February 4, 1970
Page 2389
WHO SHOULD POLICE THE POLLUTERS?
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the New York Times of February 1 carried a story entitled "Who Should Police the Polluters?" written by E. W. Kenworthy.
The philosophy of existing and pending environmental legislation is that agencies responsible for promoting activities should not be responsible for control of the environmental effects associated with those activities. In this regard I recently commented on proposals to provide the Federal Aviation Administration with authority to regulate air pollution emissions from jet aircraft. I think that Mr. Kenworthy's article provides another useful example of why the environmental control functions should be kept separate from environmental impact functions.
I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the RECORD. There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
WHO SHOULD POLICE THE POLLUTERS?
(By E. W. Kenworthy)
WASHINGTON: The Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy holds its hearings in a small, stuffy room tucked under the Capitol roof. Last Tuesday morning when Chairman Chet Holifleld, California Democrat, opened the second round of hearings on the environmental effects of producing nuclear power, the room was jam-packed with A.E.C. Officials, lawyers, power company representatives, observers for conservation societies, students and reporters.
At the witness table was Harold LeVander, the Republican Governor of Minnesota, flanked by John P. Badalich, executive director of the state's Pollution Control Agency, and Dr. Ernest C. Tsivogiou, a Georgia Tech physicist and consultant to the pollution agency. They were there to defend the state's asserted right to set more rigid limits on radioactive discharges than required by the Atomic Energy Commission for a nuclear power plant being built by the Northern States Power Company at Monticello, 30 miles north of Minneapolis.
The company requested and received an A.E.C. operating license that would permit a "stack release" of 41,400 curies a day, or over 16 million a year. The state Pollution Control Agency in its permit to the company set a limit of 860 curies a day or just over 300,000 a year – about 2 per cent of the A.E.C. limits. Northern States has taken the issue into Federal court.
Governor LeVander began by saying that the state's position was that it had a right and responsibility to set the more exacting standards to safeguard the health of its own citizens and protect the Mississippi from thermal pollution which results from dumping very hot water from the plant into the river.
Immediately Chairman Holifleld and Craig Hosmer, Republican of California, pounced on him like a pair of prosecuting attorneys. Mr. Holifleld, while protesting that his committee was not "pro-pollution or pro-radiation damage," insisted that, by law, the A.E.C. had pre-empted the regulation of radioactive waste. Mr. Hosmer questioned the scientific credentials of Dr. Tsivoglou and said that his report, on which the state's requirements were based, was "half-cocked" and politically motivated.
To all this, the Governor and his aides replied that they did not question the Federal Government's authority to set minimum standards but did challenge its power to forbid a state from setting standards more rigorous than the A.E.C.'s, especially when those standards were technically feasible and would not increase costs beyond the consumers willingness to pay.
"What is the objection if a state wants to go an extra mile in protection?" Governor Le Vander asked.
The courts must settle this particular Federal-state conflict (eleven states are supporting Minnesota's position). But the contentious hearing did dramatically illustrate two problems that must be faced if the Federal Government is to do effective combat to protect the environment.
The first is what H.E.W. Secretary Robert Finch has called "the hopelessly fragmented" responsibility for antipollution programs, with his agency in charge of air pollution and solid waste disposal, the Interior Department in charge of water pollution, the A.E.C. in charge of radioactive discharges, and other departments having (or claiming) authority in such areas as auto and jet aircraft emissions, and stream pollution.
Second, and perhaps, more important, is the well-known tendency of Government departments and even regulatory agencies to become identified with the interests of the industries with which they deal, or at least, to give the views of those interests a more than sympathetic hearing. In the same way, Congressional committees are sympathetic to the departments and industries with which they deal.
Senator Edmund S. Muskie, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution, and several other legislators would meet this difficulty by establishing a new agency (not a department) in which would be concentrated authority for all antipollution programs – that is, the authority to protect. They would also establish a joint Congressional committee which, while not having legislative power, would maintain an "oversight" on environmental policy, much as the Joint Economic Committee does on economic policies of the Government.