policies and programs.
It is a massive international effort, sponsored by the United States, to encourage nations to put existing water technology to work in the interest of peace, growth, and progress.
Never before has such an international assembly taken place in Washington. Never before has such a comprehensive conference on water dealt with every conceivable facet of water use and development. Discussions range from water for human use to water for industrial use; from desalting the ocean to flood control; from pollution abatement to water for irrigation and sanitation; from conservation to water quality control; from the technical to the political.
While grappling with the current crises in Vietnam and the Middle East, President Johnson has not forgotten fundamental resource programs so desperately needed at home and abroad.
He has never stopped pressing for a world without want.
He has never stopped pressing for a world in which water problems would unite rather than separate, because he knows -- as a man from the Southwest knows -- the elemental importance of water resources as a base for cooperation, friendship, and common projects for progress.
In 1965 the President told a group of water experts:
In a sense the whole story of man is revealed in his search for dependable water supplies. Where there has been too little, wars have been fought over what there was. Where there has been too much, great cities and flourishing agriculture have been engulfed and destroyed. Where there was enough -- and where people could depend upon it and where the people controlled it, civilization has blossomed and has endured.
This is the vision of a man who would share with the free nations of the world the bounties of water for peace -- just as we have shared the bounties of electrical power in atoms for peace, and the bounties of our farm riches in food for peace.
The urgent need to move water programs forward rapidly is not based on unsupported claims.
Every day a half billion people use polluted water as their only source of water.
Every day 250,000 new people are added to the world's water user population.
Every day competition between the water "haves" and "have nots" intensifies.
Every day -- at home and abroad -- we see the ravages of too little water in drought, or too much in flood.
The technicians from all over the world who will be trained as a result of this conference are the men of the front lines in a war against the attrition of a basic natural resource. The combined intelligence and administrative talents represented by the Water for Peace Conference are practical weapons in a very practical struggle -- a struggle against thirst, drought, disease, impoverishment.
Have we overstated the problem? Is water such an essential ingredient that it necessitates money and time and men to preserve it and use it wisely.
Again, the President's words:
If science can unlock the door to an unlimited supply of pure and drinkable water, I think it will be an event in human history as significant as the harnessing of the atom.
Man lived for millennia before harnessing the power of the atom. He cannot live long without water. It is my belief that President Johnson is urging this country on a proper and noble course as he seeks to use the gifts of nature for the benefit of mankind.
The Water for Peace Conference is a new and wise step in that direction. Let us support it, utilize its recommendations and give credit to a President whose commitment to the development of the world's resources will some day stand as a monument to his administration.
As a timely illustration of that commitment, I ask unanimous consent to insert in the RECORD a copy of the President's remarks when he signed Senate bill 270 a few days ago authorizing the construction and operation of a new 150-million-gallon desalting plant in southern California.
There being no objection, the remarks were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT UPON SIGNING S. 270, CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATION OF DESALTING PLANT IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, MAY 19, 1967
Mr. Vice President, Members of the Cabinet, Distinguished Members of the Congress, Ladies and Gentlemen:
For many centuries, men have been searching for ways to produce fresh water from our oceans. Three hundred and fifty years before the birth of Christ, the ancient Greeks were struggling to try to solve that problem.
Today, with the signing of this bill, here in the East Room of the White House, we take a step toward the end of that struggle that was begun so many years ago. Today we begin the greatest effort in man's history to produce water and electric power from the sea.
This bill makes possible a new desalting plant which will more than double the world's total capacity for desalting water.
And in the process, it will lower considerably the cost of making fresh water from the sea.
Two years ago, when speaking at an international meeting on desalting, I asked the Congress to authorize this plant for us: to make full use of today's scientific knowledge and to produce, by 1970, 100 million gallons of fresh water per day.
Two years ago that seemed to all of us a very ambitious goal. But this plant will produce not 100 million gallons, but 150 million gallons – 50 percent more than we even dared to predict.
Each hour, each day, it will produce more electric power than the Hoover Dam produces.
This plant alone will not suddenly and overnight make our deserts bloom. But more than anything that we have done yet, it does point to the day when lands now dry and empty will sustain life and will feed the people of the world.
In our own country, we know, I think, what hardship is caused when neighbors have to depend on a single river for their water supply; and when we must share those meager resources with each other. One single stream – the Colorado River – must now serve seven dry states, and must provide water in addition for many of our good neighbors in Mexico.
For years, that stream has been the source of much too little water – and too many arguments. It has been the subject of quarrels, lawsuits, interstate compacts, international treaties, and has affected elections from time to time.
All of that worry, all of that effort, added not one new drop of water to that great stream.
This bill will help us change all of that. Mexico, the states of the west and the southwest need more water, and they need that water now.
This bill will help them get it.
This bill, as you know, marks the beginning, not the end, of all of our efforts.
Our sights are set on a whole family of desalting plants – to help not only our coastal communities, but our inland towns also, which are troubled by brackish water supplies.
Some of these new plants will be powered by atomic energy.
Others will be fired by coal, gas, or oil. Others – some day – may even get part of their energy from reconstituted waste products.
Until we build those plants, we are going to continue to face very urgent water problems.
With every tick of the clock, more people are being born into this world. As their need grows for food, clothing and industry, our water tables continue to drop. This venture – this venture that we are launching – must be the first of many ventures of this nature throughout the world.
So many people deserve credit for this success this morning that I dare to mention not even one name. But I shall just have to refer to a few who have come in and out of our office in the months that have gone by.
Members of the Senate, like Senator Jackson, Senator Anderson, Senator Kuchel, almost all the members of that body.
Congressmen Craig Hosmer, Wayne Aspinall, Harold Johnson, Richard Hanna, Ed Reinecke; my good friend Chet Holifield; my friends from the California delegation; Bernie Sisk, and others.
Secretary Udall, and all the people in the Interior; Assistant Secretary Diluzio.
I don't want to overlook the Mayor of Los Angeles because I made him come in and ante up a little extra when the going was a little hard. I guess he appropriated some of it to bring him here today. We are happy that he is at this ceremony to launch this experiment.
The Vice President and all public officials everywhere who have participated in that, and, more than that, are willing to enlist in the war ahead.
We will outline plans as soon as that distinguished Californian, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, gets them ready for any other ventures that some of you want to take.
Finally, I want the citizens and public officials of the Federal Government, and the State of California – and particularly Southern California – to know that we appreciate this partnership in this very special effort.
To the Members of the House and Senate, the Governors of the States, we are all deeply in your debt.
This achievement is really a symbol of not only our partnership and our working together, but our power to act together. Often there is too much talk and too little action. What is needed for the future in this whole field of water is the will and determination to act.
I am very happy to sign this bill. I am very pleased that you could come here.
I am glad that all of you will witness it. As you witness it, and become a party to the fact, you will enlist with us in the light that is ahead for all of us.
Thank you very much.