REORGANIZATION PLANS NOS. 3 AND 4 OF 1970

TUESDAY, JULY 28, 1970

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EXECUTIVE REORGANIZATION

AND GOVERNMENT RESEARCH,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room 3302, New Senate Office Building, Senator Abraham Ribicoff (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Senators Ribicoff, Javits, Percy, Stevens, Metcalf, and Muskie sitting with the committee by invitation.

Also present: Robert J. Wager, general counsel; Eli E. Nobleman, professional staff member, Committee on Government Operations; John Graff, minority counsel; and Rosemarie Wagner, clerk.

OPENING STATEMENT

Senator RIBICOFF. The committee will be in order.

This morning we begin hearings on Reorganization Plans Nos. 3 and 4 of 1970.

Plan 3 would establish a new Environmental Protection Agency to be composed of 10 units from five departments and agencies. It will assume responsibility for setting standards and their enforcement in air and water pollution, solid waste disposal, and pesticide and radiation control. EPA would have a budget of $1.4 billion in fiscal 1971 and 5,600 employees.

Plan 4 would create a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in the Department of Commerce. It would bring together eight related sea and atmospheric programs from five departments and agencies. NOAA will have 12,000 employees and a budget of $270 million in fiscal 1971.

The plans appear to have widespread support. Certainly everyone is in favor of reorganizations which will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of Government programs. Today and tomorrow we will examine these plans to determine whether they are likely to achieve these objectives.

Our concern must not only assure economy in Government; I think we should also focus on two issues which will be fundamental to the success of these plans.

CONCERN FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

First, we wonder whether the present concern for the environment is just another fad which will soon be forgotten. For 6 months the Na

tion has been bombarded with millions of words about the problem. First, President Nixon sent Congress a lengthy message. Then newspapers ran special series and magazines carried feature articles. In April, one day was set aside for national involvement.

All the talk threatens a new kind of pollution—a pollution of broken promises. I fear we may become so saturated with oratory that we will grow impatient, lose interest, and go on to another cause.

Do the Government and the people have the stamina for the hard work ahead, or will this just be another brief crusade?

Second, we wonder whether people will accept the major changes in our national life which will be necessary if we are to cleanse the environment. Up to now, America's answer to the pollution problem has been to overpower it with technology and try to buy our way out with money. But this will gain us only a standoff with nature.

If we are to make any real progress against environmental contamination we must do more than apply a few palliatives. There must be basic changes in the goals and values of society.

To begin with, we must recognize that we live on a planet with limited air, water, and land. Accordingly, we can no longer follow a policy dedicated solely to national growth.

LINK BETWEEN POPULATION, PRODUCTION, AND POLLUTION

Second, we must recognize the link between population, production, and pollution. So long as our population and production increase, we will never reduce pollution. Inevitably, more people demand more goods, which results in more pollution.

So, we will need a new economics which rewards the man who preserves more, not only the man who produces more. And we will need a new environmental ethic, one which emphasizes the dependence of man on nature, not his domination over it.

We hope that the witnesses will address themselves to these larger and more basic questions, as well as the details of the plans before usfor, in the long run, the answers to these questions will determine whether we can preserve a healthful environment for future generations.

Senator Javits?

Senator JAVITS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

BOTH PLANS DESERVE FAVORABLE CONSIDERATION

I join the chairman in the expression of opinion which the Chair has just given. Both reorganization plans seem to me to deserve the favorable consideration of both Houses of the Congress. They represent a consolidation of vitally important fields of activity, now carried on in different departments, which will give them greater effect, efficiency, and make for tighter administration.

The EPA brings together in a single organization the major Federal pollution control programs now existing in four separate agencies (Interior, Health, Education, and Welfare, Agriculture, and the Atomic Energy Commission), and one interagency council (Council on Environment Quality).

This requires pulling together into one agency a variety of research, monitoring, standard setting and enforcement activities now scattered

through those several departments and agencies. The mission of the EPA will be to organize the fight against environmental pollution on an integrated basis which acknowledges the critical relationships among pollutants, forms of pollution, and control techniques.

According to the President, EPA, with its broad mandate, would also develop competence in areas of environmental protection that have not previously been given enough attention, such, for example, as the problem of noise, and it would provide an organization to which new programs in these areas could be added.

Under Reorganization Plan No. 4, NOAA brings together in a single administration within the Commerce Department the major Federal programs dealing with the seas and atmosphere. These programs presently are established now in four departments and one agency. The function of NOAA is to organize a unified approach to the problems of the ocean and the atmosphere and to create a center of strength within the civilian sector of the Federal Government for this purpose. Although each of the units which will comprise NOAA presently carries out oceanic functions according to its particular mission, the lack of overall planning and systems approach has resulted in an impetus toward oceanic affairs which has been much less than it should be.

In the forward march of human progress with the environmental situation which we face in our country and which, indeed, the whole world faces, both of these are equally appealing. They represent a very strong and overdue effort to arrest and prevent the erosion of the priceless resources of all mankind and also to prevent that most priceless asset, the human being himself, who, in a singularly polluted atmosphere, may find it impossible to exist.

With respect to Reorganization Plan No. 4, here, too, as in outer space, there seems to be signaled a uniquely important invention for all mankind.

Now, I find no problem with Reorganization No. 3, that is the Environmental Protection Agency. As far as I am concerned, Reorganization Plan No. 4 also looks to me desirable.

I do hope that the witnesses, and I beg the witnesses of the Department to give me their attention, as I may not be here in the course of their questions-I hope they will deal with the following questions:

THREE VITAL AREAS OF CONCERN

First, is the Commerce Department an appropriate agency for all of the activities?

For example, the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries?

Second, what will be the effect of a new agency on any new effort to deal with priceless natural resources like Long Island Sound on which the chairman held very admirable hearings last week? Our coasts, including Long Island Sound, are also the subject of the National Estuarine and Coastal Zone Management Act of 1970, introduced by Senator Boggs of Delaware and the plan authorized in that bill is to be administered by the Department of the Interior. Might that plan, under this reorganization plan, not go there?

And, third, what would be the effect of both the new agency and administration on the ultimate establishment of a Department of

Natural Resources which, generally speaking, I favor and which may ultimately be the way in which this whole effort, including environmental protection, may move?

I would appreciate the administration witnesses answers to these questions. I have no doubt that they will have adequate and proper explanation if only because the reorganization is, itself, an interim step in the process of government, but I do think we should have explanations of record.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator RIBICOFF. Thank you very much.

The President's messages transmitting Reorganization Plans Nos. 3 and 4 of 1970 and staff memorandums No. 91-2-23, dated July 23, 1970, and 91-2-25, dated July 27, 1970, will be placed in the record at this point.