Mr. DONALDSON. No; I don't see where it would be necessary to have DOE do any enforcement, as opposed to inspection. DOE could simply collect information for the CPSC and the CPSC would then act.

Mr. ECKHARDT. Now Mrs. Harrison, full committee counsel, has worked in the area of all these acts, and perhaps she would like to comment on how they overlap and what conceivably could be done. Mrs. HARRISON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Donaldson, you raise the issue of DOE setting quality requirements as well as the language of the act which will require DOE to set standards for the safety and effectiveness of residential energy conservation measures. They are also required to set standards for the installation of these measures. These are standards which a manufacturer of various conservation measures will have to meet and the enforcement in the act at this point goes not to a manufacturer not complying with those standards but to a utility which fails to implement an approved residential conservation plan. Now those standards are not necessarily an element of that plan. Conceivably under the statute I think DOE could make them a requirement of the plan but they are not now specifically spelled out that way.

Now is your understanding different from mine? If so, maybe we can clear it up.

Mr. DONALDSON. I don't believe the Department of Energy could tell a utility to implement a residential energy conservation plan but allow the utility to ignore DOE standards for insulation. That seems inconceivable to me.

Mrs. HARRISON. Those standards must be compiled with by the manufacturers of the products and the installers of the products, not by the utilities. The civil penalty section runs against the public utility.

Mr. DONALDSON. My understanding is the utility has to publish an approved list of materials to be used but that the manufacturers are not required under NEA to comply with any standards. The NEA has nothing to do with the manufacturing.

Mrs. HARRISON. There is another element in here and that is that the State Governor could be drawing up the plan and it will not be the utility which makes the final judgment as to who is a qualified contractor or supplier, it could be done under existing State law.

Mr. DONALDSON. Yes; effectively the consumer has no protection under the National Energy Act.

Mrs. HARRISON. Yes.

Mr. DONALDSON. It has no protection for the consumer written in the National Energy Act and something should be done.

Mrs. HARRISON. You are speaking to this specific issue, the safety issue.

Mr. DONALDSON. As it relates to insulation.

Mr. ECKHARDT. The question is whether the facilities of that Department should be called into play with respect both to the development of the standards and inspection and the enforcement. The rules should be promulgated ultimately by the Product Safety Commission and enforcement.

Mr. DONALDSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. ECKHARDT. I would suggest that might be the best way out of this thicket.

Mr. DONALDSON. The overlap among these acts, especially when some of them are not in existence, plus the sort of fluid situation with the safety standards makes this area particularly hard to pin down. As soon as you pin something down, something else moves.

Mr. ECKHARDT. Trying to pin it down in this respect by a specific statute.

Mr. DONALDSON. Yes, sir. I support what I am saying is I don't think that the Department of Energy should set insulation safety standard. Mr. ECKHARDT. You do not think so?

Mr. DONALDSON. I do not. The CPSC should set safety standard but there is a role for both the Department of Energy and the CPSC in enforcing safety standard.

Mr. ECKHARDT. Then as I understand it you would like to see us take basically the structure of the Moffett bill before us, but be assured that in that bill there can be the utilization of the full resources of the Energy Department with respect to standard making and with respect to inspection.

Mr. DONALDSON. Yes, sir, because what I am worried about is that the Department of Energy will reject responsibility for enforcing any safety standard.

Mr. ECKHARDT. And secondly you are saying that we should try to avoid an interim measure of putting into effect 515C, that in whatever manner we should put in something like the contemplated 515D. Mr. DONALDSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. ECKHARDT. I think other witnesses have indicated to us that it is most desirable that the ultimate GSA standard be uniform with the general sandard, and I have suggested that this might be taken care of by the timing of the bill.

Mr. DONALDSON. Yes, sir, but there is an urgency to this. We are insulating half a million homes a month, so every month you delay there are that many more homes that may or may not have safe insulation.

Mr. ECKHARDT. Of course what we heard about the timetable, this does raise very difficult questions.

Mr. DONALDSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. ECKHARDT. We have those standards due in about 2 months, but the Energy agency's study is to be completed by the end of summer as we hear it. However, whatever occurs, it would seem desirable to get this bill on its way.

