Udall that the program's impetus will be kept going, I think perhaps we would not quarrel with the President as to where he desires his program to be, as long as it has the forceful direction that we intend it to have.

Senator RIBICOFF. Thank you very much, Mr. Kimball. You have been of great help.

Mr. Penfold, please.

Mr. PENFOLD. Mr. Chairman, Philip A. Douglas, executive secretary of the Sport Fishing Institute, who had planned to be here today, is ill and his office asked that I hand his statement in.

Senator RIBICOFF. Without objection it will be placed in the record at this point.

STATEMENT OF PHILIP A. DOUGLAS, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, SPORT FISHING INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mr. DOUGLAS. Mr. Chairman and members of this committee, I am Philip A. Douglas, executive secretary of the Sport Fishing Institute, which is the only privately supported national fish conservation organization. We are staffed by professional aquatic biologists, competent and fully cognizant of the importance of recreating a pollution-free aquatic environment.

By means of Reorganization Plan No. 2, the President has invoked his rightful authority to organize the executive as he believes will increase administrative efficiency. Whether it will, remains to be seen. It is now up to us all, citizenry and politicians alike, to see to it that the Water Pollution Control Administration starts moving in a clearcut, identifiable pattern toward the ultimate objective-clean waters. Water pollution control has only recently been accorded adequate administrative status on paper. Previously, conservationists fought hard over many years to help raise the administrative stature of water pollution control to that of a major program activity where it could function in HEW undiluted by the major traditional emphasis in that Department on matters of human health. This troublesome aspect would obviously disappear if the program goes to Interior. Yet the obvious benefits to human health that will result from a pollution control program which improves the quality of the aquatic environment will by no means be lost by such transfer.

The institute's executive vice president, Richard H. Stroud, in this regard has provided a useful distinction between water pollutionnot necessarily a health hazard-and water contamination-unhealthy-in a talk before the American Society of Civil Engineers Water Resources Engineering Conference in Mobile, Ala., March 1965, entitled "What Is Pollution-To a Conservationist?" He said:

Water pollution is the specific impairment of water quality by domestic, industrial, or agricultural wastes [including thermal and atomic wastes] to a degree which has an adverse effect on beneficial use of water, yet which does not necessarily create an actual hazard to the public health.

He stated, further:

Water contamination is merely an aggravated impairment of water quality by those wastes to a degree which creates an actual hazard to the public health through poisoning or the spread of disease.

We are somewhat concerned whether, in the Department of the Interior, there may be an administrative tendency to overburden the water pollution control function with other more or less related water activities and thus dilute the long-sought needed emphasis on the primary mission to clean up the national water resource. Unfortunately, then, we would undoubtedly lose this singleness of purpose in water pollution control for which many conservationists have fought so hard for so long to achieve. We believe that water pollution control must be a single-minded goal within this new administration unit in Interior-as it would have been in HEW. In addition, intradepartment conflicts of interest should not be allowed to stall the program. Therefore, Mr. Chairman, my organization believes that the new Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Water Pollution Control, when appointed, must not be shackled with other diverse duties that would detract from or divert the mission of this vital Water Pollution Control Administration.

The Water Supply and Water Pollution Control Division, currently within HEW, is commencing to organize expanded water quality criteria research programs designed to protect the most sensitive species of aquatic life from continuous exposure to various forms of pollution. A fine cadre of professionals in hydrobiology, ecology, and other such specialized fields now comprises the skeleton of the WPCA professional staff needed to delineate water quality criteria essential for the protection and maintenance of aquatic life. They must be induced to continue with Interior under the President's Reorganization Plan No. 2.

