July 27, 1976
Page 23980
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MOSS. I am glad to yield for a question.
Mr. MUSKIE. I know the Senator has indicated a desire to continue the discussion until the Senate turns to another subject. If it would be helpful to the Senator, it would be helpful to me if I could have some of the remaining time before 2 o'clock to touch upon some of the issues which the Senator has raised; but if the Senator would prefer to use the time himself, I would certainly understand.
Mr. MOSS. I would like to complete some material I have here, but I would be glad to yield time to the Senator from Maine so that he could make such statements as he wished to make prior to the hour of 2 o'clock. I would like, of course, to reserve the floor so I could be assured we would not be pressed to a vote before that time.
Mr. MUSKIE. All right. Then will the Senator yield me 10 minutes?
Mr. MOSS. I am glad to yield 15 minutes, if the Senator would like it, and I am glad to yield at this time, asking unanimous consent that I may reserve my right to the floor, Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, my intervention at this point is triggered by two observations which the distinguished Senator from Utah and the distinguished Senator from Virginia appear to share:
One is that this bill with respect to nondegradation is related to someone's philosophical notion of what pristine air ought to be.
I have already put in the RECORD a memorandum from the subcommittee staff to the members of the Environmental Pollution Subcommittee dated June 26, 1975, which suggests that our approach is almost the direct opposite of that. For example, under the subject of the concept of class II, let me read the following:
EPA defined the Class II area specifically to allow development of "average sized" facilities within the Class II region. Class II was not developed by relating it to any specific ambient air quality, such as visibility. Class II does not establish a new kind of national ambient air quality standard, but instead states how much additional pollution could be added to any area which presently has air cleaner than national ambient air quality standards. Areas designated as Class II, whether moderately clean or extremely clean, would be allowed to add the exact same increment of pollution to whatever existing background levels are present.
Departing from the memorandum, I would like to emphasize that surely that is no definition of someone's philosophical view of what the pristine quality of the air ought to be in the clean air areas of the country.
Continuing the quotation from the memorandum:
EPA examined the average plant being constructed in the industrial categories most likely to have pollution problems and then projected the probable air quality impact of construction of such sources using the best available control technology. The Agency concluded that "... typical coal gasification plants, oil shale processing facilities, and petroleum refineries would not be expected individually to exceed the Class II increments in most areas. However, the Class II increments would prevent the aggregation of such sources within close proximity of each other."
Well, surely, Mr. President, again departing from the memorandum, a policy which permits the construction of coal gasification plants, oil shale processing facilities, and petroleum refineries can hardly be defined as a policy insisting upon pristine air purity.
Returning to the memorandum:
The same statement holds true for the average sized plants in the following categories: fossil fuel fired steam electric power units, municipal incinerators, kraft pulp mills, iron and steel mills, coal cleaning plants, sulfur recovery plants, lime plants, Portland Cement plants, phosphate rock processing plants, petroleum refineries, by-product coke oven batteries, sulfuric acid plants, carbon black plants, primary aluminum plants, primary zinc smelters, primary copper smelters, fuel conversion plants and primary lead smelters. For many of these sources, the average sized plant would be substantially lower than the increment allowed.
Again departing from the memorandum, Mr. President, that is hardly a definition of a policy that insists upon pristine air purity.
Returning to the memorandum:
The size of the facility or the number of identical facilities located within a Class II area is limited only by the existing technology for controlling emissions.
That pinpoints a requirement of the committee bill that new plants shall be required to use the best available technology that is available to them for the purpose of controlling their emissions.
The Moss amendment would eliminate that requirement, at the same time that he urges that we buy some time with his amendment for the purpose of developing technology. If we are not prepared to use the technology that is now available, what assurance can we have that any new technology will be developed let alone that it will be used, or that public policy then can be converted to mandate its use when the Moss study is completed?
Returning to the memorandum:
As that technology increases in sophistication, larger facilities and facilities spaced in closer proximity would be allowed within the Class II increment.
