So, my point to you is: Do you really believe it makes a difference who houses the agency that has the duty to coordinate under the coordination policy, under the environmental policy, under a coastal zone policy that the Congress lays out?

I, myself, do not. I think that the reorganization concept, the executive using reorganization powers to bring about efficiency in Government is a good thing and that we should not oppose for environmental reasons an agency which has the same environmental guidelines no matter where it is housed, and I think the coastal zone solution will involve a coordination plan just as the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act did and the Environmental Policy Act did.

Mr. PENFOLD. Well, I would certainly hope so; I would certainly hope so. The coastal zone plan will cut across just about everything we do in this country.

Senator STEVENS. Absolutely. I agree with you. And, therefore, creating NOAA is not going to make any difference to the coastal zone solution. We have got to set up a program that all agencies involved in coastal zone operation or management, in any way affecting it, whether it be HEW or aviation activities or Department of Defense, or anything else, have all got to comply with the program in terms of coastal zone. Wouldn't you agree with that?

Mr. PENFOLD. Oh, absolutely.

Senator STEVENS. Well, so how can NOAA affect it? And why is NOAA premature in light of that, in that it will not have control over these other agencies.

It, itself, is going to fit into a coordination plan in the end.

Mr. PENFOLD. Well, Senator, following your course of argument, I think it could be turned directly around 180 degrees and say: "Well, why not leave it in Interior?"

BUREAU OF COMMERCIAL FISHERIES

Senator STEVENS. Well, as I point out, we have very valid reasons to get BCF into a position where someone who understands the business problems of BCF is involved. I mean, in terms of administration we have to have top supervision. We have very valid reasons that the persons who are involved in weather control be involved in the oceanographic activities regarding BCF and regarding the fishing activities, the total activities of the functions that are being transferred to NOAA.

I examined NOAA, and I cannot find anything that is unrelated to Commerce activities, present activities, and they are not taking away from Interior the things which should remain there from the point of view of recreation and sport activities.

Don't you agree with that?

Do you have any objection to what is left in Interior after this reorganization?

Mr. PENFOLD. No.

Senator STEVENS. As you know, I spent four and a half years down there with Interior.

Mr. PENFOLD. I know.

Senator STEVENS. And I think everyone in Interior has dreamed of a Department of Natural Resources, and I am one of those, but every time we see a reorganization plan come in for the Pentagon, we

understand why other people oppose it. Every time you create one of those monster organizations it just grows and grows, and there is no way to really control it and control its internal activities, and this is the great fear, I take it, that is still expressed about the Department of Natural Resources.

Thank you.

Senator RIBICOFF. Senator Nelson?

ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS OF THE OCEAN

Senator NELSON. A few moments ago, Mr. Rouse of the Ash Council, stated, if I can paraphrase him correctly, that his belief is that the coastal zone management functions, and environment of standardsetting, the programs to protect the marine environment, should go into the Environmental Protection Agency. Do you have a position on that?

Where should it go? If not there, where?

Mr. PENFOLD. Well, I think it would be logical for it to go into the Environmental Protection Agency.

Senator NELSON. Would you oppose those functions being placed in the Department of Commerce?

Mr. PENFOLD. Yes, sir; I think we would.

Senator NELSON. I have no further questions.

Senator RIBICOFF. In other words, as I gather, you feel that we should continue to make the Environmental Protection Agency stronger and stronger, with as much supervision and control over the problems of the ecology and the environment?

Mr. PENFOLD. I would hope so.

Senator RIBICOFF. If the future distribution of these functions were as Senator Nelson suggests, would you feel differently about NOAA? Mr. PENFOLD. What?

Senator RIBICOFF. Would you feel differently about NOAA coming into existence if the functions mentioned by Senator Nelson went to EPA instead of Commerce?

Mr. PENFOLD. Yes; I think that would make it much more palatable.

Senator RIBICOFF. Thank you very much.

Senator Stevens, any more questions?

Senator STEVENS. May I have just one moment here?

Senator RIBICOFF. Certainly.

(Short interval.)

Senator STEVENS. Mr. Chairman, I understand that Senator Javits would like the record to show that any report the committee may submit should indicate that while placing NOAA in Commerce might be for development, as Senator Nelson expressed, the Commerce Department naturally would conduct its affairs consistent with the Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and in close harmony with the new Environmental Protection Agency, as the President's message states. Further, Senator Javits would have the report show that while some might be skeptical about which department would have jurisdiction to administer the pending coastal zone bill, in which there is "standard setting" authority, it still is up to Congress to decide the fate of the coastal zone bill.

