If we could just do something about dumping all this sewage and refuse from the factories into the streams of America, I am sure it would be a big step in getting away from a lot of these diseases that we have today which are so prevalent. I know the Health Department is doing something about it. I have witnessed some of the most terrible things going on in this country of ours where we try to be sanitary. Sewage running into the streams and the rivers of our Nation is one of them. Mr. MILES. Mr. Chairman, that is one of the purposes of this bill, to make provision for sewage-treatment works so that the sewage will not be dumped directly into the streams. Mr. JENSEN. You will not get it done before we have more stringent laws, State and National. Mr. ANDERSEN. I have a question I would like to ask Mr. Miles. In evaluating these various things that you are asking money for, what would you place at the top? Mr. MILES. I would put at the top the provision of the essential utilities required in connection with the housing which is constructed in these critical areas, namely Mr. ANDERSEN. Water purification and sewage disposal? Mr. MILES. Yes. Those two first. Mr. ANDERSEN. If we do not allow you all you ask for, those would be first? Mr. MILES. Yes. Mr. HEDRICK. Are there any other questions? Does anyone wish to make another statement to the committee? Mr. DENTON. The difficulty about building a hospital under the Hill-Burton Act in my part of the country is the fact that the Government has taken most of the taxable property and they cannot tax it for their share of it. This community that I am thinking of would have an awfully tough time building a hospital under the Hill-Burton Act if they needed one. The Government has taken about 40 percent of the taxable property. Mr. ANDERSEN. How close to that particular area is the present hospital? Mr. DENTON. There is a hospital about 10 miles away, but it is inadequate for that particular town. They are talking about building one there. About 20 miles there is a Hill-Burton hospital. Mr. ANDERSEN. We are all pressed for hospitals. Mr. DENTON. I do not see how they could do it in their situation. Around Paducah they have the same situation. Mr. ANDERSEN. If your State thought it was a serious situation, they are enabled to allocate funds under the Hill-Burton Act to take care of that situation temporarily and make the others wait? Mr. DENTON. I do not remember the terms of the Hill-Burton Act. It is a question of priorities in my State. They are giving the grants to the States in the order that they applied for them and qualified for them. Dr. DEARING. They cannot quite do that, Mr. Denton. They still have to establish priorities and to be sure that if a priority A community has not the funds and the State is not willing or able to supplement those funds to enable the priority A community to build, then but only then can they allocate their present year funds to a present priority B community. Mr. DENTON. Under this act? Dr. DEARING. Under the Hill-Burton Act. The State has established priorities A, B, C, and D, certifying to us. Mr. ANDERSEN. My sole contention is that I do not like to see another agency grow up and get staffed, as it may be under this proposal, with consultants and hospital engineers and such when we already have the Hill-Burton Act working very well. I would rather vote additional funds to promote the Hill-Burton Act. Mr. DENTON. Can you use your staff under the Hill-Burton Act for this? Dr. DEARING. Yes. That is the purpose, as I think was brought out in the hearings on Public Law 139, for placing the hospital construction with the Public Health Service, so that it should be related to the Hill-Burton program and to all the planning and all the information that has been developed under that which would be applied in these areas. Actually, the State agency which administers the HillBurton program of the State will be called on to make the decisions in regard to the projects for which we receive applications under this. Mr. ANDERSEN. But, Doctor, the trouble is that the State agency will have to consider separate and apart the situation in the various communities of the State as contemplated under the Hill-Burton Act as compared with the demands of the various communities as they relate to these defense areas. I want the whole thing to be considered as one pattern. Dr. DEARING. The funds under this act would not be bound down by the matching requirement which Mr. Denton just stated was interfering in the area to which he referred. These funds have no statutory matching requirement. That is negotiated on the basis of the means test. Mr. ANDERSEN. That part I understand. Dr. DEARING. But the State has to look at its plan, look at the hospitals, and say, "What about the hospital 10 miles away?" They have to consider whether it can pick