Past history gives little cause for confidence that dumping even 100 miles into the sea will prevent grave consequences 40 years from now. In fact, the evidence from the present New York situation, and from the effects of other United States and worldwide marine activities, indicates firmly that if we are to avoid setting off further disaster in our vital offshore areas, the dumping should be phased out entirely along our coastlines and the Great Lakes. The legislation I am proposing would require such a phase-out in 5 years, a deadline which respected authorities have indicated would be reasonable, if a concerted effort is started now to find alternative, safe means of waste disposal or recycling. The only exception would be when the Secretary of the Interior determined that an alternative was not yet technically available. Then, a temporary permit could be issued until an alternative was developed. The legislation will also deal with the wastes pouring directly into the ocean and the Great Lakes from numerous outfalls of municipal and industrial waste disposal systems. As I pointed out earlier, the alternative of piping our wastes directly into the sea is becoming increasingly attractive from an economic point of view, as water quality standards are tightened inland. Yet from an environmental point of view, moving to the edge of the sea for cheap waste disposal and cheap water supplies will only accelerate the pollution of the sensitive offshore areas. It is a trend that must be halted now, and the legislation I am introducing will allow only liquid, nontoxic wastes, treated at levels equal to the natural quality of the receiving waters, to be disposed of at sea, with the exception noted above, where an alternative was not technically available. Now, on one 30-mile stretch of the New Jersey coast alone, there are 14 sewer outfalls discharging directly into the ocean, with more planned. In New York harbor, 20 New Jersey companies are either in court or under orders to halt pollution. According to Federal figures several years ago, the estuarine waters of the United States received 8.3 billion gallons of muncipal waste discharges per day. Clearly, wholesale waste disposal and dumping into the ocean environment is a practice that is rapidly becoming a national scandal. It reflects another near total failure of our institutions to come to grips with a grave new challenge of this modern, complex age. And it is one more tragic instance of polluters and Government, with the consent of a lethargic public, avoiding rational environmental planning now, and letting future generations pay the price. To date, we have been spending only a pittance in this country on new, more effective ways of handling our wastes, while we spend tens of billions of dollars to put man on the moon, or to fight the Vietnam war. Legislation now pending before the Senate, the Resource Recovery Act, would be an important step forward in the urgently needed effort to manage this country's mounting solid wastes. Ironically, while we continue to accelerate the gruesome process of polluting the sea, industry, our crowded cities, commerical ventures of all kinds, and even public agencies are making big new plans to carve up this rich, little regulated frontier for profit or for the tax dollar. Already, the Defense Department holds one of the biggest chunks of marine environment-a total of approximately 300,000 square miles used for missile testing grounds and military operations. But jurisdictions are so confused in the increasingly busy offshore waters that one mining operator had to turn back his sea bed phosphate lease when he found it was an old Defense Department ordnance dump. Crowded metropolitan areas are looking to the sea as the answer not only to their waste disposal problems, but for their space shortages as well. In the next few years, it is possible that construction of floating airports will begin for New York City, Los Angeles, and Cleveland. Floating seaports and floating cities may not be far behind. And population and use pressures on our coastal areas will continue to escalate. Already, more than 75 percent of the Nation's population, more than 150 million people, now lives in coastal States, and more than 45 percent of our urban population lives in coastal counties. Now, the coasts provide recreation for tens of millions of citizens. And the demand for outdoor recreation is increasing twice as fast as our burgeoning population. Yet in the face of these growing needs and expectations, the coasts are in danger of being crowded and polluted out of the market as recreation resources. In effect, Americans are slamming the door on their last escape route to a livable world. Our choice now is to either clean up our environment, or survive in surroundings we never thought we would have to accept. Again, we look to the sea for distant answers. Within 33 years, we can expect permanent inhabited undersea installations and perhaps even colonies, according to the commission on the year 2000, a group established by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In another activity, oil tankers, a more frequent source of pollution than oil wells, are being built to huge scales, cutting transportation costs but increasing environmental danger. The Torrey Canyon tanker was carrying 118,000 tons of crude oil when it broke up off England in 1967, a disaster that soaked miles of beaches with oil and killed more than 25,000 birds. Today, there are tankers being designed with a 500,000 ton capacity. In addition to bringing new pollution dangers, the tankers will probably help create a new industrial seascape off our