Mr. DONALDSON. Absolutely.

Mr. ECKHARDT. So that we could fashion the bill in accordance with better developed standards it seems to me.

Mr. DONALDSON. Yes, sir, but I don't think the Department of Energy or the GSA or the NBS are the only sources of information. If, as I have suggested, there is an APA rulemaking by the Product Safety Commission, industry, Government, and consumer groups can provide data during the process.

Mr. ECKHARDT. But if we wait for that, we are calling for even more. Mr. DONALDSON. I don't think so, sir.

Mr. ECKHARDT. It has been the history of product safety rulemaking that it is a very tedious and lengthy process.

Mr. DONALDSON. Yes, sir, but that is why I am proposing using the APA as opposed to the Consumer Product Safety Act.

Mr. ECKHARDT. Are you suggesting an alteration for this purpose? Mr. DONALDSON. Yes, sir, we are not discussing the Product Safety Act per se but I would also like to see the Product Safety Act altered the same way. I don't think the offeror process has proved effective. Mr. ECKHARDT. We have been discussing that question, and I think we have got something of a consensus amongst the Commissioners that there ought to be an alternative.

Mr. DONALDSON. But in this specific bill produce a fire and corrosion safety standard for cellulose installation. I would definitely urge you to use the APA and give CPSC only 120 days to produce a standard. Mr. ECKHARDT. Mr. Broyhill.

Mr. BROYHILL. You have already hit on the questions that I was going to ask or at least expressed the dilemma that we are in. To come up with a new standard is even going to be more delay but if you adopt the present standard as you already pointed out there will be some problem that will develop along the way. Of course I have felt that the Commission could have used more aggressively the authority in section 7 (c) and I think I mentioned that in the hearing last year as I recall.

Mr. DONALDSON. Yes, sir, you did.

Mr. BROYHILL. It is still a mystery to me why they have not moved more aggressively so they would have a standard in place already.

Mr. DONALDSON. That to me is an unresolved mystery. When the Denver region alerted the Washington headquarters in June of 1975 that there were problems with cellulose installation, why the CPSC did not act then is totally beyond me.

Mr. BROYHILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ECKHARDT. Thank you very much. I think your testimony has been fruitful, though provoking, and very useful to the committee. Mr. DONALDSON. Thank you.

Mr. ECKHARDT. We next have a panel. Mr. L. A. Barron, managing director, National Cellulose Insulation Manufacturers Association, Inc.; Mr. Charles D. Mesigh, president, Society of International Cellulose Insulation Manufacturers; and Mr. Robert W. Anderson, director of product development, Diversified Insulation, Inc.

Mr. METCALFE [presiding]. Mr. Barron, would you lead off?

STATEMENT OF LESLIE A. BARRON, MANAGING DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CELLULOSE INSULATION MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION, INC.

Mr. BARRON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. METCALFE. Do you have a prepared statement?

Mr. BARRON. Yes, indeed, Mr. Chairman. With your concurrence I would ask that our formal statement be entered into the record of these hearings but I would like to paraphrase a supplemental statement of some items that have come to our mind since the preparation of our formal statement.

Mr. METCALFE. Without objection, so ordered.

Mr. BARRON. Thank you.

I would like to file with your committee copies of wires that I received from four trade associations in the cellulose industry; that is, the National Cellulose Insulation Manufacturers Association; Manu

facturers Association of Cellulose Insulation International; the Society of American Cellulose Insulation Manufacturers; and the Insulation Industries Association.

These associations, representing approximately 70 percent of the tonnage of the industry, have agreed to form one association to be known as Cellulosic Insulation Manufacturers Association. Their wires generally state complete support of CIMA and also affirm their intention to join in forming a new association to support certain matters that will be expressed to you in the statement.

We submitted our formal statement. May I offer these comments. It is hoped, gentlemen, that the recommendations that have been set forth in this supplemental statement will indeed be not only imposed upon the cellulosic industry but also upon those agencies of the Federal Government who do buy insulation in the open marketplace. As we set forth in our previously prepared formal statement, there are agencies in the Federal Government that do not require that cellulosic materials purchased conform to the now existing Federal specification HH-I-515C. We feel that this standard should be impartially mandated to the entire country.

