Mr. FALLON. I have read recently where the importation of residual oil has increased year after year for the past 10 years. It seems to me if some controls could be put on the importation of these offshore oils, it would make a better market for the coal operation.

Mr. FLOOD. Of course it is true, Mr. Chairman, as you know, we from these coal areas are violent partisans of the so-called import quota system on residual fuel oils. We have been fighting a losing battle, but we are still punching. Mr. FALLON. I can see by your distress up there that you have been fighting a losing battle. I was just wondering if that would not be one way to bring up the economic position of the coal operators by cutting down on the importation of residual oil.

Mr. FLOOD. This, of course, is true, but I hasten to add that the future of the economy of the coalfield areas of this country, the hard coal, especially my area, is no longer the mining industry. All of the reduction in unemployment that I so proudly recited has gone to very carefully diversified industries that we have given birth to and have developed and have brought into our area by our leaders with the help of the Federal and State Government programs of industrial development.

Mr. FALLON. How about the other areas of Appalachia?

Mr. FLOOD. This I am not sufficiently well versed in to speak, I am speaking only of the anthracite coalfields, although I come back that there is no doubt that as far as the mining industry is concerned, it can only benefit if the volume of residual fuel oils permitted is reduced. That follows like night follows day. But I want to emphasize that we do not look to the anthracite mines as the future of the economy for my area.

Mr. FALLON. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Baldwin?

Mr. BALDWIN. Mr. Flood, I would like to join Mr. Fallon and Mr. Davis in commending you on a very forceful and thought-provoking statement.

I would like to ask a question relative to acid drainage from mines.

We have had testimony at various times before our committee-we have other bills besides this bill before our committee dealing with the problem of pollution and acid mine drainage.

Mr. FLOOD. Yes, I know.

Mr. BALDWIN. We have had some testimony relative to sealing off the openings of the mines now. Obviously this would not work with any mine that was in

use

Mr. FLOOD. I beg your pardon?

Mr. BALDWIN. I take it this would not work with any mine that is in use. You would have to find some other solution. This would only be feasible for a mine no longer in operation.

Mr. FLOOD. That is correct.

Mr. BALDWIN. I was interested in your comment that in your opinion no solution so far has been found to this problem of acid mine drainage. Do you feel that in these cases of the sealing off of the mine those have been effective?

Mr. FLOOD. Yes, that is our opinion-by "our" I mean we from the area-of these programs, both under your auspices and the State auspices and in a very limited way the coal producers themselves. This is frightfully expensive as you can imagine, but there has been a proliferation of ideas and technical efforts none of which has proved successful for the very simple reason, I repeat, they admit very frankly they do not know the answer. They have tried these things. Anything is good. Anything that they have tried, including the sealing off processes of which you speak, have undoubtedly helped. I have seen a number.

I personally, knowing what I know, say unequivocally the answer to your question is "Yes." But you must remember that because of the geological structure of the area, because of the nature of these long, narrow, valley facings, because of the tremendous water tables and the great rainfall, because of the existence of these ugly stripping mine squares, cave holes, abandoned mines for generations, only the good Lord knows where this water is going. But we know that it is going into the mining areas; these abandoned mining

areas.

The technicians will give you tables of how it rises and falls and the processes of oxidation as it does, and the chemical reactions with the rise and fall of water and oxygen, how it produces these acids of various types and kinds. Some deadly, some not, but all bad as far as the streams are concerned, as far as fish and wildlife are concerned, as far as what the conservationists want to do is

concerned, as far as our hope for developing a great area for tourism, for public recreation.

I stood on the riverbank on the 30th of May in my city where every year since the Spanish War we blow up a boat, a tribute to the sinking of the Maine, you remember. This has been a tradition in my city. Vast crowds, 10,000 people there while this boat is blown up as a tribute to the men who died at sea and so on, now to everybody who died in the Armed Forces. Here is this great Susquehanna River, the biggest river in the United States east of the Mississippi, bigger than the Hudson, a great river rising in New York and ending in Havre de Grace, great volumes of water. As it passes through my area, a vulgar, ugly, abused stream, a disgrace. There should be beaches along that bank where I spoke and the thousand children that stood there listening to the music should be able to swim after the program was over. There should be boating.

In the old days our Indians-we were a 6-nation country-an old Indian story used to say that when the shad ran during shad season in the Susquehanna, in my valley at the spot where I was standing, in the Indian days you could walk across the river on the shad. Nothing can live there today—nothing. This is too bad.