up with another one. If they could, they would know it and the hospital would not be built. Mr. ANDERSEN. I could see a possibility where they could not match. Mr. DENTON. Here is their situation. The Government has built two plants there. One of them is a powder plant and the other is a bag-loading plant. They have taken about 40 percent of the taxable property. One of the plants is operated by du Pont and one by Goodyear. If the property was under the tax set-up, they would be in beautiful shape for any of these facilities. As it is, they have taken out 40 percent of the property and they cannot tax the improvements on there. Mr. ANDERSEN. That is where they should be eligible to a Federal grant. Mr. DENTON. That property there is under the control of the Government. The Government owes a certain duty as a taxpayer to take care of some of the facilities there. They have increased the population three or four fold, and the people are more or less transient. You do not have the established charities that could go ahead and put up a hospital there. The people do not have any interest in the community because they are transient, although I have been notified that in the last few years it is developing. It was there during the last war. There is a chamber of commerce there, a live organization. Mr. MILES. I would like to point out in that connection that I believe a substantial amount of the money that is contained in this estimate for hospitals would be used actually to augment Hill-Burton projects. Many are scheduled in or near critical areas and these funds would be used in connection with the hospitals that are now being built or have been programed under the Hill-Burton program. The two programs would be integrated. In some cases, it would be necessary to add on an extra wing, or something of the sort, with additional Federal money under this appropriation. Dr. DEARING. In connection with the Savannah River project, the University of Georgia Hospital at Augusta is under consideration for expansion. The Savannah River build-up in population has thrown a load into Augusta which they say they need 200 beds to handle. In making a final decision about what to do about hospital facilities there, that proposal, plus other locations nearer the site would have to be evaluated, and the whole thing done on an integrated basis, rather than take what each individual coming up to Washington arguing his case might say. We could call back on Georgia and the South Carolina hospital facilities to look at the whole picture. Mr. ANDERSEN. That is why you need one direction at the top. Dr. DEARING. That is where you would have it, at the top. Mr. ANDERSEN. That does not take care of my situation in Minnesota. As far as I am concerned, they get just as sick as any of these defense workers and need hospitals just as badly. WATERWORKS AND SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANTS Mr. HEDRICK. Do you know of any of these new plants, like the one down in Georgia and South Carolina where there is actually an emergency existing now for the lack of good pure water for those people to drink, and sewage disposal, actually an emergency? Mr. MILES. Í believe it is very close to it. I would like to ask Mr. Pond about that. Mr. HEDRICK. As a physician I am greatly interested in that point. Mr. POND. We have one classic case in Jacksonville, N. C., adjacent to Camp Lejune, where the water-treatment plant is already overloaded. They have 600 or 700 additional houses which are about to be finished, and with the in-migrant population the plant cannot supply the water that is necessary. The community is up to its bonded indebtedness. It cannot raise money to pay for the expansion of a water-treatment works. That problem is a water-supply problem. The same community has a modern sewage-treatment plant which was designed for a small community. It was very efficiently designed, but it is now overloaded and with the 600 or 700 families that are coming in the community it will be heavily overloaded and a part of the sewage will have to be bypassed or inadequately treated. That sewage is discharged into a river which the Marine Corps is using for amphibious practice. I know there is a great concern in the locality and in the Marine Corps about that particular situation. We have other examples which are not as dramatic where existing water supplies are about at capacity, where the treatment works can take care of no additional quantities of water, and where the community is not able with its own finances or its resources to increase the capacity. Mr. ANDERSEN. It is not, too late yet to urge upon the Defense Establishment that when they pick a site for any defense works of any nature they should first of all find a place with plenty of good water and with ample disposal facilities for the sewage. Mr. POND. I am sure