think this is one of the most important things that has been overlooked at the present time so that somebody has got to come across and follow the patterns of the other two fields and come up with land quality criteria. This would be the first thing. Then, of course, you can also show people through demonstration grants how it can be done. In other words, criteria means nothing unless you can show that it can be done. This is where the Government comes in, through the demonstration grants. This has been accomplished in the water pollution control field. We have demonstrated it and it should be demonstrated in this land quality control field, too. DEMONSTRATION Senator SPONG. You believe that in all of these areas of water pollution, solid waste disposal, all of these environmental problems, that the fundamental role of the Federal Government or the prime role should be to furnish research, establish criteria, and disseminate information to the States and localities? Mr. ELIASSEN. Yes, sir; and also to demonstrate. Senator SPONG. Demonstrate. Mr. ELIASSEN. You know too well that the cities are the critical areas. I mean the policies are made at the city level. Sometimes we wish they would be made at the county level. In California we wish they would be made at the regional level. The Federal Government cannot get in there and enforce this thing unless you have land quality criteria and that it has gotten so bad you have to do it. say You have interstate situations such as the District of Columbia and Virginia and Maryland, but the role of the Federal Government is to assist; the problem is still the control by industry, by municipalities. I don't think we can ever let that responsibility fall on other shoulders. CURRENT PRACTICES Senator SPONG. Would you care to comment on the long-term implications of current solid waste disposal practices on health and welfare? Mr. ELIASSEN. Yes, sir. I have seen so much of poor solid waste management in the slums, for instance, of New York City where I consulted with the New York City Health Department. The poor people in the slums are coming in from the rural areas and are used to throwing their garbage out the window. They have no other facilities on the sixth floor so they practice what we call "airmail special delivery" garbage disposal. It was piled higher and deeper in the back alleys. The rodents have a wonderful time feasting on that and the houses are so poorly constructed and maintained that the rodents have harborage right close to the food. The rat bites I have seen among the poor children of the slums would turn your stomach. We persist on collection of refuse without discipline on the part of the people right at the source. Then, of course, the dumps harbor rodents which have many diseases. The Public Health Service came out with quite a thick brochure on the diseases related to solid waste disposal. I think in the long term the health of the people is being affected today. AIR POLLUTION How much air pollution is contributed by the burning of wastes? I remember in Los Angeles before they stopped this backyard burning, their smog was tremendous. Quite a bit of that was solved by controlling indiscriminate burning. The health implications of solid waste disposal are obvious through the reports that have already been put out in the Public Health Service. WASTE MANAGEMENT I think it is very important that the health factor not be overlooked and that the Public Health Service or the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare be given a strong mandate to go ahead with this solid waste management program in a very strong fashion. We hear so much about research dollars for heart and cancer control but this prospect environmental-caused disease may be more pervasive than some of the others. We cannot overlook these and I hope the Congress will tell the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare specifically that health is involved and by all means get at it in a major program because the long-term health prospects are very poor unless we do something about it. FEDERAL POLICY Senator SPONG. Would you care to comment on any irreversible decisions that are now being made in pollution that may obstruct future progress in environmental quality management? Mr. ELIASSEN. Gee, what do you mean by "irreversible decisions"? Senator SPONG. Let's modify that to ask whether we started in any wrong directions, in your judgment? Mr. ELIASSEN. Well, I feel in one case we are penalizing the municipal governments where money is so short and where we are insisting that before we give Federal support to the construction of sewage treatment plants we are insisting on secondary treatment in all cases. We have a project for the territory of Guam where my colleagues are consultants. The people are poor but they had to have a sewerage system. Preliminary treatment was dictated by extensive studies, and the outfall was put 1,000 feet out beyond the reefs in deep water. The only large living things out there are the sharks. The health of the populace was protected at the shore where swimming prevailed. Before getting Federal assistance the Government of Guam had to guarantee to put in unnecessary secondary treatment. The Federal regulations now say you must "enhance" the quality of receiving waters. Enhance the quality of the practically pure Pacific Ocean? Ridiculous! Enhancement, as strictly interpreted, leads to secondary or tertiary treatment which means much more expense to these communities before you can get any financial help from the Federal Government. It is necessary in many Eastern communities but the need is not universal. This obstructs environmental quality management. It is ridiculous in many other cases because it will retard pollution control activities in New Orleans on the Mississippi, Los Angeles on the Pacific, and so many other cities which practice scientific sewage disposal. Why should they have to do that? Somebody in the executive branch makes a statement and this is adopted as an irreversible policy. The Congress must check to see that when decisions are made or regulations promulgated, they must be done on a scientific basis rather than on an irrational or emotional basis. I think it is not quite irreversible but I think it has got to be corrected-and soon! Senator SPONG. Dr. Eliassen, we thank you very much for this very helpful testimony. Mr. ELIASSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the privilege of being here. Senator SPONG. Mr. Russell Train. Mr. Train, we are very pleased to have you here. We will receive your statement in its entirety and you may testify in part from it as you choose. STATEMENT OF RUSSELL E. TRAIN, PRESIDENT, THE CONSERVATION FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, D.C. Mr. TRAIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Russell Train, president of the Conservation Foundation. I have submitted to the committee a few revised copies of my statement edited as of last night, and I trust that has been made available to you, sir. Senator SPONG. Yes, I have the latest