MISUNDERSTANDING

Mr. SICILIANO. I think, as I mentioned earlier, they are based on a misunderstanding as to the capacity of the Department of Commerce, an attitude that was based, in turn, on the failure to recognize that more than 80 percent of the people in this new agency are already in the Department of Commerce.

And, very simply, we felt that the role and responsibilities should be in our Department. The Secretary made this point to the President. The President agreed with him that the opportunity should be given to our Department to prove that it is not only capable but that it can carry out what is really an exciting and a tremendous challenge.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION OF THE SEA

Senator RIBICOFF. In your formal statement, which I have read, it is devoted entirely to the commercial developments which may result from this NOAA. You say nothing about environmental protection of the sea, and I think this was the point raised by Senator Nelson, one that worries him so much that when he told us, and I quote:

"Senator NELSON. Commerce simply does not establish the necessary environment priorities regarding the sea."

Now, what steps does your Department plan to take to protect this vital part of our environment?

Last week and the week before, I had hearings covering Long Island Sound, and I have been dismayed to see the deterioration of that fantastic body of water by pollution, the deterioration of commercial and sport fishing, and the possibility that even Long Island Sound would become a dead sea like Lake Erie. So, I, too, am concerned with the environment.

You see, I do not think that we can keep on dumping in the sea and using it as a garbage heap. The sea is going to reject man just like the land has rejected man. How are you people proposing to protect the environmental factors of the sea?

PRESERVATION AND MAINTENANCE OF THE SEA

Mr. SICILIANO. Well, I agree completely that you cannot have economic development if we misuse and deplete the natural resources without regard to the future. We are certainly not talking, at least it is not our philosophy, of approaching the sea with the idea of simply using it, fishing it down to the last two fish, as someone recently said. could be the approach. As far as philosophy is concerned, it is a very clear one. It is one that is based on the preservation and maintenance of the resource that is there, the reasonable use of that resource with appropriate restrictions, the ensuring that industry itself is not allowed the opportunity to exploit it-to use that word.

Dr. Tribus would like to talk about this.

Senator RIBICOFF. Well, I would like him to, because this is of deep concern to me, and I think to Senator Nelson and, in fact, every other Member of the Senate. As you know, Senator Nelson has filed a resolution of disapproval of the plan, and this means that if he so continues along this line that we have got a fight on our hands, and I imagine that this would be one of the focuses of the objections.

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Mr. SICILIANO. Well, there are vast resources in the oceans, but we recognize that this source is not inexhaustible and that we have to strike a balance between what we take and what we replenish.

Dr. TRIBUS. Well, I think that we first have to look at what it takes to do something about the problem, and then proceed to examine the organizational forms that are proposed and those that might be needed beyond the reorganization in order to do what needs to be done; rather than to start with saying how the organization solves the problem. Let me talk a little bit about solving that particular problem. We have to, first, make sure that we really understand what materials are going in, that are being dumped in the ocean; and what alternatives there are for these materials. We must know what materials are harmful and what materials the ocean can absorb which are not harmful.

I am quite sure that now these things are all mixed up. After all, there are many biodegradable materials which can be put into the ocean which do not harm it. Many forms of refuse are not damaging to the ocean environment. Many others are, such as mercury and other heavy metals.

DEVELOP STANDARDS FOR WHAT THE OCEAN CAN TOLERATE

So, we first of all have to develop techniques for stopping the dumping into the ocean of things which are harmful. We have to develop standards for what the ocean can tolerate, because there are some things that are harmful only if the concentrations exceed particular amounts. This means that we must be able to learn, we must be able to know, and the sooner the better, what the diffusing characteristics of the ocean streams are, what the tolerance is of various life forms, and the effects on various life forms in the ocean from various things that man puts into the ocean.

So, we have to start with a good information base, which is concerned with living things, and with the physical environment itself. We have to start with a base of information concerning what man himself is doing and what man's alternatives are.