Mr. President, I put the rest of that memorandum in the RECORD this morning. I emphasize the first page in order to respond to the impression that is being left in the debate this morning that the nondegradation provisions of the bill are designed to prevent economic growth. From that portion of the memorandum, which is the philosophical base of the committee bill, it is clear that that description is a distortion.
The second point that is being raised is that there are no values beyond primary and secondary standards that it is in the public interest to protect.
Let us look at the question of visibility. I know there is a tendency in some portions of the East where visibility has long since disappeared as an esthetic value of any consequence to sneer at visibility as a public interest value that ought to be protected. But I should think that, if I were a Senator from a State like Utah, New Mexico, or some other States out there where visibility not only is an esthetic value, but is an economic value when it is translated to the numbers of people who move to that area or travel through that area for the purpose of enjoying its beauty, I would wish to protect that visibility.
Let us look at visibility.
If the existing particulate background is 10 micrograms per cubic meter, the existing visibility is 120 kilometers, call it 120 miles. We can enjoy that kind of visibility in most parts of New Mexico. Having the Senator from New Mexico on the committee we focused on that. But with respect to class I, under the Senate bill, the national parks, like the Glacier National Park out in the Senator's area and some others, that 120-mile visibility would be reduced to 80 miles.
With respect to class II areas, the increments which the Senator's amendment is directed against, visibility would be reduced to 60 miles, and with respect to the House bill, which some people hold up as the standard, it would be reduced to 25 miles.
I have traveled through some of those great natural parks out there and, as I recall them, protecting their scenic values, protecting visibility, is critical to the protection of the area. I mean, if we want to eliminate natural parks, fine. But if we are going to permit their air quality to deteriorate to the standard advocated by the Senator from Utah, a standard which is the minimum value to which we seek to raise New York City and Los Angeles and Boston, then we are talking about visibility of 12 miles. I tell Senators I would not visit Glacier Park and spend a half day there if the visibility in that park were permitted to be reduced to 12 miles. So there are values.
There is the question of acid rain. Acid rain is one of the great looming pollution problems of this country, and we have nothing in public policy at this point to protect us against acid rain. There is nothing in primary or secondary standards to protect us against acid rain. And it is clear that some of the devices and some of the technology that is being advocated by critics of this bill to lower the economic costs of dealing with pollution would exacerbate acid rain levels, and what acid rain does to the clean air areas of this country. Acid rain is transported from public utility crowded cities, and industry crowded cities — the areas that are dirty — to the areas that are clean. There is nothing in this bill that protects against that unless it is the margin of safety built into the class II increment. If we were to substitute for the class II increment the national primary and secondary standard there would be nothing in this bill toprotect against the risk of acid rain and what it would do to the rural areas of the country, including my own State of Maine, and I assume some of the sparsely settled areas of the West.
Mr. President, if I may, at this point I shall put to the Senate some questions that I would hope every Senator would consider as he considers the issue raised by this nondegradation issue.
One, should Congress address the issue of protection of air quality in clean air areas — is that any of our business — either by voiding EPA's regulations, substituting congressional policy for protection for clean air areas, or striking the Clean Air Act requirement that air quality be protected and enhanced?
If we really want to buy time, if we really are uncertain about whether or not we need to protect clean air areas beyond the primary and secondary standards, why do we not simply amend the Clean Air Act, by striking out all provisions for protecting the clean air areas of the country?
That is the first question.
Mr. McCLURE. The Scott amendment does that.
Mr. MUSKIE. And I gather, if I understand correctly, the Scott amendment would do that. Why not just strike it out? Let us wait until the clean air areas are filthy, let us wait until they need the application of national primary and secondary standards before we worry about them. Why should we worry about them in advance? Let us strike all provisions and make the Clean Air Act really comfortable and just deal with the dirty air areas of the country.
Second, if the decision is that we should write congressional policy, what should be the basis for that policy? The same policy as for dirty air areas, that is, allow pollution up to secondary standards, or an added level of air quality protection designed to maximize options in clean air areas and to protect values that are not protected by primary and secondary standards.
