September 29, 1969
Page 27547
STILL NEEDED: A STANDING COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT
HON. DONALD G. BROTZMAN OF COLORADO IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Monday, September 29, 1969
Mr. BROTZMAN. Mr. Speaker, on April 28, 1969, I introduced House Resolution 375, which, if enacted, would establish a Committee on the Environment -- a permanent standing committee which would concern itself with many, although not all, of the pressing environmental quality problems which face this Nation and the entire world.
I proposed that this committee be vested with jurisdiction over water quality, air quality, weather modification, waste disposal of all types, pesticides and herbicides, acoustic hazards, and other degrading influences on the integrity of our environment.
Today the front page of the Washington Post carried an article which indicated to me that such a committee of the House, and a comparable organization in the other body of Congress, are desperately needed.
The story, which I am submitting for reprint in the RECORD, described "feuding" over congressional committee authority in creating a national environmental policy.
I am of the opinion that such jurisdictional debates could delay for years one of this Nation's most critical needs -- a cohesive crash program to restore the quality of our natural environment.
Nearly everyone agrees that both Congress and the executive branch should overhaul the management systems which have grown, like Topsy, as we have attacked our environmental problems piecemeal. But after several years of debate over procedures we seem unable to get even a consensus about committee authority in Congress, and I am very much afraid that precious years will be lost unless fresh approaches can be implemented.
I would like to repeat a portion of my speech of last April 28. I said:
It is incumbent upon Congress, in my view, to take a single minded approach in providing the enabling legislation, the funding and -- perhaps most important of all -- eternal oversight as the environmental salvage efforts proceed.
We are not talking in terms of a few years or even a decade of environmental therapy. It may well take 100 years or more of research and applied science to restore clean air, with a proper balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen. Or to rescue bodies of water such as Lake Erie, San Francisco Bay and the Potomac River from their current status as open sewers. Or to learn how to dispose of our solid wastes and our chemical and radiological poisons without killing our wildlife and upsetting our ecological balances ...
In introducing this legislation I want to state very clearly that I do not minimize the excellent work which has been done by a number of our present committees in these very areas.
But I do claim that some of these problems currently are under the scrutiny, irregularly, of two, three and four different committees, a situation which is neither efficient nor conducive to the coordinated leadership which the Nation and the world so desperately need for the environmental quality crusade.
Mr. Speaker, I have urged the House Committee on Rules to schedule hearings on House Resolution 375, as have many of the 29 Members who have joined in sponsoring identical resolutions.
I firmly believe that a Committee on the Environment in the House -- matched, I would hope, by an equivalent standing committee in the other body of Congress -- is sorely needed to forge some of the landmark legislation which will be needed in the decades ahead.
The Committee on the Environment potentially would represent some of the most prestigious assignments in the Congress. I could think of no greater responsibility to mankind than assuring a high quality of life for current and future generations.
The Washington Post article of September 29, 1969, which I mentioned earlier, follows:
SENATORS MUSKIE AND JACKSON FEUDING OVER CONTROL OF ENVIRONMENTAL BILLS
(By Spencer Rich)
Two of the Senate's most powerful senior Democrats are feuding over their respective authority in creating a national environmental policy.
The disputants are Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.), chairman of the Senate Interior Committee, and Edmund S. Muskie (D-Maine), chairman of the Senate Public Works Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution and presently his party's frontrunner for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination.
The controversy centers less on substantive issues than on the question of which Senate units should have jurisdiction over general environmental questions. That is not a negligible issue in a legislative body where tradition, seniority, prerequisites and control of legislation are paramount.
Jackson last July pushed through the Senate without debate a bill establishing a national environmental policy and creating a Board of Environmental Advisers in the Executive Office of the President.
A similar measure was passed by the House last week, but Muskie is threatening to block a House-Senate conference to iron out differences because he fears the Jackson bill would give the Interior Committee permanent jurisdiction over general environmental policy questions.
Some sources close to Muskie even suggest that the Jackson bill might be the opening wedge of a campaign to gain for the Interior Committee at least partial power over legislation on air and water pollution and solid waste disposal, which are now under the jurisdiction of Muskie's subcommittee.
Muskie is also said to be dissatisfied with some of the specific language in the Jackson bill, fearing it may dilute environmental controls in some respects. Muskie's own committee, in approving the water pollution control amendments in August, included a section creating an Office of Environmental Quality in the executive office of the President. This appears to overlap directly on the Board of Environmental Advisers included in the Jackson bill. The Committee whose bill ends up as the one creating the White House unit will be the one that exercises future jurisdiction over the unit.
Muskie has also been pushing for creation of a Select Committee to generally study environmental matters, with no direct legislative jurisdiction, but aides claim Jackson has blocked the advance of this measure in the Government Operations Committee.
Jackson's aides deny that the Interior Committee is seeking to raid Muskie's jurisdiction on environmental programs like air and water pollution and point out that the Jackson bill on environmental policy and a White House unit was passed first, while Muskie's provision has not even reached the floor yet.
The dispute between the two Senators has held up not only Jackson's bill, but Senate floor action on the water pollution bill, though that is supposedly coming to the Senate floor early this week.
Over the past week, spokesmen for the two Senators have been negotiating. With Chairman Jennings Randolph (D.-W. Va.) of the full Public Works Committee, they got the Democratic leadership last Wednesday to postpone a vote on the pollution bill.
All sorts of proposals halve been made, but so far none has been accepted by the parties to the dispute: for example, that the Jackson bill, though already passed by the Senate, now be referred to the Public Works Committee for hearings on the environmental policy statement included in the measure; or (on the other side of the issue) that Muskie simply drop from his bill its section on a White House unit, in return for which Muskie might be allowed to go to the House-Senate conference on Jackson's bill and help rewrite the section he doesn't like.
A compromise may be worked out before the water pollution measure reaches the floor; but if not, it is conceivable the two senators will clash openly on the issue during this week's debate.