SEA POLLUTION OUTSIDE THE 3-MILE ZONE

Finally, the tremendously important responsibility for controlling pollution of the sea beyond the 3-mile zone is also unsettled, and plan No. 4 does not provide the answer.

We might argue that a NOAA in the Department of Commerce is only temporary, with the hope that better things are in the offing—an independent NOAA, for instance. As I am sure you are aware, the Stratton Report recommended an independent NOAA, and it also recommended that a program for coastal zone management be placed within an independent NOAA, a question that is not settled yet.

Furthermore, as we all know, temporary agencies in Washington have a way of becoming permanent and gathering power, through no one's fault or ill-intention, but 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 2 years, report after report has urged a coordinated national effort to wisely manage and protect the marine environment.

REPORTS GO UNHEEDED

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 shellfishes, 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, as I mentioned a moment or two ago.

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 oil spills and pointed out that we are drilling 3,000 to 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 No. 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 developmentoriented department at this early stage 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.

PROPOSED LEGISLATION

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.

So, we have the early administration's recommendation that coastal zone management go into the Department of the Interior and the Stratton Commission recommendation that there be a NOAA and that the coastal management function be put into that separate, independent oceans agency. Under Reorganization Plan No. 4, there is no provision regarding where coastal zone management would or should go, but I would suspect that if we allow Reorganization Plan No. 4 to go into effect automatically the Federal role in coastal zone planning and development and control would be put into the NOAA agency within the Department of Commerce. Yet, I think there is a serious question whether that responsibility ought to go there and I believe the matter ought to be carefully reviewed before the decision is made.

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

TWO BILLS REGARDING THE OCEANS

This year, I have introduced two bills regarding the oceans. One, the Marine Environment and Pollution Control Act, proposes a comprehensive system of 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 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, it seems to me, would represent a better first step toward establishing a national environmental policy on the oceans than Reorganization Plan No. 4 would 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.

Mr. Chairman, I would ask that the balance of my statement be printed, as though given, in the record.

Senator RIBICOFF. Without objection, so ordered.

(See exhibit 1, p. 107.)

Senator NELSON. And I would ask that a sheet that summarizes the Federal marine activities and where they are within the Federal Establishment and also I would ask that the statement that I made on the floor last February respecting the environmental problems of the ocean and ocean policy be printed at the conclusion of my remarks. Senator RIBICOFF. Without objection, so ordered. (See exhibits 2 and 3, pp. 110 and 111.)

Senator RIBICOFF. I would comment, before Senator Nelson leaves, that he has raised some very pertinent and important questions. While most of them are addressed to Secretary Stans, whose Department will have the responsibility for NOAA, I would expect that Secretary Stans would address himself to the questions and doubts raised by Senator Nelson when he appears tomorrow.

May I say to you, Senator Nelson, that if you desire to be here tomorrow, you will certainly be afforded the opportunity to question Secretary Stans if you would like to.

Senator NELSON. I do not know what time he is to be here. I am having an executive session on the manpower bill that we are marking up, and if we are in session on that, I could not be here. If we are not, I appreciate the invitation of the chairman.

DISAPPOINTED IN THE PLANS

Senator RIBICOFF. May I say, apropos of your remarks, that personally I have been disappointed in these reorganization plans. I consider them better than what we have had, but I had anticipated that the administration would have recommended the creation of a depart

ment of environment and natural resources, basically reorganizing the Department of the Interior and giving the entire mission to the Department of the Interior. It is my understanding that the Ash Commission that had made an entire study of this problem had so recommended, but after the Ash Council had recommended this type of reorganization, when it got to the White House, the White House rejected the Ash Council proposal and substituted these instead.

