arrangement, which I think is fairly unique among the respective States. So, as you point out, there is a great deal of interest in this question of conservation and preservation of natural resources in our urban areas. I think that the whole structure and scope of this bill, the purpose of it, to consolidate this and to preserve it, will be of extraordinary value not only to friends in the West but also to those of us in the East. Senator RIBICOFF. Senator Harris? Senator HARRIS. I have no questions, Mr. Chairman. Senator HANSEN. I have no questions, Mr. Chairman. Senator BAKER. Mr. Chairman, I have no questions except to reiterate that, in general, I share the sentiments expressed by Senator Kennedy and Senator Moss to the effect that this heightened awareness to the necessity for conservation might better be served by improved organization. However, I would once again underscore my belief that centralization of planning does not always produce uniformly good results, and I once again espouse my concern for one of the primary examples in this field, the TVA. PROTECT NATURAL RESOURCES NEAR POPULATION CENTERS I might also say, parenthetically, that a point Senator Kennedy makes with respect to the availability of natural resources near population centers is one that I feel we must give increasing attention to, because, as much as we owe the responsibility to preserve distant and in some instances semiremote areas of natural beauty, we also owe the responsibility to make areas of opportunity available within traveling distance of our population centers. That, once again, relates to something in my own State, in part at least. The Great Smoky Mountain. National Park may not be the most spectacular national park in America-I happen to think it is-but it is the most visited, simply because it is in the East where the population is located, and I think there must be a coordination of effort in this direction as well. But I caution against, for my part, the destruction of those things good that have been created by way of regional agencies, such as TVA, the Appalachian Regional Commission, and others who have the responsibility, not only for natural resources development, but human development and economic development at the same time; and these are inexorably interwoven. Senator RIBICOFF. Senator Moss? Senator Moss. I wish to express my appreciation to Senator Kennedy for his very fine statement and his understanding of the problem and the objective. I think you stated it very well, and we would count on you to continue to expound this as the dialog continues on this. I expressed my appreciation to the chairman of the subcommittee for setting this down and getting this underway. I wanted to point out one thing, that it seems to me, was in your statement that brings to focus what we are talking about. MOSS CITES EXAMPLE OF AGENCY CONFLICT The Corps of Engineers, for example, first was assigned simply to take snags out of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and it has grown until it its functions have grown into building levees and building reservoirs, and it is into the recreation area now. The Corps of Engineers has more recreational days that is spent on its waters than any other water agency in the Federal Government, you see, and yet we think of it sitting over there in the Department of the Army, something which was not supposed to be for recreation I do not believe. It has grown into a full-bloom water agency, and this is proper, because water can be used for many things, not just for transportation and not just to control floods, but to supply cities, and so on. We had an instance of this very recently, of the conflict that arises, in my own State. The Bureau of Reclamation is building the central Utah project out there, to bring water from the Colorado basin into the great basin. For a number of years, the city of Salt Lake has talked about a reservoir in the mountains above the city for flood control, one, but really more important for water supply. Well, the Corps of Engineers got in on that one, because of the flood control part of it. So, when they made the announcement of the proposal to build the dam there to control the floods and to bring water to the city, the Bureau of Reclamation came up and said, "We do not want to do that, because we have already planned to bring water over there, and we have got to sell that water in order to pay back the cost of the project." And, so, you have two agencies there out publicly, after the announcement is made, in this conflict with one another. Now, it is hard to explain that to anybody in Utah, because they just think you ought to get every bit of water you can. Water is so scarce that anybody who wants to build a dam, we are for him, and we want water into the city. But this is the kind of planning that should have been made at the level of the Department of Natural Resources sometime far back before it ever got that far along, obviously. Now, that is just one little minute element of conflict. I think you can find it all through the thing. One other thing you mentioned, about the structure of the committees of Congress on this thing. It is a fact that we have been treating the Forest Service appropriations in with Interior for a long time in the Appropriations Committee, even though they are in two separate departments, because they are on the same subject matter, and therefore we have been a little more logical than the executive department here in the Congress in our structure. I certainly appreciate your testimony, Senator. Senator RIBICOFF. Thank you very much, Senator Kennedy. (At Senator Ribicoff's previous instruction, the prepared statement submitted by Senator Gale McGee is incorporated into the record at this point and is as follows :) EXHIBIT 5 STATEMENT OF SENATOR GALE MCGEE (D-Wyo.) Mr. Chairman, the testimony I offer this morning is to favor a vital piece of legislation introduced by Senator Moss, myself, and others to redesignate the Department of the Interior as the Department of Natural Resources and to transfer certain agencies to and from such Department. Legislation which takes such a broad, but absolutely compelling step undoubtedly means there will be cries of pain from two types of protesters. The first of these types will be those who go into shocked anguish when a name is changed. The second type is that person who views any change as a threat to what he views as his own fixed and God-given order