February 25, 1970
Page 4949
SENATOR MUSKIE OFFERS SOME VIEWS ON OUR POLLUTED AMERICA – WHAT WOMEN CAN DO
HON. ROMAN C. PUCINSKI OF ILLINOIS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Wednesday, February 25, 1970
Mr. PUCINSKI. Mr. Speaker, long before pollution became a matter of national priority and long before it became a prime concern for everyone, Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE was leading the fight against environmental hazards that threaten to upset the balance of nature.
He, more than any other person, has for many years been lecturing, writing, and legislating in an effort to call attention to the urgent need to clean up our environment.
In the February issue of Ladies' Home Journal, Senator MUSKIE discusses very eloquently the problems that pollution in America has caused, and the vital role that women can play in helping to solve these problems.
Senator MUSKIE proposes a plan to guide women so that they can organize themselves into an effective force at all levels of government to prevent further destruction of our environment. The ladies, indeed, have been leading the fight against pollution for some time now and are destined to play an even greater role in the years ahead.
Because Senator MUSKIE can rightly be praised as the father of war on pollution, I highly commend his timely and well-written article to my colleagues.
Mr. Speaker, the article follows:
OUR POLLUTED AMERICA – WHAT WOMEN CAN DO
(By Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE)
We take great pride in the human ingenuity that made it possible for us to soar to the moon, transplant human organs, conquer polio, isolate the building blocks of life, develop atomic-power plants and design satellites that bounce television rays from one continent to the other.
But now we are beginning to realize that we are using our good earth thoughtlessly, like nomads at an oasis, drawing greedily from its resources as if we could pick up and move to another planet when those resources are fouled and depleted.
Our "longer, fuller, better life" has begun to mock us. We are disgusted by the dirty air, rotten odors and vile water, by the noise and ugliness that has become the backwash of modern goods and services. We are alarmed by the warning that we are upsetting the balance of nature, causing the most pressing environmental crisis in history.
We can demand change. We can decry the destruction of our country. But we will not renovate and rejuvenate our environment until we start moving our criticism from the kitchen to the hearing room, from the living room to the legislature, from the back fence to the ballot box, and from in front of the TV set to in front of the TV camera.
I think women can make a major contribution to a reversal of our trend toward self-destruction.
Some women are already at work cleaning up our dirty world. With zeal and persuasiveness they have succeeded in galvanizing their communities by asking what may be the most relevant question of our times: Is the modern technology we appreciate so much enhancing or damaging the quality of our lives?
In 1963, in New York City, when nearly 400 deaths were triggered in a few days by a dense, noxious smog, Mrs. Hazel Henderson and a half-dozen concerned friends formed the Citizens for Clean Air. Today, this is perhaps one of the most effective public watchdog groups in the nation; it has enlisted thousands of volunteers, including an advertising agency, a public relations firm and executives in the communications industry. They estimate that they have educated New Yorkers to the realities of bad air with at least $350,000 worth of free radio and TV spots and ads in the press.
Women such as Mrs. Henderson. who are indignant over the increase in childhood emphysema. bronchitis, asthma and eczema caused by the smoke, fumes and pollutants in our atmosphere, can literally sweep our skies clean if they wish. The Federal Air Quality Act of 1967, which I sponsored, specifically calls for public hearings to establish air-purity standards. It is designed to provide citizens with the facts on air pollution and to give them the opportunity to determine the quality of the air they breathe.
The system is working. In Pittsburgh, for example, a meeting to discuss proposed air quality standards had to be transferred from the office room to a large auditorium because 500 members of a "breather's lobby” – representing women's clubs, colleges, unions, conservation groups and health societies – showed up to press for stringent standards.
We were careful to write into the Air Quality Act that public sentiment should be a deciding factor in the decision-making process affecting air-pollution abatement. This means that Americans can, by concerted action, restore our pure air and save the taxpayer nearly $13 billion every year in medical expenses, cleaning bills and building maintenance.
