stant form of education. My own camp this summer is due to be inspected. And in the course of preparing myself as a visitor, my people who will come in and see me, I have to review myself. It is an automatic process of self-education and I would consider one of the most important things to uplift everything.

If we just hold it to a status quo, there is no purpose.

Mr. Escн. Well, I know it is somewhat analogous to the Occupational Health and Safety Act we passed. One of the problems we have is to provide more training and research into that program and I am hopeful that as we move forward on this legislation we might have a strong component that would provide training and an opportunity for those camps that would like to upgrade themselves to upgrade themselves, as part of the program, so that legislation would not just be punitive or restrictive, but it would be a constructive type of legislation that would add to the safety of our young people. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for your time.

Mr. STOLZ. Thank you, sir.

You mean this as an educational methodology as well.

Mr. ESCH. Yes.

Mr. STOLZ. I think this would be vital, very worthwhile.

Mr. DANIELS. I recognize the gentleman from Connecticut.

Mr. SARASIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank you very much, Mr. Stolz, for your very illuminating testimony and for the several opportunities I had to discuss this issue with you.

First of all, you have referred to the amendments, and I have looked through the material I have here and I don't seem to have it. I don't know if you have the amendments that were offered with the testimony either, Mr. Chairman.

I assume that we will have that information.

Mr. STOLZ. The amendments, Congressman, were turned in, some 50 copies were delivered to the young lady this morning.

Mr. SARASIN. All right, I will look for that.

Mr. STOLZ. It covers amendments, chapter and verse, based on the 10 recommendations I read and also includes a recommended makeup of the State Camping Advisory Councils.

Mr. DANIELS. Are the amendments written out or are they recommendations that the bill be amended?

Mr. STOLZ. With all due respect, Congressman, I am not a constitutional lawyer. I drafted what I thought would get the message across as a draft amendment, and of course leave it to your prerogative.

it?

Mr. DANIELS. Have you furnished the committee with copies of

Mr. STOLZ. Yes, we delivered 50 copies this morning.

Mr. DANIELS. I will see that all members get a copy.

Mr. SARASIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to pin down a little more of the ACA position.

What will your position be if the Daniels' bill is adopted with reference to the States that do not voluntarily, or rather do not go out on their own and create the legislation.

As I read the bill, that leaves the Federal Government in the field and we would be required then to step in.

Do you have any feeling in that regard?

Mr. STOLZ. I feel it would be a tremendously difficult thing to do. I don't know how this works, the authority between the Federal Government and the States, but if we establish all of this on paper, and it does not come to pass, what have we done?

Because the States that already have regulations, just like the good camps, are not really the ones we are concerned about but the bad camps are the States that are not doing this.

Mr. SARASIN. Then you have no problem with the possibility that the Federal Government may very well get involved in the entire procedure if the State fails to act?

Mr. STOLZ. Speaking personally, because this is not part of the report, Congressman, I think that my personal feeling that would be part of your strongest motivation for the State, as Dr. Sussman said, "We want to keep the Federal Government's sticky fingers out, let us do it ourselves and do it right to begin with."

Mr. SARASIN. With reference to an earlier question asked regarding ACA accreditation, I think or I believe you said about 4,000 camps are accredited?

Mr. STOLZ. Approximately.

Mr. SARASIN. And how many camps are investigated leading to that accreditation? In other words, I assume there are some camps that fail to receive accreditation?

Mr. STOLZ. Yes.

Mr. SARASIN. And how many do you look at?

Mr. STOLZ. Well, it is approximately a little under 1,000 camps that would be visited annually. These could be camps such as my own, which is up for reinspection, periodic reinspection, and this also includes camps examined for the first time who have applied for membership and also includes camps that did not pass an inspection and have to be reexamined, because a substantial number of the camps visited were turned down and not accredited.

A few camps were also dropped as a result of studies for reconsidered violation of the Association's professional and ethical code of practice. This stems generally from complaints of sorts that are investigated and determinations are made.