of things. In regard to the first type, those who quiver at changing words, it is thus that changing the name of the Department of the Interior to the Department of Natural Resources brings protests of horror that we are changing the natural order of things. But the fact is that we in the Congress have changed the names of various departments of the government before the Department of Defense to name just one, Housing and Urban Development, and Health, Education and Welfare, to name two others. But more importantly, what is being changed by S. 886 is not only the duties and responsibilities of the Department of the Interior but we are merely designating a new map that more accurately describes the territory. When our maps and territories get into closer fit, then the chances for understanding and wise behavior increase correspondingly. Concerning the second type of protester, those who view their activity and practices over a long period of time as a working-out of an iron law of how things are and must be, one must once again point to the fundamental fact of life-the fact of change--which means that from time to time that the administration of the consequences of change must also change. There isn't a person in Congress and the government who isn't aware of the hodge-podge of agencies that deal with natural resources. At times indeed the competing and contending activities of the agencies and bureaus within the various departments charged with the care of our natural resources boggles one's reason. By the same token, one cannot help but be impressed by the skill and dedication of the employees in all of these agencies and departments. Yet we are faced with incredible complexities in administering our natural resources; and the murky conglomeration of agencies and bureaus, too many times contending with one another for jurisdiction, do not make the problem any easier. For example, the development of our water resources is made unduly difficult, if we are concerned with the entire river basin concept, as long as independent bureaus with traditional loyalties and jealous clientele carve up the development and management of tasks. This Nation faces a two-fold task in developing overall river basin planning. First, this country must find and find quickly increased supplies of clean water; and second, we must manage with far more wisdom than we have used thus far the water supplies we now have. The total management of water resources involves a variety of functions. Among others are watershed protection and management, flood control, river and harbor improvements, irrigation, fish and wildlife, recreation, desalinization, and pollution. This whole package must be tied together. We must plan for entire river basins from their sources to their mouths. Even should authorities be successfully established for every river basin, however, the basins themselves are interrelated. Precipitation, pollution and water use in one basin can vitally affect others. Co-ordination in their development and management is imperative. Interbasin transfer cannot even be considered without both river basin planning and overall planning of water programs of many basins and states. Ideally, we should have a national long-range plan for management of water resources in the United States. The national plan would then be the starting point for the river basin plan. In trying to effectuate this planning, we now have three primary departmentsDefense, Agriculture and Interior. In addition, the Federal Power Commission, which grants licenses for projects, and Health, Education and Welfare, which determines water quality standards, must be considered in all planning. This is not to mention the vital role that the Department of Housing and Urban Development should play. Below the departmental level, a Pandora's box opens. In Interior alone we have this array of agencies-the Bureau of Reclamation, three power marketing agencies, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Fish and Wildlife, the Bureau of Mines, Geological Survey, the National Park Service, the Office of Saline Water, the Office of Water Resources Research, and the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation. The listing of these difficulties is not to beg resolution of the problem of water management, but to emphasize the necessity for unity and wholeness of view in the management of our natural resources. One further example might serve to illustrate the problem of co-ordinating the activities of various bureaus and agencies. Senator Moss and I have co-sponsored legislation which would take the management of the Flaming Gorge Recreation Area in our states out from under the management of two agencies and place it in the hands of one. As Senator Moss will testify, it was no easy task to get agreement from the two agencies, the National Park Service and the Forest Service, to agree that administration of Flaming Gorge would be more effective in the hands of one agency. Imagine-it takes an Act of Congress to effectuate such an obvious solution. As I have pointed out, everyone in government recognizes the confusing array of responsibilities, departments, bureaus, and agencies in the management of our natural resources. I would like to speak briefly of this problem in broad conceptual terms rather than belaboring long lists of government departments. Any cursory glance at the history of the United States leads inevitably to the thought that our attitudes, indeed our very lives, have been profoundly changed by not only the uses to which we have put our natural resources, but by the way in which we view those natural resources. The distinction between use and view is an important distinction. Such a distinction is not meant to suggest that use and view are polarities. Indeed, they are closely interrelated. Those who first came to the North American continent must have been struck by the magnificence and abundance of our natural resources-the timber, the game, the water, the very spaciousness led inevitably to the view that the cornucopia was endlessly full. Indeed, this sense of abundance was manifested in many of the landscape paintings and diaries of early settlers and travelers. So pervasive was this sense of abundance that even today when we ought to know better many Americans look upon their natural resources in terms of abundance and very seldom in terms of scarcity. Nor was the European settler prepared, either in economic outlook or in moral