Third, if we are to have a congressionally set policy — should an individual facility, should one facility, be permitted to use all the available capacity between background air quality and secondary standards, or should that capacity be divided among polluters? Should the maintenance of the secondary standard be an enforceable requirement? Should this require retrofit of new facilities prior to continuous operation if the plant causes or contributes to secondary standards being exceeded? What level of control should a new facility be required to achieve, or are we going to allow new facilities to proliferate without limit, without regulation, without standard, until the study is completed and Congress is able to develop a new policy based upon this study?
Four, if one facility, as is the case in many parts of the country, can utilize the entire remaining air resource, should the statute include a prohibition on any further development which might add to existing particulate and sulfur dioxide levels? If the committee decides that growth and air quality require protection beyond the level provided by secondary standards, what should be required?
Should there be a margin of safety between background air quality and secondary standards to: First, permit reasonable growth of satellite development associated with large industrial facilities; and, second, future demands for new and expanded plant capacity?
Mr. President, those two areas, it seems to me, are emerging from this debate, the question of: First, whether or not the committee bill does indeed require the maintenance of pristine air quality in the clean air areas of the country; and second, whether or not the public interest requires protection of clean air beyond national primary and secondary standards. Those are two legitimate issues, and I hope the Senate will focus on them as the debate progresses.
I thank the Senator from Utah for yielding.
Mr. MOSS. Mr. President, I am happy to have the Senator from Maine express his view on the bill that is before us, and I find that I agree very much with what he has to say.
I certainly do not want to be one who advocates dirty air or who is opposed to making all progress possible as rapidly as possible for improvement in cleaning the air.
I am sure that with the impetus there has been behind the Clean Air Act and its enforcement, the air quality in this country has improved immensely in the last 4 to 5 years, and I hope it will continue to do so.
However, my concern is with forcing a situation that goes too rapidly and where we do not have in hand all the facts. I am convinced, as I am sure every person in this body must be, that if you put into statutory language and make it law that certain things must be done and then find out that the standards have gone too far or they did not take into account certain conditions, then you have a very difficult situation with respect to changing it and getting out of there.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a moment?
Mr. MOSS. I yield.
I have seen that chart, and I was in effect referring to that.
Mr. MUSKIE. Let me explain what it is.
This chart is written on a 1975 base that tells us where we are. It deals with two pollutants, one of which is sulfur oxide, which is one of the two pollutants covered by the nondegradation provisions. There are sulfur oxides and particulates.
At the present time, we are emitting 34.3 million tons of sulfur oxide into the air of this country.
If we were to project high growth at 6.1 percent and apply nothing more than the inadequate new source performance standards to new plants and equipment, which are below the requirements of nondegradation, by 1990 we would add 7 million tons of sulfur oxides per year to the atmosphere, on top of the 34.3 million emitted in 1975.
If we were to project moderate 4.8 percent annual growth, we would add 5 million tons more of sulfur oxides by 1990 than we do now, using new source performance standards.
If we are to use best available control technology, as the committee nondegradation provisions require, and project the same high 6.1 percent annual growth, by1990 we would add 3.8 million tons per year of sulfur oxides to the atmosphere. We would add that much, using stringent enforcement of what the Senate bill requires. In other words, this is not rolling back pollution. This is rolling back the increase in pollution.
If we were to project moderate 4.8 percent annual growth — and we would hope to do better if we are dealing with the requirements of this country, and rigidly enforce the provisions of the committee's bill — we would still add, by 1990, 2.8 million tons of sulfur oxides per year.
With respect to nitrogen oxides, which is not related to nondegradation — but inasmuch as I have the chart out, I might as well complete the description of it — this also is a 1975 base. At the present time, we are emitting 24 million tons of nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere.
If we were to require the 2 grams per mile NOx standard of the auto industry as proposed by the administration, by 1990 we would add 22 million tons of nitrogen oxide per year. The base is 24 million tons, as the Senator can see.
If we were to use the accelerated new source performance standards, for industrial facilities, and the committee's 1 gram per mile NOx standard, that would still add about 9 million tons of nitrogen oxides per year by 1990.