coasts. Since our ports are not big enough to handle these super ships, offshore docking facilities will have to be built. In the Gulf of Alaska, heavy tankers could soon be operating to ship oil from the southern end of the proposed Trans-Alaska pipeline. Meanwhile, other oil and gas interests are proposing leases for drilling in the gulf. Leasing could put the tankers and oil rigs on a collision course, with massive oil spills as a result. In another area of resource use, a company will soon begin an experimental mining operation off the southeast Atlantic coast in which a vacuum device will draw materials off the sea bed, and half way up, separate out fine wastes and spew them into the undersea in a broad fan. An almost certain result will be the smothering of bottom life over a wide area. On Georges Bank, a rich international fishery off the New England coast, studies have identified areas with tremendous oil and gas potential, posing possible conflicts. The evidence is clear. If tough environmental management steps are not taken now, the outcome of this bustle of new activity is certain. We will ultimately make as much a wreckage of the oceans as we have of the land. There will be constant conflicts between users, more reckless exploitation, perhaps the total destruction of marine life, and through the whole process, public agencies will be relegated to their all too frequent ineffective role of referees between competing resource users. The legislation I am proposing today as the Marine Environment and Pollution Control Act of 1970 prescribes far-reaching steps to establish rational protection of the ocean environment. The first section makes it unlawful for U.S. citizens, which includes corporate and municipal officers, to dispose of refuse materials into the Great Lakes, the territorial sea, Outer Continental Shelf waters, or the high seas without a permit from the Secretary of the Interior issued with the concurrence of the Council on Environmental Quality in the White House. Before the Secretary can grant such a permit, he will be required to undertake a broad-ranging investigation into the effects the disposal would have on the marine environment. In addition, public hearings will be held if requested, to give concerned citizens the opportunity to speak on the matter. In general, this legislation provides for public involvement in the decisionmaking process at every available opportunity, an involvement that has far too frequently been lacking in the making of Federal environmental policies. Under this bill, the Secretary will only grant a waste disposal permit if there is convincing evidence that the disposal will not have any adverse effects on plant and animal life and the marine environment generally. As I have pointed out earlier, consideration of the impact of dumping on the fragile marine ecology of dumping has been entirely inadequate. The bill would phase out all marine dumping by June 30, 1975, which is a reasonable and essential step for environmental protection, except for the exceptions noted earlier in the statement. It also provides a fine of not more than $1,000 per ton of material disposed of in violation of the act. In the important second section of the bill, a system for marine environment management is established, which will apply to the submerged offshore lands under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior. As a first step, the bill provides for an Advisory Committee on the Marine Environment, to be appointed by the Secretary with the concurrence of the Council on Environmental Quality. The private citizen committee will include scientists trained in disciplines dealing with marine environment concerns. It will be responsible for the general scientific overview of the whole new program. Also called for is a series of comprehensive programs and studies designed to increase our knowledge of the marine environment and its complex ecological systems, and the effects of our activities on this vital environment. Under the bill, the Secretary would develop models of physical and ecological systems of the marine environment which would be used to predict in advance the effects of proposed activities, an unprecedented step in marine environment protection. I have also included a provision in the bill requiring truly long range forecasts of our needs and requirements, not only for minerals, but for recreation, fisheries, shipping, and natural ecological balance, over the next 50 years, another unprecedented step fundamental to making sound decisions about our ocean activities. This information will be made available to the public as it is developed by the Secretary, with the advice and recommendations of the scientific commission. The next section of the bill provides for the application of the information and knowledge gained by the Secretary and the commission to the development of comprehensive resource management plans for the marine environment. Such plans will be developed whenever the Secretary is notified that present or proposed uses of the marine environment involve a risk of serious environmental damage or serious conflict with present or future users, or when any submerged lands under the jurisdiction of the Secretary are proposed to be leased. As a part of the plan, the Secretary would conduct an intensive study of the specific area involved, and of all the plant and animal life in it, and would attempt to develop means for avoiding adverse effects or conflicts among uses. The Secretary will also seek the views of the Governors of the coastal States in the vicinity of the area of proposed activity. These efforts will culminate in a