September 10, 1973
Page 29030
ENERGY POLICY SHOULD BE EXPLAINED
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, President Nixon's announcement that he will seek suspension of air pollution emission standards in answer to the threat of a fuel shortage is apparently based more on politics than on fact. Not only did the President fail to justify this proposal, but I have been unable to obtain from administration sources any analysis of the basis for, or implications of this policy.
The Congress and the people deserve a complete explanation of what the President, through his Energy Policy Office intends to do. Therefore, I have today initiated an invitation to Gov. John Love, Director of the Energy Policy Office, to appear before the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution in the next week.
The President has clearly decided to abandon the environmental safeguards which some States and localities have adopted with the encouragement of the Federal Government. This step should not be taken lightly.
On the same day that the President recommended that we reduce our clean air effort we were told that the people of North Birmingham, Ala., have to fight to breathe because of the dirty air.
The people who must breathe dirty air have a right to ask whether the President has considered other alternatives. Who produced this policy? What were the facts taken into consideration? How was the decision made? Were alternatives such as fuel conservation considered? Would a mandatory allocation program work as well or better in providing fuel, while not endangering people's health? These are just some of the questions I hope Governor Love will answer.
The President has not explained what States will be affected or for how long. He has not explained the legal basis for his action.
He has not specified the amount of the fuel shortage, or how dirty the substitute fuel will be.
All the President has said is that we should abandon environmental safeguards rather than get tough with the oil industry. He has said he would prefer to sacrifice the health of the people rather than impose mandatory fuel allocation requirements on the oil industry.
I want to know why.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my letter of invitation to Governor Love, a newspaper article on the air problems in Birmingham, and other related newspaper articles be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
U.S. SENATE,
Washington, D.C.,
September 10, 1973.
Hon. JOHN LOVE,
Director of Energy Policy,
Washington, D.C.
DEAR GOVERNOR LOVE: I have read with deep concern the press reports regarding the effort which you will make in the near future to gain relaxation of state air pollution standards. I understand that the justification for this attempted action relates to the availability of low sulfur fuels to meet home heating needs this winter.
As you know, many states have adopted stringent air pollution emission standards in response to legislation which has been developed by the Congress over the past decade. In many instances, state standards and deadlines for their compliance have been incorporated in approved air quality implementation plans which, in effect, means that they have become Federal standards and deadlines. Whether or not this is the case in the specific instances which you will address when you confer with the Governors is not clear.
In order to provide the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution with a complete evaluation of the justification for and impact of this proposed effort, I would appreciate your appearance at a hearing of the Subcommittee prior to your scheduled meeting with the Governors, hopefully before the end of this week or early next week. I cannot understate the importance of a timely public discussion of the policies which you have been directed to implement.
I would appreciate a response to this invitation by the close of business Tuesday, September 11, in order that the necessary arrangements can be made for the hearing. I realize this notice is short, but the nature of the issue underscores the urgency of the hearing. If you have any questions regarding this invitation, please contact Leon G. Billings of the Subcommittee staff at 225-7859.
Sincerely,
EDMUND S. MUSKIE,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution.
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 9, 1973]
POLLUTION CHOKES NORTH BIBMINGHAM ALABAMA CITY GETS EPA HELP IN PROGRAM TO CLEAN UP AIR
(By Stuart Auerbach)
BIRMINGHAM, ALA. – Della Thomas, who lives in the shadows of iron forge stacks that belch acrid smoke day and night, woke up at 1 o'clock the other morning "smothering" – as if someone were holding a pillow over her face.
"She just about died. She was gasping for every breath," said her daughter, Kathleen Barron.
Mrs. Barron rushed her mother to a nearby hospital, out of the heavily polluted area, where the older woman quickly revived. "As soon as she got into the clean air of the hospital she was better," said Mrs. Barron. "The doctors couldn't find anything wrong. They said it was just the pollution."
The air is never clean in the North Birmingham neighborhood in which Mrs. Barron and her mother live. Smoke pours continually from plants owned by the U.S. Pipe Co. on one side of the neighborhood and the American Cast Iron Pipe Co., known here as ACIPCO, on the other.
People in that area breathe polluted air no matter which way the wind blows.
"I don't see how they live out there, I really don't," said City Councilwoman Angie Grooms Proctor, who heads the council's pollution committee.