What we are saying with both charts is that this committee bill does not roll back pollution with respect to either of these, which are two of the serious pollutants. All it does is slow down the increase in our discharge of these pollutants into the atmosphere, and the Senate should understand that. We are not talking about rolling it back.
Mr. McCLURE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MOSS. I yield.
Mr. McCLURE. I want to add to what the Senator from Maine is saying. With respect to nitrogen oxides, that is a combination on the chart, a combination of stationary sources and autos.
Mr. MUSKIE. Exactly.
Mr. McCLURE. There are varying strategies on both.
Mr. MUSKIE. But the sulfur oxide is the most important.
I will get to the other chart, because I think the Senator from Utah would like to see it.
There has been a lot of talk about the cost of dealing with air pollution. Here is the projected cost for electric utilities. All of us have seen the television advertisements, we have heard the radio advertisements and seen the newspaper advertisements of the electric utilities and their complaint about the cost. This is the projected cost, $4.8 million over the next 10 years for utilities. That is the additional cost to capital investment that they are already planning. This is the capital planning they are already planning, which is about $180 million. This takes them up to $212 million, which is about 4.8 percent. They say that is too much.
The steel mills are a little higher. They have a more complicated problem. This is their projected capital investment; pollution requirements would add 12.5 percent; with respect to petroleum refineries, an additional 5.7 percent; with respect to pulp mills, 9.3 percent.
There are some who say that even 5.7 percent is too much. They will have to make their own case, but this puts the additional cost in perspective. The source of these figures is EPA's Office of Planning and Evaluation.
There are some other charts we shall put up here tomorrow that will, we hope, put this all in perspective. I thought these might help.
Mr. MOSS. I thank the Senator from Maine. The last chart that we looked at does have some of the features that we shall want to get from the study; that is, how much more is it going to cost to meet certain standards and will that make certain industries unavailable to certain areas? We want to know what the health factor will be, whether that amount of pollution will have any impact on the health and welfare of people. We even want to know visibility, which the Senator was talking about earlier.
I also observe that the first chart that was up there indicates to me one of the fallacies of the provisions of the bill. It tells us that we are getting 34 million tons in the air now and that might go up by 8 or 7 or some other number of tons. That sounds awfully bad just to talk about it in the abstract. We think about, my goodness, 34 million tons over this country. We are talking about SO2. Well, we have to pin it down into what that does and where it is concentrated.
Mr. MUSKIE. I say to the Senator, if this does not do anything, let us repeal the Clean Air Act. It is this kind of thing that we have been writing environmental legislation for; because people have been dying; because buildings have been damaged; because plant life has been destroyed; because agricultural crops are being destroyed. That is what it is doing. This represents a growth in that damage.
Mr. MOSS. That is exactly what we want to know. We want it down to specifics so we can look at it and say, this is going to be the effect. When we know that, then we can make a decision as to whether or not we want to legislate in that particular area.
I point out that, under the bill, EPA is also authorized to intervene in State decisions regarding permit issuance. Although the States are to determine what constitutes "best available control technology" on a case-by-case basis, taking into account energy, environmental, and economic impacts and other costs, the Administrator can contest such State determination in court. Every State action on area classifications and permits would be part of the State implementation plan and subject to EPA review and approval. I fail to see how the committee bill is less restrictive of State prerogatives than existing EPA regulations.
Mr. STONE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MOSS. I am happy to yield to the Senator from Florida.
Mr. STONE. Will the Senator from Utah say whether the section 6 implementation has been reduced to map form? In other words, is there a map which would show the specific air shed areas to which the nondeterioration would apply and to what extent?
Mr. MOSS. Yes, there has been a map with overlays pointing out the various impacted areas. I intend to use that when my amendment comes up tomorrow. It is rather unexpected that we are here now, so I have not reached that. I do hope that we will have a good attendance in the Senate, because I thank it will be very shocking to the Senators to see what is left in white after we take out the areas which, by EPA standards, existing standards and those that will be provided in section 6, will, for one reason or another, not be available for any additional nondeterioration.