REORGANIZATION PLANS ARE BETTER THAN WHAT WE HAVE

Eventually, my feeling is, you are going to have to recognize the importance of this entire problem on a Cabinet level basis. Again, I agree with many of your comments. The question that would bother the chairman would be that while this may not be the best reorganization, whether we should reject these plans, because they are certainly better than what we have now. But you have raised very pertinent questions, and I do appreciate your raising them before this committee. Senator NELSON. I just wish to say to the chairman and emphasize that I am not critical of the President's environmental concern. I am praiseworthy of it as it has been expressed in his message to Congress which I thought was a very good one, and I think Reorganization Plan No. 3, establishing the Environmental Protection Agency, is a very good step in the right direction. I think it is right as the President said in his fact sheet on these plans to separate the promotional functions of various agencies from the enforcement functions. I think it has been an impossible problem for the Department of Agriculture, for example, to really address itself to appropriate control of the use of pesticides while all of its clients are users. And the President very wisely moved that function into EPA. So, I think plan 3 is a very fine step. I want to emphasize that it may be that the President's proposal in Reorganization Plan No. 4 is the right step.

JURISDICTION OVER ENVIRONMENTAL MATTERS

My concern is that we settle the question of jurisdiction over ocean environmental matters before we proceed with reorganization plans that involve, in particular, emphasis upon development of oceans, and it might be, after all, after careful consideration, in settling various environmental aspects, that you would have NOAA as proposed by the President in the Department of Commerce. It may be that you would establish within the environmental protection agency all of the environmental responsibility respecting the oceans, including oil, or put part or all of them in the Department of the Interior. Or it is possible, as many of us believe and I am one of those that this matter is important enough that we ought to have an independent agency, and whether it ought to be an independent NOAA involving the development aspects of the ocean and its environment, or whether marine environment ought to be separate, I am not entirely sure. I am only raising these questions here, because I think there are too many things unsettled respecting marine environmental responsibility to proceed with Reorganization Plan No. 4 now. I am not saying the President is wrong in it. It might be after we settle the marine environmental questions that he has the exactly correct answer respecting Reorganization Plan No. 4. So, I am, in effect, saying that we ought

to turn plan 4 down, at least for the time being, until we settle these questions. And, then, it may be that the President's proposal is far and away the best one respecting the responsibility that he places in NOAA within the Department of Commerce. And if that is the case, as I said in my statement, I certainly would support it.

Senator RIBICOFF. Thank you very much, Senator Nelson.

Do you have any questions, Senator Muskie, or Senator Metcalf? Senator MUSKIE. No. I have a statement that I would like to make, but before I do I would like to compliment Senator Nelson for his excellent statement. The questions he has raised are questions that I share with him.

The point that he stressed, the inconsistency of combining environmental protection with resource development programs I think has plagued us in the past and can plague us in the future unless we carefully separate the two and carefully separate responsibilities with respect to it. So, I would like to compliment Senator Nelson. He has raised the questions and asked them better than I could.

Senator RIBICOFF. May I add that if you cannot be here, I will have the staff take the questions you have raised and I will ask they be raised with Secretary Stans tomorrow.

Senator NELSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Senator RIBICOFF. Senator Muskie.

STATEMENT OF HON. EDMUND S. MUSKIE, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MAINE

Senator MUSKIE. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to testify today in favor of the President's Reorganization Plan No. 3 creating the Environmental Protection Agency.

The President has proposed to do by reorganization what I had proposed to do by legislation. Last December I proposed the creation of an independent watchdog agency to protect the environment, and on April 6 of this year I introduced a bill, S. 3677, to create the environmental quality administration.

I might ask, Mr. Chairman, whether that might be included?
Senator RIBICOFF. Without objection, it will be included.

(See exhibit 4, p. 117.)

Senator MUSKIE. Removing environmental regulatory authority from promotional agencies was the goal of my proposal, and it is the primary importance of the President's reorganization plan. At the same time, concentrating environmental protection programs in one independent agency should give our environmental quality efforts a measure of stability and coordination they have never known.

Few Federal programs and executive agencies have undergone the constant change in a relatively short period of time that has marked our environmental efforts. Few Federal "wars" are being fought with as much room for administrative improvement. Without a thorough reorganization-of the kind that the President and I have proposedthe pursuit of environmental quality will never achieve preeminence in the Federal Government.