"Yes," is the answer to your question, but there are other problems. You can seal these voids but we know there will still be seepage from these unknown crevices because of these water and chemical problems. We do not know the answer. There is an answer, we believe, the technicians believe. You will have to help us find it. It is a bad question. Not only does it damage my city and its potential but down to my friend Fallon's backyard comes this poison and that is not fair, that is not right any longer.

Mr. BALDWIN. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Flood.

Mr. FLOOD. Thank you very much.

My compliments again to what you are doing and what I am sure you will do. You have to be in a coal mine and have a rock fall come down in a gangway and then climb over the top of it and turn the bend in the gangway and see at the head of the slope a small patch of light and know you are finally going to get out of what has been a very difficult problem.

Of course this committee knows far better than I how man has ripped and destroyed his environment. It would be carrying coals to Newcastle, and that is not making a metaphor here, to mention that to the subcommittee. But no place has it been done more thoroughly than in the coalfields of the so-called Appalachian part of this country.

While I speak only of the anthracite that I know, the hard coal field, there is a bituminous section of the country. Really, as you know, there is only one coal, anthracite. The other is a bitumite. Actually, we have collie dogs with hind legs that can scrape out bigger holes than you can find in the entire bituminous region, but they have their difficulties too. But all the anthracite is pretty near in my area. This creates the problem that you and I know so well.

I want to emphasize we have been working on this problem, as you know. We have never come here with our hat in our hand looking for handouts. We do not think that by any grace of your committee, or the Congress, or the taxpayer, we must survive. We have done tremendous things with our own money, and in our own State, and in our own municipalities and you know this. However, the purpose clause of your bill is such-we are so happy to see this because this is the recognition of a national problem, and it is no longer parochial and not regional, and you will approach it in that way.

We join hands with you.

The chief problems are the surface support programs, the so-called flushing programs. These are going on. I explained these to you in detail last year. They are going on now. They are going on with

State help and local help. The local people are supplying the refuse material at their own expense for flushing, and you contribute your share in these contracts. These do employ people. These are not hitand-miss deals. These are local people. These are not fly-by-night operators.

Mr. JONES. The Governor yesterday testified you were spending some $3 million, or more, on these flushing operations.

Mr. FLOOD. That is correct. I can stand on the back porch of my home and see the operations now proceeding that are doing exactly what must be extended to flushing and filling the voids to give surface supports.

I hold no brief for what has been done for the past 100 years in the underground mining of my area. I hold no brief for the evils and rape that has been committed. There is no question about it.

What the State should or should not have done is pretty clear, but it was not done. You are presented with a fait accompli, and this you want to attack, and I think you will.

These flushing programs will go on. We know they are no guarantee for surface support, but the experts tell us there is absolutely nothing else that can be done. That we are doing, and where we have done it, the results have been miraculous and are continuing to be so. These affect vast areas and great voids.

We do not think they can all be filled. There is perhaps no need to fill them all. But by selective processes, and from the experts who know best, Federal, State, and local, we are sure the proper projects will be properly done.

We are confronted with a matter of public health safety and welfare with these ghastly scars that you know of. Several years ago I flew with a young French fighter pilot in a two-seater French fighter plane in Laos up toward the Chinese border of Laos, and he said to me, "Mr. Flood, if ever your country is going to land on Mars, you can train your troops here."

Well, I have news for that young French fighter pilot. If ever the NASA people wish to train their astronauts for landing on Mars, they can take them to the coal fields of Appalachia and there they can train them well. They will never on Mars see what they will see in the whole Appalachia field in these destroyed and turned-over coal fields.

Chemistry being what it is, and your interest in water resources, this is an allied subject. I would hope special attention would be given to this almost insoluble problem of mine drainage.

What do you do about mine drainage? No one knows. No one in the world knows. France, Germany, Wales, England, or here, nobody knows. But a rifle must be put on this problem, not a shotgun.

I propose to amend this, but I know expedition of this bill is paramount, and so I will not proceed with such an amendment. I know the study you are going to make. I know the studies in HEW that are being made and the progress being made there, and I will be satisfied that the subject is now of such paramount importance to everybody concerned that it will be finally met and solved if it can be done. This I am sure will be done.

Mr. JONES. We in the Government Operations, the subcommittee of which I am a chairman, made a very close examination of the problem and will write a report on it very shortly. I think the report will embrace just what you have said, it is going to be a remaining problem and the answers have not been forthcoming.