In Front Royal, Virginia, Mrs. Gladys Harris, a Tuberculosis Association staff worker, in her spare time informs citizens about the pollution in Virginia's rivers and streams. She belongs to an all-female Izaac Walton League chapter. (The National Izaac Walton League is a conservation group that, until modern technology began to backfire, was largely a brotherhood of outdoor fishermen.)
Mrs. Harris, and others like her, are not satisfied with saying that filthy water is unacceptable. She studies the technical language of specialists concerned with such problems as the oxygen level of water, which she then interprets to her neighbors and other Virginians. They, in turn, speak up at water-control hearing boards and ask local editors, outdoor writers and businessmen to take the public stand in opposition to pollution hazards.
Woman power can make a big difference in cleaning up the waters of this nation, which are choked with waste, reeking with sewage, teeming with such organisms as the plague bacillus and so thick with oil that they are fire hazards. Many housewives and professional women already belong to the Citizens Crusade for Clean Water, an ad hoc coalition of dozens of organizations, including 157,000 members of the League of Women Voters, whose 1,275 local leagues have called upon women to testify, write letters, distribute fact sheets, attend public meetings and spark community dialogue about pollution.
In my own state of Maine, where vacationers from every state in the union renew body and spirit in the natural sanctuary of our forests, on the edges of our streams and by our rocky shore, women are applying pressure to clean up our man-made central cities. A Maine housewife, Mrs. Caroline Glassman, designed the health, safety and beauty factors in the Portland Model Cities area, where there are now organized litter patrols, well-designed, strategically placed trash baskets and realistic plans for the collection of garbage and also for diverting the city traffic away from neighborhood streets.
It seems to me that women can play a unique role in planning ahead to prevent the unsightly, unsafe, deteriorating effects of highways that are being designed to slash through our yards, school zones, parks, historic sites and wildlife preserves. In fact, women in such cities as San Francisco, New Orleans, San Antonio and Memphis have single-handedly and successfully led battles to maintain the integrity of communities which have been threatened by proposed highway construction.
Governments can make highway laws. But citizens must implement them. Consider what might happen if women started passing the news to each other that today's laws require public hearings both before and after highway corridors are selected, that there are state highway department lists on which they can enroll to receive public notification of impending highway plans.
Wherever we look we are faced with blight, rats, dumps, slums, agricultural refuse, mining wastes, sewage, scrapped cars, rubbish. There are ways to deal constructively with these problems. For example, the crisis in our cities and on our beleaguered earth has prompted 175,000 members of the American Association of University Women to undertake a two-year study project to develop, with school teachers, new curricula and study guides for our children about the problems of environmental control they will inherit.
I would like to suggest a plan for all women who are not yet involved in programs to stop environmental pollution. In a broad sense, its aims would be to inspire and educate every American community to potential hazards in modern life, to urge every citizen to exert pressure for change at all levels of government, and to force U.S. industry to redirect technology toward the improvement of the quality of life.
A pragmatic scheme, it calls for each woman to isolate those problems in her neighborhood or community that cause discomfort and disease, and that might ultimately jeopardize our existence. It asks her to determine if local or national organizations are working toward elimination of these ills or whether she should try to create a new mechanism with which change might be brought about faster.
Any woman who wants to change things must survey, pinpoint, document, threaten, cajole, publish, petition, telephone, write and vote. She must be hard-headed, stubborn and charming in discussing her goals with neighbors, educational institutions, industrial managers, city councils, mayors, governors and Congressmen.
From time to time she may be frustrated or angered by resistance to change, but the experience will be exciting and rewarding. She will find deep satisfaction in conserving our environment and in making the experience of living healthier and more valuable for her generation and for those who follow. I believe she will soon find herself head over heels in a new, life-long romance – with all of the elements of life on earth. And that, it seems to me, is what the power of a woman should be all about.