regard to putting the main water conservation, water quality management function in a single department would do more for my Department to give it a mission, to give it a real challenge than anything that has happened since the Department was created 115 years ago. Therefore, I see this not as an isolated reorganization proposal. I see it as an opportunity for the executive to organize itself in such a way that you have, for the first time, an organization or a governmental department that has primary responsibilities in a very sharp focus for the stewardship of the natural resources of this country.

Now this doesn't mean that perhaps other steps should not be taken later or that there isn't other tidying up to do, but I regard this as a very big step. I simply want to say that my own feeling is that my people and my Department are ready for this type of challenge and responsibility. There have been some very dramatic changes in the last 2 or 3 years, the new Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, with its responsibilities, the fact that we have gone into what I think is already seen as a historic move to enlarge our national park system, particularly in the eastern part of the United States. The last several Congresses, all the way from Cape Cod down the coast and inland, have been belatedly authorizing a whole series of projects to help save the out of doors in the eastern part of the United States.

This should have been done, in my judgment, long ago, but we failed and now we are having to do it belatedly and in a very costly way. I want to say for the record and the two Senators here, who happen to be from the East, and who happen to be very sensitive to the quality of the environment problems, that I think that the best way to get quicker action, the best way to enlist the type of national interest and support that is needed, the best way to achieve the objectives of cleaning up our rivers, of providing a better outdoor environment for the country, is to center more responsibility in one depart

ment.

I think this reorganization proposal does it. I have indicated yesterday the type of leadership that I intend personally to provide in this area, and I think that this can be regarded in retrospect, if everything goes the way I think that it will, as a real historic step that gave the Nation an opportunity to provide a new thrust of leadership in this whole business of the national environment of the country.

Senator RIBICOFF. As I have listened to you, it seems to me that, if this function goes over to you, to your Department, the Department of Interior will in many ways be moving toward becoming a Department of Conservation and National Resources.

Secretary UDALL. Well, I think this we refer, although Orville Freeman and some of the other people I think look a little askance at it, we refer to ourselves in some of the literature as a department of natural resources. I think to an extent there is a department of natural resources in the country today. We are it. This doesn't mean that we have all of the functions that political scientists or others would put there. Nevertheless I think that if you look at other countries that are similar, the more we can get this type of focus and centering of responsibility, the better the chance is that the country can or will follow a conservation flag and provide the support and strength that is needed to achieve the objectives that I think we are. all generally agreed are needed.

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Senator RIBICOFF. The thought occurs to me that generally the department of interior in most European countries is a department where the secret police

Secretary UDALL. That is correct.

Senator RIBICOFF (continuing). Are stashed away.

Secretary UDALL. The first thing I have to explain when I go abroad, Senator, is that I am not the police department. We have had the feeling in my own department for some time that our name, although it has a honorable history in the country, is not very descriptive.

I think most people if they are familiar with what the Department does, know what its function is. But to almost anyone who is not, or to any foreigner coming from abroad, if you say Department of the Interior, the immediate implaction, at least for Western Europeans, is well, this is a department concerned with matters of internal security and internal government organization.

Senator MUSKIE. May I say, Mr. Secretary, that certainly the concept of the Department of Land Resources is a very appealing one? And yet, here is a problem that is concerned with people. It strikes me as a little strange when we have created a department to deal with problems of urban America that we should take the water pollution problem, which is about as great as any which urban America faces, and put it in directly the opposite direction, away from people and toward resources.

In the Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee of this committee, Mr. Chairman, we have been concerned for some time with developing proposals for better government in metropolitan areas, with multiple jurisdictions. For instance, the New York area has hundreds and is approaching thousands of jurisdictions. We have been concerned with the problem of planning for these areas which would more usefully develop such projects as sewage treatment plants dealing in water systems and sewer systems. This is the reason HUD was created.

As a matter of fact, in last year's Water Quality Act, we provided incentives, additional Federal grants, incentives to jurisdictions to plan together for their sewage treatment facilities.