statement. Mr. TRAIN. I would ask that that edited version be made a part of the record. I appreciate your invitation to discuss with you the increasing importance of waste management in our increasingly crowded and technological society-specifically_to_comment, first, on Senator Muskie's bill, S. 1646, to authorize a Federal grant program for community solid waste disposal, and second, on some of the research we need in order to develop sound air, water, and solid waste practices. The Conservation Foundation does not claim special expertise in this field. However, we do have a point of view that may be useful as part of your overall review. The Conservation Foundation is a nonprofit research, education, and information organization. Our purposes are to advance conservation. Our point of view is ecological. CONSERVATION "Conservation" is not an easy term to define. The definition I offer is this: Conservation means the rational use of the earth's resources to achieve the highest quality of living for mankind. Let me comment on that definition. First, it does not treat conservation as an abstract goal, such as preservation for its own sake, but as a goal directly related to human needs and human welfare. Second, the definition is directed particularly to the quality of life, building upon but going beyond basic satisfaction of the quanti tative needs of man for food, clothing, and shelter and for a biologically healthy environment. Third, conservation is seen as a positive, creative "using," susceptible to rational planning and development based upon objective choice. UNESCO For this definition of conservation, I am indebted to a report to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, published by UNESCO earlier this year. The report, entitled "Conservation and Rational Use of the Environment," was drafted by Dr. Raymond F. Dasmann, the Conservation Foundation's director of environmental studies, under a contract between UNESCO and the foundation. I have a copy of that with me, not for the record because it is too long and not all of it relevant to the subject. It may be of interest to your subcommittee. Senator SPONG. Thank you. PROBLEM AREAS Mr. TRAIN. Among the conservation problems related to solid waste management, we see these three in particular: First, the destruction or contamination by dumping and landfill activities of natural environments which have important values for man and which perform more useful work for man when left essentially undisturbed in their natural condition; Second, the failure to recycle waste products, resulting in both unnecessary depletion of natural resources and unnecessary disturbance of the environment; Third, the need to develop a coordinated national policy on environmental pollution which recognizes the interactions of air, water, and solid waste pollution within natural systems, and provides the governmental reorganization or institutional innovation necessary to implement such a policy. THE ENCROACHMENT PROBLEM The first of these problems can be called the encroachment problem. Despite increased recycling for reuse, and more widespread use of proper methods of waste management, we will continue to deposit tremendous quantities of waste products on the landscape-particularly around our metropolitan areas for the foreseeable future. This form of disposal can and is being used as a productive assetwhen, for example, it is used to fill manmade excavations such as some old quarries or gravel pits or the strip mine gullies which are being filled daily by Philadelphia's "garbage express" via the Reading Railroad. DISPOSAL SITES But all too often, in the search for dump sites, cities and industries settle on out-of-the-way natural areas which have high values for educational and recreational uses, or have irreplaceable historic or scientific values. More often than not, it seems, municipal or industrial dump sites are located in those low-lying places where the land meets the water-marshes, estuaries, and other wetland and shoreline areas, or in ravines or stream valleys. These kinds of areas often perform useful functions for man as part of natural processes. They often help regulate flood runoff and perform other vital functions in the water cycle. They also can play essential roles in the production of wildlife and fish. ESTUARIES Dumping in estuaries and other wetlands has resulted in major losses of waterfowl production, of migration and wintering habitat, and of spawning and nursery habitat for fish and shellfish. Some dumps along our coastal wetlands and other shorelines contain waste products which leach into adjacent waters, killing aquatic organisms or making them unfit for human consumption. This practice has been identified by the Department of the Interior's office of estuarine studies as one of the greatest destroyers of estuarine values. SAN FRANCISCO In the San Francisco metropolitan region, for example, the Association of Bay Area Governments has reported that some 3 million tons of refuse a year are dumped by 83 collection agencies at 77 sites. Of these 77 sites, no fewer than two-thirds are along the shoreline of San Francisco Bay, one of the world's great estuaries. WASHINGTON, D.C. In the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region, a solid waste disposal study prepared last fall for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and nearby Virginia and Maryland planning commissions, proposed five major landfill sites for future regional requirements. Of the five, four are in or alongside the Potomac River estuary. NEW YORK CITY And New York City last year learned how enforcement of the city's new air pollution control ordinance threatened-through a kind of environmental chain reaction—to destroy a beautiful wetland area in the Split Rock section of Pelham Bay, alongside an outlying city park. The incident illustrates the interactions among the three principal forms of environmental pollution. When New York's air pollution control ordinance went into effect, many apartment house owners balked at installing new control devices in their incinerators. Instead, they said, they would put their trash in garbage cans and the city's sanitation trucks could haul it away. City sanitation officials objected; they said they were running out of waste disposal sites. The additional trash from the apartment houses, they said, meant they would have to dump it at Pelham Bay, and thereby destroy an estuarine area. Conservationists pointed out that the estuary was a nursery and sanctuary for wildlife and fish-and one of the last reaches of unspoiled shoreline in the region. Turning it into a dump would not only destroy this irreplacable resource, they said, but also could pollute Long Island Sound. So, one spring evening last year, New York City planning, park and sanitation officials, met with Mayor John Lindsay on the spot to see for themselves what was at stake. The gratifying result was a decision that Split Rock should be saved as a natural area. The mayor told the sanitation department to find another site for its garbage |