The Sport Fishing Institute is, therefore, much concerned whether there will be ample financial incentive to retain these people and to attract new outstanding scientists upon whom America must rely to solve the problems of advanced waste treatment and to determine water quality criteria for various uses in order to achieve full water pollution abatement and control. Research budgets must be adequate, professional ratings liberal, and budgetary unity preserved. In this connection, we have not been favorably impressed by past performance on the part of the Department of the Interior in requesting adequate funds for vitally needed research programs, especially true where aquatic biological problems have been involved. Therefore, we are much concerned about the possible implications of what we view as a poor history of administrative and policy support, at top departmental levels, for research programs in aquatic biology, vis-a-vis such needs in the water pollution control program. We hope that the Congress will watch this aspect closely, as it could "make" or "break" the program, as we see it. Reorganization Plan No. 2 provides a starting point-but it must be properly implemented.

The main question, as we see it, is not so much whether the WPCA should be in HEW or in Interior. The important questions are whether, how soon, and how aggressively water pollution control will get underway. Water pollution control has been in a hiatus for several months, due to the uncertainty of its administrative affiliation. The President has made his move on that problem. The main task, now, is to get on with the job. Time and the pollution tide wait for nobody.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to present these views to your committee.

Senator RIBICOFF. You may proceed, Mr. Penfold.

STATEMENT OF J. W. PENFOLD, CONSERVATION DIRECTOR, IZAAK WALTON LEAGUE OF AMERICA

Mr. PENFOLD. I am J. W. Penfold, conservation director of the Izaak Walton League of America. The league is a nationwide organization of citizens dedicated to the conservation and wise use of America's natural resource wealth-its soils, woods, waters, and wildlife. Since its founding nearly 45 years ago there has been no natural resource problem to which the league has given greater attention than to cleaning up and preventing the pollution of our lakes and

streams.

It can be truthfully stated that the league was organized because a small group of dedicated outdoorsmen became disgusted at the rate at which waters were being lost to human uses because of municipal and industrial dumping of wastes. They decided it was time to call a halt. It was just about 40 years ago that the league made the first nationwide survey of water pollution at the request of the Outdoor Recreation Commission established by President Coolidge. The findings were appalling. And local leadership in the Izaak Walton League helped develop public support for construction of some of the first modern municipal sewage treatment works in the Nation. Through the 1930's and 1940's the league, through its magazine and other educational materials, by speeches of its officers at hundreds of meetings and conferences, by appearances at public hearings called by committees of Congress, committees of State legislatures and municipal bodies, urged adopting of public policies and programs to abate pollution and achieve once again clean water. There were solid results, but it was a slow process.

The league supported the weak Taft-Hartley Act of 1948-but it was a beginning. The league vigorously supported Public Law 660 in 1956, and appropriations to implement it fully in subsequent years; it supported the acts to strengthen and make it more effective in 1961 and in 1965.

I cite these few items, among many others, not in any sense of selfapprobation-the condition of America's waters today permits none of us to feel smug-but to point out the keen interest and concern of the Izaak Walton League over the years in America's No. 1 natural resource problem-water pollution.

There seems little need to elaborate on the problem itself-it is ubiquitous, no section of the Nation has escaped it, no section of the Nation can, so to speak, sweep it under the rug and face the future with confidence. The leadership of the Nation has responded to the growing demand of the people, and has declared it to be national policy to enhance our lakes and streams, our estuaries and coastal waters. The Nation can no longer afford, if it ever could, to lose the usability of waters for all purposes because of filth.

Today, we proclaim our refusal to be strangled by the wastes of civilization. Said the President.

The President has now proposed that the Federal Water Pollution Control Agency as a unit be transferred from the Department of

Health, Education, and Welfare to the Department of the Interior. As a matter of principle, the league is less concerned about where the program is housed than about how vigorously and effectively it is administered. The objective must be to get our waters clean and keep them clean so that they may serve the wide range of legitimate uses to which an expanding population must put them. There can be no compromise with this objective. We can accept no philosophy which in effect calls for a limitation on the Nation's future by temporizing with the known problem because of convenience, selfishness, individual advantage or apathy.

We will cooperate wholeheartedly with any administrative arrangement which serves this objective.

I believe the league's attitude can be summed up in one sentence: "Let's get the show on the road."

