October 10, 1974
Page 34855
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I am very pleased that Congress will today send to the President a bill to create a new Energy, Research, and Development Administration. This legislation is badly needed, and will fulfill the goal of reorganizing the Government to stimulate our efforts to bring increased energy to the country.
One of the provisions of this bill that has been of serious concern to me has been the transfer of functions from other agencies to the Energy, Research, and Development Administration. ERDA clearly must absorb the developmental work being done in agencies such as the Office of Coal Research, National Science Foundation, and Atomic Energy Commission. But one inappropriate transfer was slated to occur in earlier versions of the bill. This was the transfer of the pollution control technology program of the Environmental Protection Agency.
This action would have transferred over $100 million and a large part of EPA's technical and scientific manpower.
The House-passed version of this legislation would have transferred the advanced automotive power systems – AAPS – and stationary source pollution control work to ERDA. Senator JAVITS and I proposed an amendment in the Senate Government Operations Committee which deleted the proposed transfer of EPA activities. The amendment was adopted and under the Senate-passed bill, absolutely no functions of the Environmental Protection Agency would have been transferred to ERDA.
The conferees adopted a very sensible solution on this matter. We agreed to transfer that portion of the AAPS program which deals with research, development, and demonstration. EPA will retain the assessment and monitoring capability necessary to stay abreast of advances in the field.
Absolutely no transfers beyond this would occur. The conferees adopted the philosophy of the Senate bill, recognizing that EPA needed a strong, scientific, technological base to develop pollution controls so that those controls can be required as part of EPA's regulatory program. To ask EPA to establish such standards without the capability of participating in the development of better technology would undermine the Nation's effort to move ahead in environmental protection.
The separation of pollution control technology development from pollution control regulatory activities is not sound public policy, and was rejected by the conferees.
Congress has clearly determined that it is not enough for EPA to maintain an ability to "assess" pollution control developments. The conferees recognized that the Environmental Protection Agency must be able to stimulate such developments and to participate in the day-to-day activities of those processes. This allows the Agency to understand those developments, to understand the problems in requiring their adoption by regulation, and to defend those regulations when they are issued.
During the Senate floor consideration of this bill, I inserted a number of letters in the RECORD that clarified the legislative history of the Senate version. With regard to all stationary source programs, that legislative history on the Senate floor and in the Senate report is the controlling legislative history, for it is precisely the position of the Senate that was adopted by the conferees.
With regard to the advanced automotive power systems program, the transfer of developmental work to ERDA was allowed with the clear understanding that ERDA must continue to place emphasis on the development of a low emission vehicle as well as one that has high fuel economy performance.
This transfer was agreed to because of the long-term nature of the goals involved. EPA retains its programs dealing with the research, development and demonstration of auto emission control technology that is more closely associated with present engine systems.
In the AAPS work transferred, when engineering decisions occur that require design choices between fuel economy and low emissions, low emissions must not be sacrificed for fuel economy increases. In most cases, advanced systems inherently have low emission and greater fuel economy. But the initial purpose of the program is to develop a low emission vehicle.
The Senate conferees only agreed to accept this transfer after assurances were gained from the Office of Management and Budget that EPA would not lose the manpower authorizations associated with AAPS. A commitment was reached between Frank Zarb of the Office of Management and Budget and Al Alm, the Assistant Administrator for Planning and Management of the Environmental Protection Agency, that the Environmental Protection Agency would retain the authority to hire new employees to fill the personnel slots presently assigned to the AAPS program, even though the people now filling those manpower positions would be transferred with the AAPS program to ERDA. This will allow EPA to use these manpower authorizations to add badly needed personnel in assessment, monitoring, certification, and other activities in EPA's program.
The conferees recognized the need for ERDA to have technical competence in advanced auto systems and therefore agree that these scientific personnel should be transferred. But the manpower slots assigned the agency are not to be reduced as a result of this transfer. The slots are to be used by EPA for the purposes mentioned above.
The agreement between Mr. Zarb and Mr. Alm helped to satisfy one of the Senate's basic objections to any transfer of any portion of the AAPS program. That was the objection that EPA might lose some of its manpower authorization at a time when manpower has become a critical need within the agency.
ERDA must work to eliminate the environmental impact of energy development projects. ERDA should develop sound environmental programs and be sensitive to the environmental implications of energy projects. But ERDA's emphasis should be on new energy technologies.
The job of cleaning up old technologies remains with EPA.
Mr. President, I am delighted that the Congress has completed its work to create the Energy, Research and Development Administration. I hope the new organization will immediately begin to move this Nation forward in its search for new environmentally sound energy sources.