You are thinking in terms of river basins, which in a sense are similar to what we are thinking about in metropolitan areas, bringing together the groups of people. You talk about bringing together the groups of resources. Now both are logical from a certain point of view, but I am really disturbed as to which is the most logical to deal with this problem. Frankly, I have been tempted to oppose this plan. My primary objection is the timing.

However, I am aware that the evolutionary changes in this program may take it to Interior eventually anyway. In addition, we must remember, our own personal dedication to what we are trying to do. If it weren't for these two factors, I would be strongly tempted, and may still be, to oppose the plan.

There is logic to your position, Mr. Secretary. There is logic to the plan, a great deal of it. Yet, there is this other problem that is disturbing. Now if you can find a way, after you take this program over, and the odds favor that at the moment, to combine this concern which we must have for the conservation and use of our natural

resources with the problems of metropolitan America in its use of water, then you will achieve what we all want.

Secretary UDALL. Senator, I think you have made, as usual, a very penetrating statement of what the problem is. With our country faced with the fact that we are 70 percent urbanized now and we will probably be 90 percent urbanized, or so some say, in a few years, I think this raises one very big question, and that is whether we can establish governmentalwise a whole new pattern of relationships, both as far as State governments are concerned and the Federal Government is concerned, to enable us to solve the problems of these urban

areas.

One might say that, well probably what you need would be a department of urban affairs with different divisions operating tightly under one direction, and that maybe this would be the best way to resolve it. I think myself that if you have a department, for example, of health and education, as you have in HEW, with a strong focus there, and if you have another department that has primary focus on resources and on the natural environment and the quality of that environment, I think these departments are going to have to establish very creative relationships with the cities themselves, and with the new Department of Housing and Urban Development.

We are right on the new edge of this, and I don't know whether we will do it well or do it poorly, but it does seem to me that this is a very critical time-a very interesting and challenging time-to see whether we can establish these new patterns of relationship, just as we are talking about doing on a river basin basis.

We don't yet know all the answers. We are going to be wrestling with that problem this year. But I am convinced if we put it together right, as we saw in West Germany a few weeks ago, that we can lay the foundations now, in the next 2 or 3 years, for laws and regulations and patterns of relationship and new governmental organizations that will be solving these problems 50 years from now in this country. That is what I find to be a real challenge.

Senator RIBICOFF. By the way, talking about your trip to West Germany, I haven't talked to you or Senator Muskie. I sort of quail at this thought. I wonder if you people are looking into this effluent charge in Germany?

Secretary UDALL. Senator, it seems to me the effluent charge they are using in the Ruhr arose out of the particular history there.

Senator MUSKIE. It's really not, Mr. Secretary, what people on this side of the water understand it to be.

Secretary UDALL. That is correct, exactly.

Senator MUSKIE. Would you be interested in having a brief description of it?

you,

Senator RIBICOFF. Well yes, because to me, and I will be frank with I have been hitting this, because what I think you are talking about is a negative way to get at the problems of water pollution by allowing the polluters to continue pollution, as I understand it, by paying a fee. I would rather give them tax credits to allow them to be positive and clean up pollution. This is what has been bothering me as I read about it.

Senator MUSKIE. This is not the way it works as I understand it. In the Ruhr area, going back to 1908, it became evident that herculean

steps had to be taken to deal with their water pollution problems. They organized themselves under law, with compulsory membership, into two associations, one to deal with water supply and one to deal with water quality. Each association is made up of membership which as I say is required by law.

The supply membership consists of everyone who draws 30,000 cubic meters of water or more a year from the streams.

The quality membership is made up of everyone who contributes anything at all to the pollution of the stream. About 46 percent of the membership of the Ruhr RiverAssociation is identical-that is, those who draw and also pollute and 54 percent are separate.

The supply association has the function of building reservoirs and the responsibility for engineering work that will maximize water supply. The money to build these reservoirs is borrowed and then amortized by annual charges to the members on the basis of a formula which takes as many as six factors into account, including ability to pay.

Then the operating costs of the supply association are also borne by annual charges to the members.