Mr. SARASIN. If a camp is dropped, is there any indication to the public that such a thing happened or is the only result the failure to be included in the next list of approved camps?

Mr. STOLZ. Two things: Of course, they cannot be in the directory and I think this is an education factor to the public. The thing that we use is this emblem that says, "Accredited Camp Member of the American Camping Association."

This is not to be confused with individual members or student members which anyone in this room could have on a personal basis, but this accredits the camp itself.

Only an accredited camp may use this emblem and literature and promotional material and of course we have legal right to take action against a camp that is not so qualified and uses it.

This is an educational process to the public at large where a family wishes to select a camp not accredited, they may do it not knowing any better, or they simply ignore it.

Mr. SARASIN. With regard to your recommendations, Mr. Stolz, in recommendation (B), you talk about utilization of Advisory Councils, which I think is a pretty good idea.

Then you mention an ombudsman in the administration of the penalty.

Is that something you feel very strongly about? I am just not sure it can work on this basis.

Mr. STOLZ. I am not sure either, Congressman. The concept I am concerned about, we are dealing with a concept, is that in the bill there does not seem to be much of an appeal procedure. There is reference made to the courts, which would be a time-consuming as well as a costly process.

For this reason, we thought that somewhere on the State level and perhaps with the Federal authority as the financial board of arbitration, there ought to be some type of administrative recourse for a camp site with a penalty or violation before they have to go to outside court procedure which any citizen would have the right to do. Now, this may be my lack of knowledge and perhaps you or the Chair can correct me on the working procedures of a committee or a board of this sort, but as far as the bill is concerned I didn't see much in the way of an appeal procedure built in.

Mr. SARASIN. I think, in response to the Chair's questions and to the questions of Mr. Esch, you responded very well to all of the other concerns that I thought I might ask you about.

I think you also have not had a chance to read the latest HEW report or not much of a a chance to read it.

Mr. STOLZ. No, sir. I received this back home in Westport yesterday and I have not seen the other report that has been referred to by Mr. Peyser at all. I didn't even know it existed.

Mr. SARASIN. I agree, Mr. Chairman. I belive Mr. Esch's thought that perhaps we can tap these gentlemen for their expertise again after this information is made available to them again and it may be helpful to the committee.

Mr. DANIELS. Thank you.

Mr. SCHMIDT. Mr. Chairman, another part of an answer to Mr. Sarasin, he asked about the camps that flunked out. There is a double way of flunking those camps.

Of about 1,000 camps that we inspect and visit each year, most of them go through and are okayed. About 20 percent as Mr. Stolz indicated, do not pass. Some of that failure is due to lack of a document or something that would be rather minor and can be made up quickly. But about 5 percent of the camps that are flunked, flunked so completely and totally we tell them "Don't ever ask again, do not come back." So there are gradations within that flunking area.

Mr. DANIELS. I want to thank both of you gentlemen for your time and testimony. It has been quite helpful.

Our next witness is Mr. Mitch Kurman of Westport, Conn.

I might state that, for the benefit of the audience, that Mr. Kurman has been a one-man crusader for legislation in this field and for

good reason. His son lost his life a few years ago. He was attending a camp and I think he unnecessarily lost his life. If the camp counsellor had been trained and knowledgeable about what he was doing he would never have brought Mr. Kurman's son to this river which had a very swift flow of water and was highly dangerous and resulted in this boy's death by drowning.

STATEMENT OF MITCH KURMAN, WESTPORT, CONN.

Mr. KURMAN. Mr. Chairman and those present, Congressmen, I want to thank all of you for the simple presence of your being here. I think this is something that almost reflects on possibly the illness that besets this country right now when we have to fight for 9 long years to get a simple bill passed to merely protect our own children attending a camp.

Everybody testified on behalf of the bill. No one has come out against it. Yet, we can't seem to get anywhere with it.