Mr. MUSKIE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MOSS. Yes.
Mr. MUSKIE. Is that the so-called buffer zone map?
Mr. MOSS. No, it is not the buffer zone map. Buffer zones are on one of the overlays.
Mr. MUSKIE. Anything that presumes to portray this bill as a buffer zone bill is a complete distortion.
Mr. MOSS. I shall deal with that.
Mr. MUSKIE. I say that in advance, because I have looked at those buffer zone maps since last July. They are complete distortions. They can only be described as a lie as applied to this bill. If that is the display that is to be prepared tomorrow, we are indeed going to have an interesting debate.
Mr. MOSS. Well, the Senator will see and he will like it.
Mr. STONE. Will the Senator from Utah allow the Senator from Florida to inquire briefly, along the same line, of the Senator from Maine without losing his right to the floor?
Mr. MOSS. Surely; I yield for that purpose.
Mr. STONE. Is there a map that the committee or its staff certifies as being accurate or correct which does show the breakdown of the airshed implementation of section 6?
Mr. MUSKIE. There is no way of writing such a map for a very simple reason, I say to the Senator. I am glad to have the opportunity to give the answer.
First, only mandatory class I areas can be mapped. They are less than 1 percent of the land area of this country.
With respect to the intrusion problem, which has only to do with the extent to which industrial or other similar facilities outside the class I areas may intrude upon the clean air values of class I areas — which are national parks and wilderness areas — the extent to which that intrusion will be permitted or monitored is done on an ad hoc case-by-case basis by the States, with the States having the veto power.
In other words, the Federal land manager has the responsibility to protect his area's clean air values. If he feels that requires that he intervene in a State decision or State proceeding to set air pollution standards for adjoining land over which the State has jurisdiction, then he has the obligation under the bill to intervene and to make the case that his area's clean air values are in jeopardy if the pollutant permitted by the State decision goes forward. But the State makes the decision as to whether or not he is right. The State has the option under this bill to decide that he is wrong and to proceed with its decision. There is no way of anticipating, by any kind of map, what kinds of pollution issues will be raised around these Federal areas or what decision States will make with respect to them. So there is absolutely no way of mapping, any more than it is possible to map the Supreme Court's decisions for the next year.
Mr. STONE. Will the Senator from Maine further yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. Of course.
Mr. McCLURE. Will the Senator yield so I may add one thing to the statement the Senator has made?
Mr. STONE. With the same agreement with the Senator from Utah, yes.
Mr. MOSS. I yield.
Mr. McCLURE. I want to mention one additional element: When the Federal land manager makes the decision to intervene in the State decision making process, it is with regard to only one thing; that is the air quality-related values for which the class I area was created as a Federal area.
Mr. MUSKIE. Exactly.
Mr. MOSS. That is without further definition than just those words, "air quality-related values."
Mr. STONE. The Senator from Florida is a little troubled by the lack of predictability of mapping, as it were, of the airshed areas to be affected by section 6 nondeterioration restrictions.
The Senator from Florida wants some additional protection over and above what the current statutes provide. He wants, in the words of the Senator from Maine, further protection.
Mr. MUSKIE. This bill provides less protection than current law. This bill provides less protection, let me repeat, than current law.
Mr. STONE. Then the Senator from Florida is reinforced in his cosponsorship of the Moss amendment.
Mr. MUSKIE. Which provides even less protection.
Mr. STONE. Which would require a study for a year to find out what is the appropriate further protection to additionally protect the air shed areas impacting on these class I areas. But the Senator from Maine says at this stage of the proceeding there are no maps that could be advanced as the impact maps, as it were; is that not correct?
Mr. MUSKIE. May I say to the Senator, we have tried, and I am sure the Senator will try before his terms in the Senate have expired, to find a way to apply national solutions across the vast diverse regions of this country so that they impact exactly equally upon conditions that are exactly the same. I mean, we have tried it.
Mr. STONE. That is our goal, is it not?
Mr. MUSKIE. We tried it with transportation goals in the 1970 law, and we had a virtual revolution across this country from those areas which were asked to do more than they felt they reasonably could as a result of the application of national standards.