The quality association builds the treatment plants. The cost of the plants again is supported by charges amortized to the members. The operating costs are also amortized through annual charges to its members. This is the charge.

Certain members of the quality association are allowed discounts or credits against their annual charges to the extent that they perform in plant improvements that reduce pollution. This is the thing that has been twisted, I think, into an affluent charge concept in American literature which undertook to analyze the Ruhr situation. I don't think the Secretary or Mr. Quigley, who was also with us, understands the effluent charge to be what we thought it was when we left. Have I described this accurately?

Mr. QUIGLEY. It is not a license to pollute. This is, I think, the one discovery we made.

Senator RIBICOFF. I am very pleased to be enlightened.

Senator MUSKIE. I am not sure that we should adopt this for our problem, but it is a different kind of a system than I understood it to be.

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Senator RIBICOFF. I would say this. We have a few more witnesses, and we would like to finish with them this morning. Unless Senator Muskie has more questions for the three of you, I personally would be satisfied if you, for the purposes of the record, would supply the answers and make sure that the members of the committee get copies personally. I would like Senator Muskie to have a copy. And may say this before closing: The fact that America is conservation minded and natural-beauty minded, and preservation of natural resources minded, I think the credit goes to you more than to any single individual, Secretary Udall. I think you have been a dedicated Secretary who understands the problem and really believes in it, but there are doubts in my mind about the efficacy of this whole program, as Senator Muskie indicates, countervailing our confidence in you. I am sure if you had supervision, and this would be your main function in your Department, you could give direction which would set an example not only in your administration but the administration of any Secretary

that might follow you. I do want to pay this public tribute to you for the outstanding job you have done in not only trying to do something about this problem, but making this entire country aware of the importance of this problem to the present and future America.

Senator MUSKIE. May I say if you were to leave your post shortly after this plan took effect, I would be very unhappy.

Secretary UDALL. My plan, Senator, is to stay as long as the President will have me, if that will give you any great assurance. I think I have the best job in the Government and I would like to hang on as long as I can.

Senator MUSKIE. If his plan, which is so strongly oriented to you personally, is adopted, he has no choice but to keep you.

Mr. SEIDMAN. Mr. Chairman

Senator RIBICOFF. Just before the Secretary finishes, the staff has called to my attention the administration bill on the Clean Rivers Restoration Act of 1966. On page 7, subsection (b), appears this language:

"The planning agency shall also, in preparing a comprehensive pollution control and abatement plan, give consideration to effluent charges on public and private entities discharging waste or raw or inadequately treated sewage into any waters within all or part of a river basin or group of related basins or parts thereof."

Now I listened with great interest, Senator Muskie, because I was learning something about how Germany does this different from what I had anticipated. But what Senator Muskie described in his very, very brief statement here seems contrary to what is in this bill.

Secretary UDALL. Senator, let me undertake to explain the bill, although I won't take responsibility for drafting that particular language. This was drafted in January and February before some of us went to West Germany and got enlightened as to what we were actually talking about, and I would say certainly as far as Senator Muskie, Congressman Bob Jones, who is one of the leaders on the House side, Jim Quigley and myself-we were all together-are concerned, there is no disagreement among us as to how they are doing it over there. As to its application here, I certainly don't think that that language at this point should be interpreted as involving any kind of license to pollute, or implying that we favor it in the administration. Senator RIBICOFF. But they still have charges, you have effluent charges. In other words, you have been reeducated since your trip to Germany.

of

Secretary UDALL. That is, I think, part of my answer.

Senator MUSKIE. May I hasten to say, Mr. Chairman, in defense my own position, that I have never been very friendly to this concept to effluent charges, anyway. I was delighted that I was able to pick up ammunition in Germany about the whole concept.

Senator RIBICOFF. I am delighted too, because I think that Senator Muskie joined me when the matter came to the Senate in getting cosponsors, giving tax credits in the form of fast tax writeoffs, to industries that install water and air pollution devices.

This is something that has now received the support of the chemical industry, the steel industry, many of the largest polluters, the pulp and paper industry, as a way to encourage them to move rapidly in this field.