outlook, to make the happy discovery of abundance. His economic concepts, his moral concepts, were based primarily on scarcity. Whether he had read Adam Smith or John Calvin, he still carried the notion that scarcity, either in natural resources or in moral salvation, was God's inevitable plan. Yet what he saw here was the very antithesis of scarcity and his view changed, as well as the use to which he put those natural resources. It was true that the British holding companies were looking for new sources of raw materials, but even they had little idea of the plentitude of the raw materials in the New World. The point is, Mr. Chairman, that for a long time in America's history most Americans had little, if any, awareness that our natural resources would, or even could, have a limit. Thus, during the time of our national expansion, we found little attention being paid to the wholesale devastation of our landscape, of our minerals, of our water, and, sad to say, in some cases, of our human resources. But as we became more adept at recognizing the role of government in helping to solve problems, the more we saw government reflecting the complexities of the times. The present departments of government came about because problems were recognized. This is most particularly true of the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce. The Department of the Interior, established in 1849, came about as a result of the long-established recognition that we had untold acres of land which required orderly development. The settling of the West was due in no small way to the fact that the Federal Government took a direct hand in that settlement. In 1889 we established the Department of Agriculture because we had long since become aware that the practice of mining farm lands no longer had the easy out of abandonment for new vistas. Thus, one of the chief functions of the Department of Agriculture was the pursuit of scientific farming. During the Progressive Era, more and more Americans became aware of the irrational pillage which our natural resources were undergoing. One of the answers to such pillage was the establishment of the Department of Commerce in 1903. The effort to regulate commerce was as much an effort to save our natural resources as it was to regulate the excesses of business. What we see reflected here in this part of history is that as problems involving the development of the United States became increasingly complex and apparent, we find the creation of departments of government reflecting those complexities and changes. Instead of growing like Topsy, we sought control and wise management. The time is once again upon us to continue that course of wisdom so amply demonstrated by our forefathers. The pressures of a burgeoning industrial system has never meant and cannot now mean an iron law of indiscriminate exploitation of our raw materials. If we can adopt the concepts of the new economics in government for making the Federal Government operative and effective as an instrument to control inflation and deflation, then surely we can employ those concepts concerning our natural resources. That is as a catalytic agent in the wise and generative uses of our natural resources. But this is impossible if we violate the pursuit of wholeness and a balanced total view. The alternative to such a view is a piecemeal, contentious, and at last, destructive policy. Already, the process of destruction is at hand. Witness the tragedy of the Florida Everglades, the scars of strip mining, the denuded forests, the cry for more water, to name but a few of the crises now confronting us. Certainly conflicting and competing interests sometimes mean that we must reshift our emphasis, reorder our priorities, and, at times, control these competing interests. We must begin to change the helter-skelter approach of keeping a particular department alive to serving the public interest for generations to come. What is so vital is the development of a pervasive and dynamic unity in our attack on the wise use of our physical environment. We cannot do this when agencies contend and attention to large purpose and the ordering of priorities is neglected by a system of vying for tax money, attention, and status. Harmony is obligatory, not only because we feel better when there are no dangling and bothersome loose ends but for the much more real reason that we will never retrieve what we have, in fact, lost and will continue to lose at a horrifyingly rapid increase in pace. Nature is all of a piece and our approach and treatment of nature should be all of a piece. Otherwise we are forced into the folly of assaulting nature bit by bit rather than co-operating with and being a part of nature. One of the absolute requirements of wise planning in the use of our natural resources is the recognition of the fact that if we run out of raw material for our productive machine, we will have no more productive machine. But what of man's psychic requirements? The necessity that the spirit requires something good must happen to the eye. The redwoods, the mountains, the wilderness areas, the lakes, the uninterrupted vistas, these are all our heritage as much as steel plants and highways—indeed, not only a heritage, but a necessity. A Department of Natural Resources should be as much concerned with the psychic income from our natural resources as it would be with the material income from our natural resources. In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, my remarks should be construed in no way as an attack on the Departments presently involved. Indeed, it is a plea that they be allowed to operate more vigorously and effectively. We need the talent and dedication of these departments in a new and reordered way which would allow us the wise use of natural resources. This wise use should be the result of the government's activity, not in spite of it. Surely, when the private sector of our affairs increasingly incorporates the total systems approach, then the public sector should benefit from the same kind of approach. For, basically, a total systems approach utilizes the principle that only by conserving and unifying can we generate. In view of all this and more, Mr. Chairman, it is my earnest hope that the Committee will quickly adopt S. 886. Thank you. Senator RIBICOFF. The subcommittee will stand adjourned until Thursday at 10 a.m. (Whereupon, at 11:20 a.m., a recess was taken until 10 a.m., Thursday, October 19, 1967.) |