management plan which will be submitted to the Advisory Committee on the Marine Environment and also to the Council on Environmental Quality and there will also be opportunity for a public hearing. After concurrence of the council in the plan, the Secretary will implement it in public regulations which will constitute a comprehensive and mandatory guide for the use of the seabed and waters governed by the plan. I believe these management plans would be a major step in avoiding Santa Barbara-type disasters brought on by lack of foresight and information, and this approach might well merit consideration by the States for the Great Lakes and their offshore territorial waters. Public participation would be an important part of the development of these plans. It should be made clear that even the adoption of this legislation will only be a beginning in protecting our oceans. Inland, our water standard and cleanup programs must be strictly enforced and well financed, not only for the sake of our rivers and lakes, but for the future of the sea itself, which ultimately receives these wastes. And it is clear too that although the activities of this Nation are a major factor in the threat to the sea, all nations are having an impact, and have responsibilities which they too must exercise if this common world resource is to be protected. It is clear this will require new international cooperation and agreements. Mr. President, I introduce this legislation for reference to the appropriate committee, and ask that it be printed in the Congressional Record at this point. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The bill will be received and appropriately referred; and, without objection, the bill will be printed in the Record. EXHIBIT 4 S. 3677 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress finds and declares that (a) the deterioration of the environment threatens the health and welfare of man and degrades the quality of life; (b) air, water and land pollution disrupts production, jeopardizes the economy and impedes the growth of the Nation; (c) our technology has made it possible to increase agricultural and industrial production, meet consumer demands, and explore outer space, but we have not used our technology adequately to protect the resources of our environment. (d) the protection and enhancement of the environment requires effective coordination and management of existing and future programs providing for the control and prevention of air and water pollution, the disposal of solid wastes and the conservation of natural resources; and (e) it is therefore the purpose of this Act to protect present and future generations of Americans against the adverse effects of environmental changes through the establishment of an independent agency (1) to develop and promote policies for the protection and enhancement of the environment; (2) to develop criteria which identify the effects of pollutants and other environmental changes on the public health and welfare; (3) to develop and enforce standards to protect the public health and welfare from the short- and long-term adverse effects of environmental changes; and, (4) to develop the technical capacity to implement such policies and standards responsible for the development, administration, and enforcement of comprehensive national policies, programs, and activities authorized by Act of Congress to improve the quality of the American environment and to maintain that improved quality. SEC. 2. (a) The Administration shall be headed by an Administrator who shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. In addition to the Administrator there shall be five deputy administrators, appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and designated at the time of appointment as follows: the Deputy Admiinstrator for Research and Development; the Deputy Administrator for Enforcement; the Deputy Administrator for Standards Development and Intergovernmental Coordination Program Planning; the Deputy Administrator for Operations and Grants; and the Deputy Administrator for Public Information. Each deputy administrator (according to such order as the Administrator shall prescribe) shall act for, and exercise the powers of, the Adminsitrator during his absence or disability. The Administrator shall prescribe the functions and duties of each deputy administrator consistent with his designation and such additional functions as the Administrator may from time to time prescribe. The Administrator and the deputy administrators may delegate any of their functions to, or otherwise authorize their performance by, an officer or employee of, or assigned or detailed to, the Administration. (b) The Administrator is authorized to appoint and fix the compensation of such officers and employees, and prescribe their functions and duties, as may be necessary to carry out the provisions of this Act. (c) The Administrator may obtain the services of experts and consultants in accordance with the provisions of section 3109 of title 5, United States Code. (d) Subchapter II of chapter 53 of title 5, United States Code (relating to Executive Schedule pay rates), is amended as follows: (1) Section 5313 is amended by adding at the end thereof the following: "(20) Administrator, Environmental Quality Administration." (2) Section 5314 is amended by adding at the end thereof the following: "(55) Deputy Administrators, Environment Control Administration (5).” SEC. 3. (a) There are hereby transferred to the Administrator all functions of the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare with respect to, and being administered by him through (1) the National