that is what was a controlling factor for the atomic site. It was interesting to note that the water was the ultimate factor. They looked at a large variety of available sites, and that was the one thing that they found in the river that would give them adequate supplies for their purposes. Mr. HEDRICK. What do you think it would cost to correct the situation in Jacksonville, N. C.? Mr. POND. I talked with the mayor and city engineer who were up here within the last 2 weeks. I gathered it would be in the amount of $200,000 for the water works and probably an equivalent amount for the sewage-treatment plant. The variation in costs, of course, is wide from one community to another, depending on a wide variety of factors which need technical investigation. You have, so far as the water is concerned, various factors, solids in the water, and so forth. Mr. HEDRICK. This is the only place that you know of where there is an emergency? Mr. POND. Yes; that just at the moment we have specific information on. We do have, Dr. Hedrick, in the 50 areas on which we have gathered data cursory information that water-treatment plants are needed, which would amount to about, I think, $25 million or $30 million worth of work. The majority of funds under any ceiling such as the $60 million ceiling would have to come from the locality itself. Dr. DEARING. There is another thing. The President has brought to the attention of the Director of the Office of Defense Mobilization a situation in Alaska, Anchorage for one, where literally a small group of our staff, who recently attended the Alaska Science Congress this month, came back and reported four little doll-sized tarpaper shacks on each lot, with one well being one man's cesspool and another man's well. Mr. HEDRICK. The ground is frozen and they have very difficult sewage disposal problems, I know. Dr. DEARING. This does not happen to be in that locality. This is just plain crowding and lack of any facilities to meet a population influx of four or five times the norm. That is really an emergency area that the President has brought to the attention of the Director of Defense Mobilization. Mr. HEDRICK. I know that in Alaska it is difficult or impossible to have cesspools and other facilities due to the ground being frozen. Mr. SCHWABE. I have just one question: This Camp Lejeune situation that was mentioned, that was originally a Government installation, was it not? Mr. POND. The waterworks and sewage treatment plant at Jacksonville were built with Lanham Act funds during the early part of World War II. Mr. SCHWABE. I had a son there for some time and I thought I knew that that was true. Is there any reason why the Defense Department cannot take care of this emergency there? Mr. POND. Mr. Schwabe, these are municipal utilities which were provided, as I say in World War II by nonmilitary appropriations. I think it would be a mistake to expect the Department of Defense to use its appropriations for providing basic municipal utilities in extra cantonment areas. Mr. SCHWABE. Although it has been done frequently. Mr. POND. My experience during World War II was that it was not done very frequently, as far as basic facilities are concerned. Mr. SCHWABE. It was done there at Camp Lejeune? Mr. POND. It was a Lanham Act job. The Defense Department I do not believe should have to use its appropriations for that. Dr. DEARING. The Defense Department tells us the Congress did not permit them to use the funds for municipal facilities. CHILD DAY CARE PROGRAM Mr. HEDRICK. If there is no objection, I would like to insert a statement in the record at this point, offered by Miss Arnold, reporting on results of the check on the day-care-center situation in Columbus, Ga. (The statement is as follows:) State: Georgia. City: Columbus. SEPTEMBER 24, 1951. One hundred and forty-one children are being served by four commercial centers. Two nurseries are rejecting applications at the rate of 20 per month. No public or voluntary centers. The health and welfare departments consider that facilities are most inadequate because of overcrowding, untrained personnel, too many children per staff member. The community fears additional danger because many small groups are organizing day-care facilities on an informal basis. (Source: Loretto Chappel, chief, child-welfare division, State department of Public welfare.) Mr. HEDRICK. The committee will stand adjourned. Mr. McGRATH. Gentlemen, the committee will come to order. We will include in the record House Resolution 318, the authorizing resolution, and House Document 247, containing the estimates. (The documents referred to follow:) [H. Res. 318, 82d Cong., 1st sess.] [Report No. 1073] RESOLUTION Resolved, That, (a) upon the request of any Member, officer, or committee of the House of Representatives and with the approval of the Committee on House |