The league along with other conservation societies worked for several years to get the Federal water pollution control program out of the subbasement of HEW. The 1961 act provided an opportunity to accomplish this. Administratively, actions were taken to remove a few levels of overburden in the Public Health Service organization chart, but organizationally it was a grotesque arrangement.

The 1965 act, however, in establishing the separate Administration, provided the opportunity for effective administration. Its establishment underscored the fact that water pollution is not just a matter of public health, important as that is. It stated, in effect, that the full public responsibility has not been discharged when a sign is posted advising that a water supply is unsafe, or a public beach is closed to swimming because of pollution. Both actions may serve to protect the public health, but neither contributes affirmatively to the wellbeing of present generations, let alone to those that will follow. Our waters should be made suitable for use by prevention of pollution, not abandoned to pollution.

The 1965 act fixed in the Water Pollution Control Administration the primary Federal responsibility for water pollution abatement. The program is now visible; its accomplishments can be measured, its failures seen and corrected. It should now be able to recruit and hold the quality of administrative, legal, technical, and scientific personnel which a program of this importance must have without fail. We believe that the new Administration can function effectively in HEW. We believe it can function as well-and potentially more effectively-in Interior, for reasons set forth by the President in his reorganization message.

We believe it is appropriate, as the transfer takes place, to suggest that the record be made clear as to the policies and basic administrative arrangements that are to guide the Secretary in his administration of the program.

Everyone is, in general, for clean water. But pollution comes from specific outfalls; and each may pose a difficult legal or political or economic stumbling block. Getting clean water demands a Federal administrative structure which will move vigorously and effectively on its own motion against specific sources of pollution and which can be a consistent and unswerving ally of vigorous and effective State and community action programs against specific sources of pollution. If the Congress decides that the water pollution control program

Secretary UDALL. I personally share some of the views that you have expressed here. Senator Muskie has expressed others to me, and I don't know that I am going to win any argument with any admission, but I have already had discussions with some of the officials you mentioned since my return a month ago from West Germany with regard to the fact that it seems to me we do need to give this serious consideration in light of the new objectives that the President has set forth.

I know there are persuasive arguments on the other side, but I think that this case ought to be argued out, and I want you to know that as far as I personally am concerned, I have very strong views on this, and I am going to argue the one case. Whether I win the argument is another matter, but to me when we look at what some of the States are doing, what other countries, industrial countries are doing, I think we have to ask ourselves some very serious questions.

I would like to think that this is an open issue within the administration at the moment.

Mr. SEIDMAN. Mr. Chairman, I assume it will be satisfactory to the committee if we provide a joint answer to these questions.

Senator RIBICOFF. I think there should be a joint answer. I think we would like to have the administration's point of view. I know the deep interest and concern of Senator Muskie, who really is the leader of this whole field and who has the responsibility on the Committee on Public Works.

I think if this plan is not to have any objection and if it is to be approved, it is going to have to have the support of Senator Muskie and myself and Senator Gruening. I think we would like the answers to these questions which would be more or less a commitment from the administration, and I think a guideline that Senator Muskie will be able to use in the committee that is dealing with this.

I think we would like a joint reply to this, by the way, provided the Budget Bureau doesn't delay it beyond April 29.

Mr. SEIDMAN. The new dates are April 22 for plan 1 and May 10 for plan 2.

However, before this hearing closes this morning. I would like to comment briefly on your first point, which is the lack of any real effort to tackle the real organizational problem of water resources; namely, the bringing together of a number of water programs now located throughout the Government.

I know of few areas of Government organization which have been subjected to more intensive analysis and study in the last 10 years than the problem in the field of not only water but land resources, and they are difficult and complex. This goes back to the recommendation of the first Hoover Commission, which split as to whether you can separate land resources from water, or whether they should be in the same department.

Now there has been more than just study, because I think we would be properly subject to criticism if all that we did was study it for 10 years and no action was taken. The Congress last year enacted the Water Resources Planning Act, which is a landmark piece of legislation in the whole area of the Federal role in water resources, and which recognizes that this is not only a problem of how we organize within the executive branch of Government, but also, if we are going