On a visit to North Birmingham last week, the air smelled like burning gunpowder and was heavy with tiny black particles of soot that collected on a reporter's suit.
Nevertheless, residents insisted that the air that day was really clean – for North Birmingham, that is.
"It's good today," said Elva Carr. "Yesterday you couldn't even get your breath. The air was so thick you could cut it with a knife."
Residents interviewed all complained of respiratory problems – wheezing, sneezing, coughing and shortness of breath.
They didn't attach medical terms to their ailments, but detailed studies by the Environmental Protection Agency show that people who live in heavily polluted areas suffer far more from such diseases as asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, emphysema and even the common cold and flu than people who live in clear air.
Young children who live in neighborhoods where the air is constantly polluted move less air in and out of their lungs each time they breathe than children who grow up in a clean atmosphere.
An unpublished EPA study estimates the cost of excess illness due to polluted air at $3 billion a year.
But to the people who live in the shadow of stacks from Birmingham's steel mills and cement plants, pollution not only affects their health but their way of life.
They complain that they can't sit out in their front yards the way other people do, or cook dinners over barbecue grills. Houses always look as if they need a paint job, even those that have just been painted.
"It ruins the tops of the cars. You have to keep washing it off, and still the paint comes off the car," said Gladys Freeman, who lives down the street from Mrs. Barron.
Like many of her neighbors, Mrs. Freeman said walking outside makes her sneeze. Her husband, she said, coughs a lot.
"We just take cod liver oil and honey to help keep the lungs clear and drink gin to make the taste of the cod liver oil go away."
Across the street, Frances Chapman said she has so much trouble breathing that she can't walk two blocks to the nearest store without stopping to rest.
"I smother a lot," She said. "I can't breathe even when I'm sitting at home. I'm 58; that's young. I'm not so old."
Mrs. Chapman said her doctor told her she had bronchitis. But Dr. George E. Hardy Jr., health officer for Jefferson County, said the woman could be suffering from early stages of emphysema – a more serious debilitating disease characterized by the inability to breathe easily.
Emphysema, in its final stages, leaves a person almost incapacitated.
"I have a hard time shaving," said S. S. Godbee Jr., who spent his life working in the midst of heavily polluted air. He developed emphysema eight years ago. He sat in a chair during the interview, wheezing as he talked.
"I can't go to my home workshop to build things for my grandchildren. Bending over and hammering is too much for me. When I carry an eight-bottle package of Coke from the car to the front of the house, I don't have enough breath left to get up the steps," he continued.
"I've got a little five-year-old granddaughter who can do more work than I can."
There is no scientific proof that air pollution causes emphysema, which most experts believe can be triggered by many factors including heredity, smoking and occupational assaults of the lung by pollutants.
But there is clear evidence from studies done by EPA and other scientists that there is more emphysema in areas with heavily polluted air.
Dr. A. H. Russakoff, a lung specialist here, found a "direct correlation between the level of pollution in an area and the impairment of lung function among its residents.
The greatest number of lung ailments in the area came from North Birmingham.
There is something called "Birmingham lung" that a doctor can see on autopsy.
"It's a filthy lung," said Dr. Hardy. "It looks like the black lung of a coal miner."
Birmingham, spurred by an active citizens' group, has been working to clean its air. Two years ago, when Birmingham suffered one of its worst air pollution episodes, Hardy called in the EPA, which for the first time used power given it by Congress to close down the furnaces and forges until the air cleared up.
Now the manufacturing companies all have plans and schedules for cleaning the pollutants that pour from their smokestacks. By 1975, said Hardy, Birmingham will be able to meet the federal clean air standards.
There are already signs that the air in parts of Birmingham is getting cleaner. In the Midfield area, about two miles from the U.S. Steel smokestacks but right behind the stacks of the Alpha Portland Cement Co., residents noted some improvement since the cement company put antipollution devices on its stacks last May.
But the air was still heavy with a fine white dust that comes from the cement plant. "You can see it on the cars and sweep it off the porches," said Mrs. L. Y. Jaynes. "Lord, you can smell it in the air.
"But it used to be that in daylight you couldn't see that house over there" – pointing to a house clearly visible across the street.
Sandra Holley noted that her family's health had improved since the cement company began using the anti-pollution devices.