If I understand what he wants to do, he wants to have the report state that Commerce may develop its new agency consistent with the Environmental Policy Act. Of course, I think that is required anyway. I think that the existing law is not amended at all by this. And the President stated in his message, as I understand it, on plan No. 4, that this is going to be in close harmony with EPA. Álso the coastal zone bill still has to go through Congress.

Senator RIBICOFF. The record will be kept open for a few days and the thoughts and ideas of each member of the subcommittee will be solicited before the report is in completed form.

Senator STEVENS. Thank you.

Senator RIBICOFF. Thank you very much, gentlemen. We do appreciate your coming.

The committee will stand adjourned until further call by the Chair. (Whereupon, at 12 noon, the subcommittee adjourned, subject to the call of the Chair.)

EXHIBIT 1

STATEMENT BY SENATOR GAYLORD NELSON REGARDING OCEANS REORGANIZATION

PLAN

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify here today. You are to be commended for undertaking this careful review of these two reorganization plans which have major implications for Federal policies regarding the environment and the oceans.

My remarks on Reorganization Plan Number 3, which creates an Environmental Protection Agency, will be brief. I support EPA and commend the President for taking this step. It should mean a much tougher, better coordinated, more effective Federal policy in dealing with polluters. Furthermore, EPA, which is similar to proposals that have been made in Congress, is a logical foundation for further steps which must be taken for environmental control. An adequate budget and staff will be critical to EPA's success.

My concern today is with Reorganization Plan Number 4, which proposes a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Department of Com

merce.

In my view, Plan Number 4 leaves unanswered major, pressing questions about our oceans policies, and I intend to introduce a resolution today which would reject the plan.

My action regarding this proposal is not intended to be critical of the President. With his State of the Union Message and the messages and proposals to Congress that have followed and with the other actions the Administration has taken, the President has shown his deep interest and commitment to improving environmental quality, and his efforts merit the support of Congress and the nation.

Further, the President may well be right in proposing Plan Number 4, and later, after careful consideration of all the possibilities, I might support it. But in my view, before an oceans agency in the Department of Commerce is established, Congress should thoroughly consider all of the ramifications not only of this proposal but of the numerous alternatives that have been proposed in high level reports and in legislation now pending in Congress.

The purpose of Reorganization Plan Number 4 at this time is not at all clear to me. Is it supposed to assist in developing the resources of the sea? Or is it supposed to protect them? Or is it to be another hybrid agency such as the Atomic Energy Commission which has had a great deal of trouble reconciling the development of nuclear power with the regulation of its consequences? In carefully reading the reorganization plan and the documents supporting it, I could not find a clear answer to any of these questions.

What is at stake in establishing this policy and deciding these matters is the last great undeveloped and probably least understood resource on earth-the sea. At the July 9 Press conference announcing the reorganization plans, Mr. Russell Train, Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality and an environmentalist for whom I have great respect, was asked why the new NOAA was not put in EPA.

Mr. Train responded: "Because the new EPA is intended to focus on the control of pollution . . . Ocean programs, obviously, go far beyond that, development efforts of all sorts."

Asked essentially the same question, Mr. Rocco Siciliano, Under Sercretary of Commerce, responded: "As far as NOAA is concerned, let's make a comparison. One is a standard setting, enforcement type agency which needs independence and that is your EPA. The other is a research, development, protection and conservation function which we are doing already in the Commerce Department . . .” Frankly, these answers are confusing to me. If, as is now proposed, floating airports are put in the ocean off some of our cities, who will be responsible for protecting the sea from the environment consequences? Who will be responsible for environmental regulations on the 47 million tons of wastes-from industrial acids to junked autos-that are dumped in ocean waters off our coasts each year? Or for the hundreds of square miles of coastal wetlands that are being drained and filled for subdivisions and industry?

The fact is, marine environment responsibilities are scattered all over the Federal government, or in instances are actually unassigned, and Plan Number 4 does not remedy this.

Under the Plan, offshore oil leasing remains in the Bureau of Land Management in the Department of the Interior and oil well regulation remains in the Department's Geological Survey. On the other hand, control of the environmental effects of offshore oil spills goes to EPA with the Federal Water Quality Administration. The U.S. Coast Guard, which has important marine pollution control enforcement responsibilities, stays in the Department of Transportation. The Department of the Interior's marine fishery program, which has important marine environmental concerns among its other tasks, goes to the Department of Commerce.

Furthermore, Plan Number 4 does little to resolve other major questions on the marine environment. The Corps of Engineers lets all kinds of waste dumping go on beyond the three-mile limit off our coasts, because it is unsure of its authority in this area, and for inshore waters, the Corps recently did not even know how many permits it had issued. Plan Number 4 does not deal with this serious inadequacy in Federal policy.

Responsibilities for protection of our estuaries and the inshore region of our coasts in other activities-such as wetlands development-are equally unclear, and Plan Number 4 would not appear to resolve this matter.

