REORGANIZATION PLANS NOS. 3 AND 4 OF 1970 TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 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 10:40 a.m., in room 3302, New Senate Office Building, Senator Abraham Ribicoff (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Senators Ribicoff, Nelson, Javits, Stevens, and Nelson— sitting with the committee by invitation. Also present: Robert J. Wager, general counsel; Eli E. Nobleman, professional staff member, Committee on Government Operations; John R. Graff, minority counsel; and Pamela J. Gell, chief clerk. OPENING REMARKS Senator RIBICOFF. The committee will be in order. This morning the subject of our hearing is Senator Nelson's resolution of disapproval on Reorganization Plan No. 4. Senator Nelson is sitting with us to help develop his point of view. Briefly, plan No. 4 would establish a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency in the Department of Commerce. The major unit of the new organization would be the Environmental Sciences Services Administration now located in Commerce, and added to it would be the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries from the Interior Department, the sea grant program from the National Science Foundation, and several other minor units. In considering this plan, the question is the standard by which we should judge it. Title 5 of the United States Code establishes certain criteria which a plan must satisfy, and I hope the witnesses will speak to them this morning, for they must be the basis of our judgment. Senator Nelson, our valued colleague, has a statement which I believe he would like to make at this time. Senator NELSON. Mr. Chairman, and members of the subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to participate today in this further hearing on Reorganization Plan No. 4. First, let me summarize my position on plan 4. PLAN NO. 3 IS STRONGLY SUPPORTED At the outset, I want to make clear my strong support for Reorganization Plan No. 3 which creates the Environmental Protection. Agency. This plan clearly demonstrates the President's commitment 49-935-70—7 to restoring the quality of the environment, and my introduction of Senate Resolution 433 is in no way intended to be critical of his environmental efforts. PLAN 4 LEAVES MAJOR QUESTIONS UNANSWERED However, plan 4-to establish NOAA in the Department of Commerce-leaves major questions about our Nation's policies toward the oceans unanswered and is opposed by a growing number of environmentalists and environmental organizations. In my view, the greatest single defect of the plan is that it is simply not timely. The matter of assuring environmental protection of the oceans is a responsibility great enough that Congress ought to hold up on authorizing the actions proposed in the plan until we have had the opportunity to evaluate all of the marine proposals that have been made and that are pending in legislation before Congress. When these matters are resolved, the proposal to put some oceans responsibilities in the Department of Commerce, as advocated by plan 4, may well prove to be the right step, and I might very well support it at that time. Greatly increased attention has been paid in recent years to the problems and opportunities of the sea, and several high level reports have been issued and legislation has been introduced proposing major new U.S. policies toward the sea. Significantly, none of these reports and no legislation has proposed putting the lead Federal oceans agency in the Department of Commerce. The congressionally authorized Commission on Marine Science, Engineering and Resources-the Stratton Commission-last year urged creation of an independent NOAA. According to reports, the Ash Council, appointed by the President to study and recommend government reorganization, recommended a new marine environment. agency under the Secretary of the Interior. And in plan 3 proposing the independent Environmental Protection Agency, the President cited as a primary justification the fact that this would serve to "insulate the pollution abatement standardsetting from the promotional interests of other departments." And on this score, I think the President is absolutely correct. SEPARATING ENVIRONMENT FROM DEVELOPMENT This principle of separating environment from development is an extremely important one and should apply to our oceans programs as well. Yet it is unclear whether this is the approach taken in plan 4. Regardless of whether the committee and the Senate act favorably on Senate Resolution 433, I would strongly urge that in committee report language and in floor discussion, it be made clear that we do not intend that a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in a development-oriented department such as Commerce have major environmental responsibilities beyond compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act. NOAA in Commerce should not be given responsibilities for environmental planning, standard-setting and enforcement, whether this regards the control of solid waste dumping in the ocean, pollution control beyond the 3-mile zone, the environmental regulation of the offshore facilities from ports to floating airports which are now being proposed, or other maritime environmental matters. Nor should