"My husband used to wake up hacking, spitting, gagging every morning. The doctor told him it was just dust and pollution. He said he couldn't do anything about it. During the past couple of months it's been better, though he still has spells of it."
[From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 10, 1973]
HEATING OIL PLAN BY NIXON FACES SOME UNCERTAINTY
WASHINGTON.– The Nixon administration plan to free additional supplies of home heating oil by relaxing clean air requirements could help the U.S. get through the winter without serious fuel dislocations – but there are stumbling blocks.
Despite President Nixon's vigorous endorsement in an unusual appearance at a press briefing on the energy situation, the plan can't assure that Washington won't have to impose some type of mandatory heating oil allocation system.
An overriding uncertainty for Nixon energy planners is how cold the winter will be. Severe weather in the U.S. could shoot demand above normal expectations. Severe weather in Europe as well would cut back the fuel available for export by Common Market refiners, crimping supplies here.
The Mideast situation is another major concern. If Libya and Saudi Arabia carry out threats to cut off or limit their oil exports, the U.S. could face even graver supply problems in the coming months, administration officials acknowledge. In his White House statement, the President clearly attempted to convince Mideast oil nations that the U.S. energy situation isn't bad enough to undernine foreign policy positions. Mr. Nixon said he doesn't see any "energy crisis," but only "short-tern shortages." He repeated administration views that nuclear power and coal liquefaction and gasification will become viable alternatives to oil imports over the next several years.
DEVELOPING ALTERNATIVES
The U.S. would prefer to continue Mideast imports, Mr. Nixon suggested, but it "must develop the capacity (of alternatives) so no other nation has us in a position that they can cut off our oil (and) our energy."
For the present, however, the plan to avert fuel shortages through relaxation of the clean air rules doesn't jibe with efforts in Congress to fight shortages with a mandatory fuel-allocation scheme.
The Senate has passed a bill requiring the administration to divvy up oil supplies among such users as utilities, independent gasoline companies and farmers. The administration opposes the bill.
Sen. Henry Jackson (D., Wash.), the bill's chief sponsor, said in a television interview yesterday that he understands House leaders "will move on it this coning week." The measure came close to a House vote before the August recess, but it hit a procedural snag.
Sen. Jackson said on ABC's Issues and Answers that "I don't believe there's a need to relax air pollution standards" if a mandatory allocation system is working and supplies of imported oil aren't reduced.
In addition to the planned relaxation of air standards, the administration energy initiatives as outlined by the President and John Love, head of the White House energy office include:
A proposal to be made shortly to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees that they approve selling 100,000 barrels daily of crude oil from the Elk Hills naval petroleum reserve to augment West Coast market supplies. The reserve, near Bakersfield, Calif., is managed and one 25%-owned by Standard Oil Co. of California and contains an estimated one billion barrels of oil. However, some administration oil officials, recalling the House committee's adamant opposition to such a move in the past, are skeptical whether chances have improved.
COST PASS-THROUGH
A pass-through of imported home-heating oil costs expected to be announced by the Cost of Living Council this week, adding about two cents a gallon to consumer costs. The Phase 4 controlled domestic bulk price for No. 2 oil, as the fuel technically is known, is 12 cents to 14 cents a gallon, Mr. Love's chief of staff, Charles DiBona estimated. By comparison, foreign No. 2's asking price is around 25 cents a gallon. The Phase 4 number-pricing change involves a formula that would spread foreign oil costs across total U.S. sales, Mr. DiBona said, thus ending the present "disincentive" for imports.
Consultation between the White House and the Atomic Energy Commission to speed up nuclear-plant licensing. Without saying precisely how this would be done or mentioning the effect on environment factors in license cases, Messrs. Nixon and Love both asserted that the present 10-year gap between plant announcement and start-up is too long.
Relaxing the clean air standards would release supplies of clean No. 2 oil that currently are blended with high-sulphur residual oil. This process, mostly carried on by Caribbean refiners using high-sulphur Venezuelan crude, produces a fuel for power plants and industry that is low enough in sulphur to satisfy State and local antipollution standards.
VARIANCES FROM HEALTH STANDARDS
The administration program will involve the granting of variances by the Environmental Protection Agency from the health protecting primary standards in Northeastern and upper Midwestern states, where use of blended fuels is particularly heavy, Mr. Love explained. The EPA, as permitted by the 1970 Clean Air Act, granted similar variances last winter, but this tine they will be offered farther in advance of any possible shortage to allow utilities and other industrial fuel users to contract for unblended supplies.