With that information in hand, we have to develop standards which will apply, that is, we have to develop legally enforceable standards which will tell the individual entrepreneurs in our society what they can and cannot do, which can be enforced in courts of law.

Now, this is a very broad statement of what one has to do.

Now, within NOAA we have an important part of this. We do not have all of it. Within NOAA we shall be bringing together, for example, some of the best talents that we have in the country in the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries on the effects of marine life on the natural or artificial changes in the environment.

I hope, if it is not already there, to develop the capability of doing the inverse, the understanding of what changes within the environment will do to marine life.

That will be coupled to the best agency, I think, one of the best agencies in the world, and that is the ability to deal simultaneously with the ocean and the atmosphere. I refer to ESSA.

The coupling of these two agencies will provide the beginnings of the source of information that we need with respect to how things that are put into the ocean and the atmosphere diffuse, and what the effect

of these things will be on that atmosphere, either the ocean atmosphere or the atmosphere above it, that is, the gaseous atmosphere.

INTERPLAY BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE ATMOSPHERE

I must say also that in this country we have not recognized as much as we should the interplay between living things and the state of the atmosphere.

For example, we know now that on land, gophers and such through their tunneling activities, and so on, have an effect on the ability of the land to hold the runoff. Where you do not have enough burrowing going on, when you have a heavy rain, the rain does not penetrate, but it flows off, and this is very bad for the ecological development.

Likewise, we know that the development of various types of marine organisms have an enormous impact on the way shorelines develop. This is particularly true in the tropical climates where you see coral and the like.

What I am saying, to sum it all up, is that one piece of the problem; namely, the general genuine understanding of the development of that ocean environment and the living things in it, that understanding or ability to provide understanding will be greatly enhanced by NOAA.

On the other hand, the matter of determination of standards will, of course, be taken care of within the Environmental Protection Agency, and that is handled under the different reorganization plans. These two groups will have to work together, and they will work together much as they have worked together in the past.

Senator RIBICOFF. How do you intend to coordinate your programs with EPA?

Dr. TRIBUS. We will probably do it much the same way as we have done it in the past, except we will do a better job.

Senator RIBICOFF. Well, "probably," that is not saying very much. Dr. TRIBUS. I know that we will do a better job.

COORDINATION EXAMPLE

But let me give you an example of what that coordination is like. Right now we are experiencing severe smog conditions in the Washington area.

Senator RIBICOFF. The whole world.

Dr. TRIBUS. But, as of this moment, we see it intensely here in the Washington area. That condition is predicted, and the decisions concerning whether or not emergency measures are called for right now, those decisions are based on predictions being made jointly by the National Air Pollution Control Administration and the Weather Bureau. We, in ESSA, are under contract; that is, under transfer of funds from NAPCA, for providing basic information on the diffusing characteristics of the environment. This happens to be the air environment rather than the ocean environment, and NAPCA is using this information, along with their people, to make predictions concerning the pollution hazard that will exist within the next 48 hours.

AN INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM

Senator RIBICOFF. The whole problem, whether it is ocean or atmosphere or air, is an international problem; it is not just national.

Dr. TRIBUS. Yes, sir.

Senator RIBICOFF. Have you been in consultation with the other industrial nations of the world?

For instance, with Germany, with Japan, the Soviet Union, with China?

Dr. TRIBUS. Yes, and at two levels. I would like to point out, on one level, that I had a conference within the last 6 weeks with Japanese representatives concerning what we would be doing in the way of establishing standards for, for example, steel mills. The Japanese are very much concerned that they establish equally stringent standards for their own people, and, as you know, within the last week they have had some very difficult times, and this is receiving emphasis in their country.

We also work internationally in the field of meteorology, and I would like Dr. Townsend to comment on the international activities at that level.

WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION

Dr. TOWNSEND. The World Meteorological Organization, which is affiliated with the United Nations, has been intensely interested in these problems. Virtually, all of the states belong to this. They have, for the past few years, been working on a world weather program. One of the specific objectives in this program is to provide the basic information and data upon which to base activities like pollution predictions and the determination of what kinds of interactions one finds in the atmosphere. There is a great deal of activity in this area.

The program, itself, has two phases, a World Weather Watch to improve our ability to take measurements, and also a global atmospheric research project.

Senator RIBICOFF. Do you find in your work with these international agencies, or other countries, that ideology plays any part, or is that completely diverse from all their considerations?

Dr. TOWNSEND. It plays very little part, sir. The World Meteorological Organization is quite unpolitical. The Russians, for example, have worked very closely and are very interested in the World Weather Watch and in the global atmospheric research project.

Senator RIBICOFF. Does China play any role? I mean, it has such a large land mass that it must be important to the predicting of weather. Are the Chinese participating at all in these discussions? Dr. TOWNSEND. No, sir. Mainland China is not one of the states that is a member of World Meteorological Organization. However, weather data are received from this area.

WEATHER FORECASTS

Senator RIBICOFF. I am just curious. With all of the experience you have and as you get better and better and, supposedly, more scientific, why, generally, are weather forecasts so inaccurate?

Dr. TOWNSEND. It is an extremely difficult job, and there is a scientific basis that indicates that one can never be completely successful in predicting the weather beyond a certain period of time. That period of time is still being debated in the scientific community.

Senator RIBICOFF. I can understand that someone gives a forecast

for 5 days or a month ahead, and you can pay no attention, but I am curious why it is you cannot even forecast for a period of 24 hours?

I mean, really, it is something that I would say that, next to politics and baseball, is probably more discussed by people than anything else, the inaccuracy of weather reports.

Dr. TRIBUS. Your point is well taken, sir, and when I took this job one of the things that I set about investigating was this question of why we have difficulty of predicting the weather and why we are caught now and then.

First of all-and I would be pleased to provide you with some of the statistics our ability to predict the weather has improved enormously over the last 20 years. But, one of the basic problems is this: the things that happen in the weather happen at various scales, and, as you know, it can rain in one corner in the city of Washington and not in another. If you are going to make predictions on that fine a scale, you have to be observing, you have to have observing equipment, you have to have stations to observe reasonably close together.

Now, our basic observing net is a set of stations that tend to be about 600 miles apart, and this is quite a distance.

We have a lot of things in between, too, but to provide really good meteorological services for an area such as Washington requires quite a density of observation so that you can catch clouds, rainstorms, that now move in between observations, and when that happens now, we do not make as good a prediction as we ought to make.

LARGE-SCALE WEATHER FORECAST--AN EXAMPLE

I have been talking with the staff of ESSA about the possibility of having a large-scale experiment in which we would pick some region, New York for example, and go into a much higher intensity of observation in order to see whether we could make significant improvement in our ability to make forecasts to tell you if it is going to rain in the Lower East Side but not somewhere else. There is a question as to how accurately we can do this, but we get stuck on the basis that we plan to do this but it is pretty expensive. We then have to answer the question of whether it is really worth it. Do people really want to have that amount of information in that detail? What would they do with it if they had it? Would they be willing to pay for it? We have not answered those questions completely, but this is the line of attack that we are following, because, I agree with you, I would like to see us do a better job, but I think it is important to know that it is very expensive to go much above the level that we are now going, because it calls for a much higher density of observing points.

One way you can do something about that is to add more radar stations, and we are now adding more weather radars as rapidly as the budget permits.

Senator RIBICOFF. What is the budget now for weather forecasting?

ABOUT $90 MILLION A YEAR FOR FORECASTING

Dr. TOWNSEND. It is about $90 million a year in the Weather Bureau. Senator RIBICOFF. $90 million a year.

Now, while it seems a lot of money, when you consider whether it is a farmer or a businessman, or the tourist or the vacationer, and