The same thing is true in a lesser degree with respect to automobile standards.
Now you have more and more States coming in and saying, "Well, we need a special law." So all of the pressure is the reverse of what the Senator is talking about. They want to fractionalize and fragment this business. The Senator fromVirginia wants each State to set its own standards. Well, why did we get into national standards in the first place? Because of competitive disadvantage.
Mr. STONE. If the Senator will yield, Mr. President
Mr. MUSKIE. So there is no way, may I say to the Senator, and I say it with all sense of realism, there is no sense of writing a map of the kind of things the Senator is talking about. Does the Senator think he is going to get a map out of the Moss study? The only kind of map you can conceivably get out of that is a map that imposes no air quality standards upon clean air. If you want something that adjusts to the requirements of individual areas this committee bill does because it gives you an increment that adds to whatever the air quality presently is in an area.
It does not impose a uniform ceiling at all. That is what you want. I can hear myself listening to the Senator from Florida in a year or two saying, "Senator, don't you know better than to tie that kind of a handcuff on every area of the country, whatever its differing circumstances?"
I mean, you have to choose a course somewhere in between.
Mr. STONE. The Senator is quite correct, and that is why the Senator from Florida does not intend to support the amendment of the Senator from Virginia (Mr. WILLIAM L. SCOTT). But the Senator from Florida would like to have some kind of a forecast of the impact, and the Senator from Florida did not ask for an absolutely equal impact all across the board, all across the country, as the Senator from Maine was talking about in his transportation studies and other studies.
Mr. McCLURE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield, because I think he addressed himself to the very crux of the argument on the Moss amendment.
If the Senator from Florida believes we are going to get more predictability under the Moss amendment than under the committe bill, I think he is sadly mistaken. If the Senator thinks he is more apt to get a map under the EPA regulations than under the committee amendment, I think the Senator is sadly mistaken. The uncertainty of the incremental additions and the uncertainty of the kind of map the Senator is talking about is at least as great and, in my judgment, greater under existing law and existing regulations than it is under the committee measure.
If you adopt the Moss amendment you are back to the existing law and existing regulations which will impose a greater uncertainty than the committee measure with which we are dealing, and you would have gone in exactly the opposite direction that you say you wish to progress.
Mr. STONE. The Senator from Florida fails to accept and understand that you will get less certainty and less knowledge out of a study than without a study.
Mr. McCLURE. That is not the question. The question is do you progress under the existing law and the EPA regulations that are implementing that law, with all of those uncertainties, which I agree are great, or do you progress under the uncertainties of the committee bill which, I believe, are less onerous than those of the existing law.
The study only kind of tries to set after a year's time how bad is the situation under the existing law. The amendment of the Senator from Utah only gives us that information after the fact, tells us how bad it has been for the year which we have been studying and living under the current uncertainty.
Mr. MOSS. I think quite to the contrary. What the Senator from Utah's amendment attempts to do is to say, "Hold where we are now on air standards, study it for a year, come back with all the data we need to tell us what it is going to be and then decide whether we want to take on this second uncertainty," which the Senator from Idaho referred to.
Mr. President, I only have a very few moments.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield 30 seconds?
Mr. MOSS. Yes.
Mr. MUSKIE. May I say to the Senator from Florida I have found around here that when we are dealing with formulas of distribution to several States you had better have a formula which benefits the majority of the States or you are not going to get a favorable vote. I can see the map that the Senator from Florida envisages, and I can see a map that imposes more stringent requirements on a majority of the States than the law in force, whatever it is, and I can see the Senate amending the map to insure that a majority of the areas represented by the Members of this body have lesser and not tougher requirements to meet.
Mr. STONE. The Senator from Florida would not be voting for less, he would be voting for more.
Mr. MUSKIE. But a majority of your colleagues would not.
