IV. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, A DISCUSSION

REP. ASHLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Feiss, for a splendid

statement. Why do we find ourselves faced with the problem that you described so well?

MR. FEISS. Mr. Chairman, that is a very difficult question to answer, of course, but it is the all important one. I think that perhaps the best answer that I can give you at this time is simply that we have felt over a long period of years that this country has been up for grabs, that a license to develop anything anywhere has been the prerogative of all enterprise, both free and public. There are no

longer

-

and this is a trite remark

there are no longer frontiers. There are no longer at our disposal vast areas of land to be used for

any purpose and at any opportunity.

We have made very sketchy attempts to put our enterprise, both public and private, under control. And we have developed mechanisms which are not strong enough to perform an adequate service.

I am

speaking here of regulatory measures with which you are, of course, familiar such as zoning, subdivision, and the other devices which are largely handled at the local governmental level.

You have seen in the pictures which we have shown earlier this morning that quite obviously these have not been adequate. And part

of our problem, it seems to me, has been a national indifference to what we have actually been doing to ourselves. We all of a sudden find that we have polluted all of our streams. I doubt if there is a major river in the country, and hardly a lake, from which you could get clear drinking water; we have let this kind of pollution of environment occur simply by lack of recognition of what we are doing, and we can multiply this into practically any environmental situation. Only the few very great movements which we have had for the conservation of certain resources, scenic resources such as our national parks, national forests, partly commercial uses, have been part of our tradition of preservation of the environment. But in the total context these are a

relatively small part of the total job that needs to be done.

REP. ASHLEY. There certainly has been an inadequacy of public planning, hasn't there?

MR. FEISS. Yes.

REP. ASHLEY. I wonder about the extent to which public planning and the free enterprise system are actually compatible.

We accept planning

as a necessary part of our corporate life, but we don't accept planning as a part of our public life.

MR. FEISS. Well, there is a growing recognition on the part of business and industry that it has been strangling itself in many urban

preserved at all cost. At the same time, we di Helt t

obviously we must engineer the mechanisms that are necessary twentiet

the problems which we are creating for ourselves and which are self-evident.

I read on the front page of the NEW YORK TIMES yesterday about a terrifying situation in the Scranton, Pennsylvania area where the underground burning of abandoned mines is creating a subsidance of soil and whole portions of cities are sinking into these pits. At the same time the atmosphere is being polluted by sulphur fumes and other emanations from fissures that are occurring in the ground.

These are calamities that we have created, that are going to take vast sums of money to correct and are emergency situations which we must identify and for which we must find solutions.

We have other immediate problems that need solutions too, like the question of Lake Erie, making it a live water again, and the innumerable air and sound pollution problems that we are facing.

So that a program must start, it seems to me, recognizing these vast and very difficult problems, the solutions of which will take time, and major effort. And I include, of course, in this the problems of slum clearance and the development of better regulatory measures than we have to prevent reoccurrence of slum and blight in urban places. It is a global problem that will take all of our skills for

many years to come.

At the same time it seems to me that we need to recognize that there must be a focal point in the national government, a focal point, as we recommended, in the Executive Office where these matters can be considered and where recommendations can be made to the Congress on a regular basis as to how to proceed. A national plan and a national program for environmental improvement for all the people are not something that will grow just simply out of my mind or anybody else's around this table. We simply are not wise enough to be able to do this at this moment in history. But I think that men of good will, in fact, I know that men of good will working together can accomplish the objectives of a better environment for all of our people now and in the future. And what you are considering now in this committee should go a long way to assist in the development of programs and policies in this direction.

REP. ASHLEY. Would you agree that there has got to be much greater reliance upon the states, distinct from the Federal Government, in the human control of our environment? What about state land planning, this

kind of thing?

In

MR. FISHER-SMITH. I would like to give an example, if I may. the State of California, of which I am a proud and happy resident, we are heavily agricultural, and the last time I remember the figures we produced one-fourth of the nation's table foods and 43 percent of its fresh vegetables, including very, very high portions of special foods