it be assigned the coastal zone management program that is proposed in bills now pending the coastal zone effort would have major environmental responsibilities. And before a decision is made on plan 4, I believe it would greatly benefit the comittee to learn the intentions of the administration with regard to the location of the coastal zone program. S. 3183 Last year, an administration bill, S. 3183, was introduced that would put the coastal zone program in the Department of the Interior. Regarding this bill, Commerce Secretary Stans said in his recent testimony before the subcommittee that this position "would have to be reappraised with the administration, and I would guess that we would have a position on that in a relatively short period of time, perhaps a month or two." Determination of the administration position on where the coastal zone program should go would seem important in more clearly understanding whether or not NOAA in Commerce would become both an environment and a development agency. If it is so intended, it would appear to be in clear contradiction of the principle of separating environmental protection from promotional interests in our Federal activities. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator RIBICOFF. Thank you, Senator Nelson. (See exhibit 12, p. 142.) Mr. Rouse, please? Mr. Rouse, you are here because Senator Nelson has some deep concerns and would like some answers to various questions, and I might have some questions for you later. Senator Nelson, at your convenience, you may proceed. This is Mr. Rouse. You had some questions you wanted to ask him. Senator NELSON. It is my understanding that you did recommend that the President create the Environmental Protection Agency as proposed in plan 3; is that not correct? STATEMENT OF ANDREW M. ROUSE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PRESIDENTS' ADVISORY COUNCIL ON EXECUTIVE ORGANIZA TION Mr. ROUSE. That is correct, Senator Nelson. Senator NELSON. And what was you rationale for the establishment of EPA? Mr. ROUSE. I think, in your opening remarks, you stated the gist of it, but I think it would be useful to go over how the Council arrived at an independent Agency for Environmental Protection, because it touches on matters that concern you. The Council started out with a predilection to place in one agency all of those activities which would enable the head of that agency to make all the necessary policy trade offs that apply to the area of cognizance of the agency. And they leaned in their deliberations toward doing that with the whole area of natural resources and their development. They found, however, that it was not feasible to do that, in this case for two fairly important reasons. POLLUTION ABATEMENT The first was that pollution abatement, the problem with which they were concerned, is a problem which permeates all of the activities of government and the instrumentalities that use resources in one way or another. The second reason was that these concerns were universal to many of the agencies of Government. It would seem totally inappropriate to place the pollution control function in any one agency which would give that agency control over certain activities of other agencies involved in resource use or promotion the area and would probably induce a bias towards the interests of the managing agency. The Council concluded that they would make an exception to the general rule they had set for themselves and to recommend to the President that a separate agency be created for environmental protection. The gravamen of that reasoning was that you should not place an activity which was universal to the activities of all other agencies, most of them resource promoting, or resource using, or resource exploiting agencies, in an existing agency, and that you should create a new one for it in order to deal specifically with the standard-setting enforcement problem. Now, the question that they were then faced with, Senator, was how much could they put into an environmental protection agency without seriously damaging the missions of existing agencies that had primary interests in certain areas which were at the same time resource using, and, on the other side of the coin, pollution creating activities. "WHERE YOU BREAK THE JOINTS PROBLEM" And that problem, which we called the "Where you break the joints problem," is the one that we had to wrestle with in putting together Reorganization Plan 3. The general rule is to put in as much as was necessary to insure the central standard-setting function would have teeth. Senator NELSON. Do I understand it was the fundamental position of the Council that you favored separating the environment aspects from the development aspects as a matter of principle? Mr. ROUSE. That is exactly right, sir; that is, the pollution abatement and control aspects. OCEAN WATERS DETERIORATING Senator NELSON. As I know you are well aware, many of the marine scientists are alarmed about the rapidly deteriorating quality of ocean waters, particularly in those critical places of our marine estuaries, breeding ground for much of the life of the entire sea. They are concerned that at the presently accelerating pace we will rather dramatically pollute this limited, especially fragile area of the marine environ |