Mr. STONE. That may be, but the Senator from Florida can only cast his own vote. The Senator from Florida is seeking the kind of knowledge of impact on the environment that will allow a wise move, something that will balance the loss of production, the loss of investment, the loss of jobs, with an enhancement of the air quality on an acceptable balanced basis, and the amendment of the Senator from Utah requires just such a study that will allow an intelligent vote 1 year hence rather than an assuming vote at this stage.
Mr. MUSKIE. May I say to the Senator I have been reading this material, studying it—
Mr. MOSS. I have now yielded about 30 minutes.
Mr. MUSKIE. For 13 years.
I would say to the Senator from Florida I doubt that he will have the kind of certainty at the end of 1 year that he is asking for.
Mr. MOSS. Mr. President, do I have the floor? I would like to claim the floor. I have been cut off for about 30 minutes. I was just trying to wind up my statement.
I appreciate the help of the Senator from Florida and the Senator from Maine.
Proponents of nondeterioration cite studies showing that growth would not be impeded under a policy of nondeterioration. They say that by applying modern pollution technology, virtually every size and type of industrial source may be constructed, under the provisions of S. 3219. I disagree. First of all, there are at least as many studies concluding that growth would be restricted. It should be obvious to those of us familiar with the clean air issue, that growth will be limited even if the policy of nondeterioration were not enacted or implemented. In many areas of the United States — in fact, in areas where most of our industry is located and where most of our citizens live — the ambient primary and secondary standards have already been exceeded. The pollution levels set by these standards are the absolute limit in areas with superior air quality, and are the defined goals in areas where pollution exceeds the standards. If ambient standards are already exceeded in many areas, a strict tightening of these standards in clean air areas can only further impede the construction of new facilities.
COMPETING NATIONAL GOALS
It is time we stopped trying to fool each other about issues involving the catch words "clean" and "environment." I am not prepared to tell you that the existing national ambient standards are adequate to protect every living person or thing in the United States. It is obvious that breathing anything short of air "pure as the driven snow" will not, under normal circumstances, enhance human health. We all recognize that any air pollutants could have adverse health effects over some period of time, on some individuals. This is no startling revelation.
Having recognized this fact, our job in setting national policy is to determine at what level, under existing technology and economic circumstances, we will accept less than pure air in order to balance this important objective against the equally important objectives of fostering a healthy economy, a healthy domestic energy industry, and a healthy job market.
Air, after all, is a natural resource and must be conserved as such. On the other hand, it must also be utilized for man's ultimate benefit. This includes the use of air to produce energy necessary. for our domestic well being.
Now, I am not philosophically opposed to the idea of nondeterioration. Neither am I prepared to say that what is good for industry is good for America. However, anti-industry measures are not necessarily pro-environment either. Until we know the facts, precipitous action is foolish and unwarranted.
Let us insure that in our enthusiasm to make our environment as acceptable as possible that we do not start a chain reaction of two steps forward for air, and three steps backward for our total environment. We must remember that it has been man's ability to alter this environment through industrial development that enables this planet to support upwards of 4 billion people. For too many of these people, change in the environment which expedites the exploitation of Earth's resources, including air, could not come soon enough. I think we have learned the hard lessons of the past that we cannot act irresponsibly in using our environment. But we cannot stop using our environment, either.
MAKING POLICY FOR 1976 AND THE FUTURE
Proponents of nondeterioration continually cite language contained in previous enactments of the Congress as the original basis for the concept of nondeterioration. Even if we accept this history as accurate, let us not forget that our responsibility is to examine, define, and where appropriate, enact public policy for the benefit of our citizens in 1976 and hereafter; not to let ancient history, whether legislative or otherwise, dictate our course. I doubt that there is a Member of this body in office in 1970, who realized that the policy of nondeterioration was embodied in the Clean Air Act that we then voted on.
We must recognize that air is a renewable resource. It does cleanse itself when pollution levels decrease. Pollution levels have been decreasing in many areas in recent years largely because of the existing act. Contrary to the impression advanced by proponents of nondeterioration, the skies over the national Parks and wilderness areas are not going to turn black, with helpless animals choking from pollution, if we implement a comprehensive and necessary 1-year study by deleting nondeterioration from this bill. We should consider it again with facts in hand.