Responsibilities for regulating the environmental consequences of such developments as offshore airports and seaports are also unfixed-yet soon, we will be faced with the job of dealing with these matters.

Finally, the tremendously important responsibility for controlling pollution of the sea beyond the three-mile zone is also unsettled, and Plan Number 4 does not provide the answer.

We might argue that NOAA in the Department of Commerce is only temporary, with the hope that better things are in the offing-an independent NOAA, for instance but as we all know, "temporary" agencies in Washington have a way of becoming permanent and gathering additional power, through no one's fault or ill-intention, but merely through bureaucratic inertia and by default. There is no quarrel with those who say we need to develop the resources of the sea. We do. The minerals, the food, the space, the recreation offered by the marine environment can be of great benefit to all nations.

But distinguished ecologists are already warning that in 50 years or less there will be little productivity left in the sea for anyone if we continue on our present course of polluting it.

Just in the past two years, report after report has urged a coordinated national effort to wisely manage and protect the marine environment.

While citing the great opportunities in the sea, the January 1969, report of the Commission on Marine Science, Engineering and Resources (the Stratton Commission) warned of the major threats lying "in the potential destruction of large parts of the coastal shelfisheries, and fisheries on the high seas." To deal with both the opportunities and the dangers, the report recommended a new, independent Federal agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, and among other things, suggested a Federal-state coastal zone management program in NOAA.

The National Estuarine Pollution Study report to Congress last November said. "The impact of man on his environment has taxed the resources of many estuarine zones to the limit of endurance and reached into the depths of the ocean itself."

Last year's reports by the President's Panel on Oil Spills said that at present rates of offshore drilling for oil, we could expect a marine disaster on the Santa Barbara scale once a year by 1980. The panel concluded that we do not now have the technology to contain major marine cil spills and pointed out that we are drilling 3,000-5,000 new undersea oil wells a year. And the President's Panel urged that certain marine resources be held in trust until we better understand how to exploit them without harming the ocean environment.

Then, according to newspaper reports, the Ash Council, appointed by the President to study and recommend government reorganization, early recognized the need for much greater emphasis on ocean problems in the Federal government and recommended a new marine environment agency under the Secretary of the Interior.

But Plan Number 4 proceeds in a quite different direction from these various recommendations and would deal with very few of the problems cited in these important reports and studies.

In my view, instead of this reorganization into a development-oriented department at this early stage at least, in the shaping of national oceans policy, we would do far better to more carefully consider the recommendations of the above reports and to carefully consider legislation before Congress proposing to deal with the challenge of the sea.

Measures to establish coastal zone management programs have been introduced and heard before Senate and House committees. One is sponsored by the Administration-introduced last year, it would put the coastal zone management program in the Department of the Interior.

The Administration has also proposed legislation to end the dumping of polluted dredge spoils in the Great Lakes-an urgently needed step, and the President has directed the Council on Environmental Quality to study the ocean waste dumping problem and report to him with recommendations by September 1 of this year.

Further, measures to establish marine sanctuaries off California and to terminate oil leases in the Santa Barbara Channel have been introduced and are being actively considered.

Legislation to create the independent NOAA has been introduced by Senator Hollings, who has chaired hearings and has intensively studied our marine problems and who has been very perceptive in his understanding of these great problems.

And the bill first the Muskie bill first proposing an environmental protection agency would have transferred the Environmental Science Services Administration from the Department of Commerce to EPA.

This year, I have introduced two bills regarding the oceans. One, the Marine Environment and Pollution Control Act, proposes a comprehensive system for marine management based on intensive environmental studies. The other bill would place in a national trust untapped marine minerals until we develop the technology and plans to protect the vital ocean environment as we tap its

resources.

The Secretary of the Interior would be responsible for the programs created under both of these measures. At this point, I would like to comment that the record of the present Secretary of the Interior since he took office leaves no question that he is a courageous man determined to carry out his responsibilities for this nation's environment to the very best of his ability. The Department of the Interior is one of the two or three logical places in the Federal government to put the responsibilities for our marine environment, and under Secretary Hickel, one could have great confidence that he would institute a comprehensive program which would be an excellent base on which we could build this important policy.

The implementation of any of these proposals would represent a better first step it seems to me towards establishing a national environmental policy on the oceans than Reorganization Plan Number 4 would be at this stage in history. And in my view, such a policy could be better achieved by reorganizing and strengthening the Department of the Interior, or by building on the foundation of the Environmental Protection Administration, than by starting in the Department of Commerce.

What is necessary is that from the very beginning, we emphasize the importance of understanding the marine environment and acting to harmonize our activities with it. This will require extensive studies, planning, standard-setting, and enforcement.