Mr. FLOOD. I know of the activity of that subcommittee, the distinguished Committee on Government Operations, and I know what the HEW people are doing, hence, I will not propose such an amendment to this bill because of the circumstances surrounding the bill. There is the unbelievable problem of underground fires. Unless you were born and raised there, you just simply cannot believe this kind of thing exists.

I have approaching my city of Wilkes-Barre, the largest city in my congressional district, a fire that has been burning for 48 years. It burns through anything. The coal companies in their own right, in fairness to them, have spent millions of their own money trying to block these out to stop them. You cannot stop them. However, this can be stopped. This can be done. The program is underway to do it. You will help that here.

These fires, if they get too deep, will get below a 300-foot mark and then you cannot reach them because there is not equipment to strip the surface and the results have been cataclysmic.

This is not peculiar to my city, in the hard coal fields there is much of this. In the bituminous there is a great deal.

There is also the fantastic burning culm banks. In soft coal, they call them refuse and slag heaps. You can see in the evening these fires burning along the mountainsides. These are on the surface, culm banks on the surface. These are not underground fires. These fires underground are started by spontaneous combustion, strikes of lightning, ill-advised disposal of garbage trying to burn it, and all of these have contributed through the years to these ghastly problems that you are trying to strike in this bill.

I will not plead the cause of the conservationist. What this will mean to the conservationist areas, they can speak in their own right in the hope we can develop tourism in Appalachia. This we want to do.

We have a right, without anyone else just being there, to live and breathe clean air like the rest of America. We think you have recognized that.

These are the things I touched briefly on, as I have touched upon them before. Not only do I compliment this committee, but Appalachia and the entire country because the results of this Appalachia study in water, and these cures that I speak of will now be available to all America so they can strike at these evils that exist in other places as they do in my area.

Thank you very much.

Mr. JONES. Thank you, Mr. Flood.

We are certainly obliged to you for your fine presentation.

Mr. FLOOD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. JONES. Next is our colleague, Hon. Robert T. Secrest, of Ohio.

STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT T. SECREST, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO

Mr. JONES. Your interest in this whole problem is well known to the committee, and it is a pleasure for us to have you here.

Mr. SECREST. I appreciate it. This is a committee on which I served for a good many years. I think it is one of the most important and useful committees in the Congress.

I support 100 percent Appalachia. I know the problems of mine fires. There is one mine fire underground in my district that has been burning for more than 80 years. It has destroyed millions and millions of dollars worth of coal. It has moved under highways, burned under them. The highways have dropped. One schoolhouse had its complete foundation burned out from under it years after it was built. The fire is still burning.

In the early thirties under the WPA we thought we had a complete solution to it. We hired miners as a WPA project. They tunneled through the good coal and we filled the tunnel with wet mud. We thought when the fire burned up to that it would have no place to go, but it got through. Those fires have tremendous heat. No one knows how they keep burning, but they do, and this one has been going for more than 80 years.

That is the portion of the bill I am interested in.

In my district in Ohio we have over 26 million tons of unmined coal. There is enough coal under that district to keep 3,000 men digging for 700 years to get it out. It is almost an unlimited supply of bituminous coal. I am interested in that.

I want to express this morning my interest in the inclusion in this bill of water and sewer systems. The President in his message yesterday said, "Over 14,000 rural communities with more than 100 population lack central water supplies."

The purpose of this bill is to furnish permanent employment, and permanent employment can come to these 14,000 towns, many of which are in Appalachia, only if they have waterworks and sewers.

Back in 1934, or 1935, as I recall, we were able to get a project approved for a little mining town of Byesville, Ohio. The first treatment plant in southeastern Ohio. They had a treatment plant before Zanesville, Cambridge, Marietta, or any of the cities.

Nothing happened for a long time. But immediately after World War II, because they had the waterworks and the sewage, the Vanadium Corp. of America came in, or a half mile away, and located a plant and the town was able to take the water to them.

The Echo Corp. came to Byesville with a plant. They have four plastic plants in the town today, and just within the last 2 months, Westinghouse has announced a new plant at Byesville. These are permanent things employing hundreds and hundreds of people, but it never could have been brought about without a waterworks and a

sewer.

The little town of Belpre had 1,100 people. We were able to get a waterworks and sewer for them under PWA in the early 1930's. Nothing happened for a long time.

After World War II the Kaiser Co. came in with a bit company, and the Shell Chemical Co. came in with a plant and they are making there today over 85 million pounds of synthetic rubber.