I hope that this finally concludes it. Those are off the record remarks but I think they are important.

Also, in fairness, I want to thank sincerely and very gratefully the chairman, Congressman Daniels, who has put up a magnificent fight for this. He deserves the utmost credit, the utmost thanks of every parent in the United States.

Congressman Daniels has never gotten a postage stamp from me and I felt that the public ought to be aware of it, that there is an element of decency in the U.S. Congress and I think that that element should be recognized and I am very grateful for it.

Now, I want to go on with my statement and before I do I want to say one other thing. I don't think that this can be construed as some of the camping unit industry would like it to be construed, as a one-man crusade, as one individual who lost a child or something of that nature. I have literally hundreds of cases, all over the United States, in camps of all types, and this is not to set up a scare pattern, there are excellent camps, there are wonderful camps.

In fact, a very important feature I want to emphasize is this, after the death of my boy I still sent my own little girl to camp for 3 years and I certainly don't want anything to happen to her.

And that man ran a very good camp, an excellent camp, and whatever profit he made out of it he is entitled to. I wish he could make more.

Now, I would like to go on with my statement; as far as the statement is concerned, the public that is attending here now can be thankful for the fact that my wife put this together. She stuck pretty much to just the skin and bones presentation of accidents which I thought or she thought would be important in this.

In 1971 Congress passed Public Law 92-318 which called for a study to be made of children's camps and the extent of State and local laws regulating such camps.

This law was passed in place of the Youth Camp Safety Act to determine if Federal legislation is needed to regulate youth camps.

The report conducted by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has just been released, and its conclusion is that Federal legislation is not needed as this job is best done by the States.

I will hereby prove that Federal legislation, H.R. 1486, is needed and that the report is faulty and contradictory.

First of all the survey conducted by the Center for Disease Control is too small to be considered statistically accurate; this is noted within the report. They themselves know this. They chose to investigate 200 camps in various geographic locations.

One group was to be in an area where States have regulations governing youth camps and a similar group to be in those States with no regulations.

It was later found that both areas contained States that had and did not have regulations; therefore a comparison of camps which must comply with regulations against those which do not have them was impossible.

Another of the survey's shortcomings is only 128 of the proposed 200 camps were actually surveyed. Other camps volunteered for the survey to replace the 72 which declined. Two hundred volunteer camps can hardly be called a representative sampling of the more than 11,000 camps estimated to exist in the United States. I want to emphasize that no one actually knows how many camps there are. Some people say 10,000 and some people say 12,000.

The CDC also conducted a mail survey. They sent questionnaires to 6,861 camps and received 3,343 replies, only 42 percent. There was no attempt to check the accuracy of reports of illness, accidents and deaths filled out only by camp operators, and that is extremely important. This is not part of my statement, but I have actual records where deaths occurred and they were covered up.

The CDC did not further investigate any of the deaths or serious injuries. No reports were obtained from outside sources such as policy, hospitals, etc. The CDC admits that the accident and illness reports returned varied widely in detail and scope and they reflect lower rates than would be expected from such a population sample.

Thus the accuracy of voluntary reporting should be questioned. The survey itself clearly states on page 7 that no conclusions can be drawn from the statistics they have compiled.

The CDC claims that their inspection survey revealed no deaths. However, their mail survey exposed records of nine deaths.

Additional fatalities, bringing the total to 25, were revealed by a clipping service and a local health department report. These deaths may represent only a small fraction of the number of children who attend camps.

However, it would be worth examining each case to determine if camp safety legislation could have prevented such deaths. That is the purpose of the surveys. No explanation and analysis of these deaths were made in the report.

The report mentions the safety programs of national organizations such as the American Camping Association, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, YMCA, et cetera. These national programs have their merits, but there is no means of compelling each chapter or local group to comply with them.

I hereby list a few of the camp accidents that occurred in 1972 and 1973 while this survey was being conducted, and I note that a number of the camps involved are members of these organizations.