Governors and mayors in the affected areas must approve the plan, but officials don't see any local resistance, based on last year's experience. Mr. Love described Russell Train, EPA administrator-designate, as in agreement with the proposal. In addition to the variance policy, the administration is continuing to press states to delay enforcement of secondary clear air standards.
These are designed to protect vegetation and property, but postponing enforcement would permit continued use of domestic coal supplies rather than forcing utilities to seek a low sulphur petroleum substitute.
The clean air variance plan, Mr. DiBona estimated, would free 200,000 to 400,000 barrels a day of No. 2 oil for home-heating purposes. Last winter, U.S. imports of home-heating oil averaged about 400,000 barrels daily and the additional supplies, therefore, would cover, or nearly cover, the nation's winter needs, assuming normal weather and no cutoff of Mideast supplies. This winter, officials hope that home-heating oil imports will average about 500,000 barrels dally.
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 9, 1973]
CLEAN AIR RULES MUST BE EASED, NIXON DECLARES
(By Thomas O'Toole)
In a move that is certain to run into strong opposition from ecologists, President Nixon yesterday declared that the country must retreat from its clean air standards to avoid a fuel shortage this winter.
"It will be necessary for those standards at the state level to be modified," the President said following a two-hour meeting with his energy advisers at the White House yesterday. "Unless those standards are relaxed, we could have a very serious problem this winter."
While not spelling out which state standards must be relaxed, President Nixon almost certainly meant the restrictions that have banned the burning of coal and high-sulfur oil in the populous Northeast and in Midwest states like Illinois, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.
The White House has no authority to override state clean air standards, but the President said he directed White House energy adviser John A. Love to meet this week or next with state and city officials to discuss moves against air pollution restrictions.
"This can be done administratively," President Nixon said, meaning that no new legislation is needed, "but it requires the cooperation of the governors because the governors have had their legislators adopt standards which are state law."
The President met to discuss the country's energy shortages with 15 administration aides, including four Cabinet members and Secretary of State-designate Henry A. Kissinger. The President described the Cabinet Room discussion as "quite spirited," though he did not go into any details about who disagreed with what proposals.
Besides calling for modified air standards, President Nixon said he would press ahead with the development of nuclear energy, the extraction of gas and liquids from coal and the construction of deep water ports to handle super-tankers carrying oil from the Middle East.
"The longer we wait here," he said of the nation's need for such ports, "the longer we are going to have to wait to have the capacity to bring in the product from abroad that we need to meet our energy needs."
But while he urged deepwater port development to handle the rising tide of imports, the President again said the United States would go all out to develop its own energy supplies to avoid over-reliance on Middle East oil.
"The United States must be in a position that no other nation can cut off our oil," the President said. "We are going to do the very best we can to work out problems with Mideastern countries, but we are also keenly aware that no nation must be at the mercy of any other nation by having its energy supply suddenly cut off."
Most of the President's moves on the energy front yesterday came as promises, but he did bring forth one concrete proposal to make more oil available for the country this winter. This was a move to produce and sell at least some of the oil on land set aside as petroleum reserves for the Navy in time of war.
Specifically, the President said he would "consult with the Congress" to authorize the sale of oil from the Elk Hills Naval Reserve outside Bakersfield, Calif.
One of four such oil preserves in the country, Elk Hills is the only one developed enough to produce oil quickly. Elk Hills could produce as much as 100,000 barrels of oil a day, which would ease considerably any oil shortages that night crop up this winter west of the Rocky Mountains.
While the President cane out hard on the side of the nuclear power program, he was somewhat vague about what the White House night do to speed its development. One White House aide said he wanted to loosen licensing procedures to hurry up atomic construction time, but the Atomic Energy Commission already has under way a program to do just this.
The AEC is down to 15 months from two years on granting construction permits with a goal of one year projected. It now takes eight years to build an atomic power plant in the United States, which is down from the 10 years it had been taking.
The President made no mention of any big new research programs in energy, but he once again emphasized that the country must develop ways of using its huge coal reserves. He said the United States has almost half the world's coal, but is unable to burn it because coal is too dirty.