Air Pollution Control Administration; (2) the Bureau of Radiological Health; (3) the Bureau of Solid Waste Management; and (4) the Bureau of Water Hygiene. (b) There are hereby transferred to the Administrator all the functions of the Secretary of Commerce with respect to, and being administered by him through, the Environmental Science Services Administration. (c) There are hereby transferred to the Administrator all functions of the Secretary of the Interior with respect to, and being administered by him through (1) the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration; and (d) There are hereby transferred to the Administrator all functions of the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to, and being administered by him through (1) the Pesticide Control Board pursuant to the Federal Insecticide Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, (7 U.S.C. 135); (2) the Farmers Home Administration, insofar as such functions relate to the water and sewer facilities assistance program. (e) There are hereby transferred to the Administrator all functions from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (with respect to, and being administered by him through) the Community Resource Development Administration, insofar as such functions relate to the water and sewer grant program authorized by section 701 of the Housing Act of 1954. (f) There are hereby transferred to the Administrator all functions of the Department of Transportation with respect to, and being administered by him through the Office of Noise Abatement; (g) Within 180 days after the effective date of this Act, the President may transfer to the Administrator or any function of any other agency or office, or part of any agency or office, in the executive branch of the United States Government if the President determines that such function relates primarily to functions transferred to the Administrator by subsection (a) through (f) of this section. SEC. 4. (a) All personnel, assets, liabilities, contracts, property, and records, as are determined by the Director of the Bureau of the Budget to be employed, held, or used primarily in connection with any function transferred under the provisions of section 4 of this Act, are hereby transferred to the Administrator. Except as provided in subsection (b) of this section, personnel engaged in functions transferred under this title shall be transferred in accordance with applicable laws and regulations relating to transfer of functions and personnel. (b) Personnel not under section 5337 of title 5, United States Code, shall be transferred without reduction in classification or compensation for 1 year after such transfer. (c) In any case where all of the functions of any agency or office are transferred pursuant to this Act, such agency or office shall lapse. SEC. 5. (a) The Administrator is authorized to appoint, without regard to the provisions of title 5, United States Code, governing appointments in the competitive service, such advisory committees as may be appropriate for the purpose of consultation with, and advice to, the administration in the performance of its functions. Members of such committees, other than those regularly employed by the United States Government, while attending meetings of such committees or otherwise serving at the request of the Administrator, may be paid compensation at rates not exceeding those authorized to be paid experts and consultants under section 3109 of such title, and while so serving away from their homes or regular places of business, may be allowed travel expenses, including per diem in lieu of subsistence, as authorized by section 5703 of such title, for persons in the Government service employed intermittently. (b) In order to carry out the provisions of this Act, the Administration is authorized (1) to adopt, alter, and use a seal; (2) to adopt, amend, and repeal rules and regulations governing the manner of its operations, organization, and personnel, and the performance of the powers and duties granted to or imposed upon it by law; (3) to acquire by purchase, lease, condemnation, or in any other lawful manner, any real or personal property, tangible or intangible, or any interest therein; to hold, maintain, use, and operate the same; to provide services in connection therewith, and to charge therefor; and to sell, lease, or otherwise dispose of the same at such time, in such manner, and to the extent deemed necessary or appropriate; (4) to construct, operate, lease, and maintain buildings, facilities, and other improvements as may be necessary; (5) to accept gifts or donations of services, money, or property, real, personal, or mixed, tangible or intangible; (6) to enter into contracts or other arrangements or modifications thereof, with any government, any agency or department of the United States, or with any person, firm, association, or corporation, and such contracts or other arrangements, or modifications thereof, may be entered into without legal consideration, without performance or other bonds, and without regard to section 3709 of the Revised Statutes, as amended, (41 U.S.C. 5); (7) to make advance, progress, and other payments which the Administrator deems necessary under this Act without regard to the provisions of section 3648 of the Revised Statutes, as amended (31 U.S.C. 529); and (8) to take such action as may be necessary to carry out the provisions of this Act. SEC. 6. The Administrator shall, as soon as practicable after the end of each fiscal year, make a report in writing to the President and the Congress on the activities of the Administration during the preceding fiscal year. |