The White House has budgeted an extra $100 million for energy research this year, but has not yet decided how to spend it. A report submitted to the White House last week by AEC Chairman Dixy Lee Ray calls for spending $50 million of that extra money researching ways of cleaning up coal.
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 9, 1973]
INFLATION, OIL, AND THE PRESS CONFERENCE
At one point in his most recent conference President Nixon declared: "As you know, we are going into a new set of tough controls on Sept. 13." A new set of tough controls? But no new controls at all are scheduled to go into effect on Sept. 13. Food price rules will in fact be loosened a little at that tine to allow processors to pass more of their rising costs on to their customers. But nothing more. It appears that Mr. Nixon simply misspoke.
Presidents make mistakes like other people. Perhaps it is surprising only that, in the tension of news conferences, they do not make more. But this misstatement was followed by other remarks that had a peculiar ring to then, as though they meant either more or a good deal less than the President apparently intended. These examples all fell into the parts of the conference in which Mr. Nixon was dealing with the economy and energy. Most politicians, regardless of party now consider inflation and the energy shortages to be the principal public concerns in this country. The question is whether Mr. Nixon is giving these subjects the same high priority his constituents do.
When he spoke of a possible fuel shortage this winter, Mr. Nixon cited seven administration proposals pending before Congress. His administration is working on energy policy, he said. "But essential to our success in meeting the energy needs for this winter, and particularly for the future, is congressional action." For the distant future, some of those bills are highly important.
But for this winter, they will have no effect at all. They involve things like the Alaskan pipeline, which will take years to build, and ports for supertankers. Even if all this legislation were enacted tomorrow, it could not substantially improve our fuel resources until late in the decade.
Did Mr. Nixon know that? If he did, he made a particularly crude attempt to shift blame onto Congress for the coming shortages. It is hardly a useful way to enlist the cooperation of Congress on this legislation. But there is also the possibility that, among all the material his aides had been providing him, the President mislaid the point that the pending bills do not affect supplies over the coming winter. In contrast, the President was a good deal more precise when he spoke after his energy meeting at the White House yesterday. On that occasion a policy seemed to be emerging although, unfortunately, it is emerging chiefly at the expense of some states' air pollution standards.
At the press conference, the President was asked about the threats of several Arab governments to limit oil exports. In the course of his reply, he said: "Oil without a market, as Mr. Mossadegh learned many, many years ago, doesn't do a country much good." It was hardly market forces that threw Mr. Mossadegh out of office as premier of Iran in 1953. After a bitter dispute over his nationalization of the British oil concessions, he fell in a coup ably and successfully supported by this country's Central Intelligence Agency. In the customary terms of presidential pronouncements, the reference to this incident might be interpreted as a manifest threat to other governments. In this case, there does not seem to be any reason to think Mr. Nixon intended a threat. But if he did not mean it as a threat, what was the point of bringing up that very sensitive bit of recent history? Perhaps there was no particular point.
A reporter asked Mr. Nixon when the current inflation might end. The correct answer is, of course, that nobody knows because the current inflation is unlike the others that we have experienced over the past generation. Mr. Nixon said as much, but he declined to let it go at that.
"I'm afraid," he said, "I can't be any more perceptive than my economic advisers have been, and their guess with regard to – you know the numbers insofar as inflation this year have not been very good. I do not blame them, however, because as you know we had the problems of weather in the United States and abroad, an unprecedented demand abroad which was unforeseen as far as we were concerned. That gave the impetus to food prices. And there were other factors which led to the inflationary pressures which our economic advisers did not foresee . . ." That answer has a disquieting resemblance to Mr. Nixon's explanation of the Watergate affair: he has suffered from bad advice and bad information from those he trusted. There has not been a President since Warren Harding as eager to persuade the voters that he has been badly advised by his own men.
Whenever the press conference turned to the subjects of inflation and energy, the words were strangely imprecise. The answers do not bear the kind of close examination to which a president's words are usually subjected. That imprecision is not characteristic of Mr. Nixon and it can prove very troublesome to him. At a press conference, a president is addressing a public that includes some very sharp listeners. Among others he is speaking to his opposition in Congress, to foreign governments and most particularly to his own huge bureaucracy. The most recent conference gave no one much idea where the President now wants to go on questions that have come to worry Americans deeply.