My thanks to you, Mr. Chairman.

[Mr. Barron's prepared statement follows:]

STATEMENT OF LESLIE A. BARRON, MANAGING DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CELLULOSE INSULATION MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION, INC.

Good morning, Gentlemen. I am L. A. Barron of National Cellulose Insulation Manufacturers Association, Inc. out of Elk Grove Village, Illinois. NCIMA, as we call it, is a national trade association supported by twelve manufacturers of cellulosic insulation located essentially all across these United States. We are a trade association organized early in 1960 and have been quite active in standards and regulation sectors of our industry including committees of the American Society for Testing and Materials, activities of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers, the model building code groups of our country as well as many other activities.

We have been asked to state our opinion regarding mandatory Federal standards being contemplated for home insulation possibly to be coupled with a mandatory third party follow-up inspection program. I assume that the Federal standard being contemplated is that as expressed in legislation offered by Senator Ford from the Senate side and Congressman Moffett on the House side that would establish HH-I-515C, the now existing Federal standard implemented by the General Services Administration, as a national mandatory standard. I would recommend that if such were done, that it be made explicitly clear that Section 2.2 of the now existing Federal standard, HH-I-515C be modified to make it precisely clear that the C-739 test method referred to is the 1977 version of that standard which was issued in November of 1977. Additionally, I would recommend to you that the E-84 test method referred to in Section 2.2 of the standard be stated as E-84 as modified in ASTM specification C-739-77. The ASTM C-73977 version makes mandatory the inclusion of a correction factor for the influence of galvanized steel screen used to support the specimen in the ASTM E-84 modified tunnel test. Underwriters Laboratories of Northbrook, Illinois does use this method and does use a correction factor for the influence of the galvanized steel screen. We in NCIMA, support that method of determining the flame spread. We feel it is the best way to measure the flame spread of materials. This tunnel test method has been used over the last twenty-five years and is recognized by every building code across the United States and Canada as the method to determine the flame spread of building materials.

There is, of course, language in the proposed legislation that would permit the Federal sector, and more specifically, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to adopt a later standard, presumably the proposed HH-I-515D as the national standard in the area of cellulosic insulation. We are, at the present time, involved in a discussion with the General Services Administration-Federal Supply Service

in details associated with the proposed HH-I-515D and take exception to the immediate implementation of the Flooring Radiant Panel Test method as well as the Smoldering test referenced in that proposed Federal specification. We understand that the data base for these two proposed methods is just eleven tests. We further understand that only now is the National Bureau of Standards implementing round-robin tests with funds from the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ascertain the reproducibility of these tests methods. We feel that this should have been done some time ago before these two test methods were ever contemplated for use in such an important specification. Obviously, more work needs to be done on these two test methods to assure that we trade off the problems suggested with the E-84 test method for the same sort of problems with these two proposed test methods.

If you will check the the testimony that was taken by the Consumer Product Safety Commission at their public hearing on August 22, 1977 relative to the insulation industry, you will note that NCIMA, at that time, recommended no additional standards and that the industry could clean itself up. You will also note in that same testimony, that there was a recommendation made that if that body, that is the Consumer Product Safety Commission, would adopt one of the three nationally recognized standards in the area of cellulosic insulation, that is either HH-I-515C, ASTM C-739, or our own NCIMA specification, N-101 and make it a national mandatory standard, that a great deal would have been accomplished in straightening out the dilemma the cellulosic insulation industry faces at the present time. We in NCIMA recognize the inevitability of a national standard and against that backdrop it is interesting to note, that just today, seven months after that occurrence before the Consumer Product Safety Commission, is the Federal sector considering making mandatory the implementation of HH-I-515C.

While the Federal government, and really, people call me day in and day out and ask me what the Federal government is going to do in the area of cellulosic insulation and I would submit to you gentlemen, that I just don't know what the term "Federal government" means. At the present time, we have your Committee as well as other committees in the Congress, other committees in the Senate as well as the General Services Administration, the National Bureau of Standards, the Department of Energy, the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and undoubtedly others, all intently investigating the insulation industry. Goodness knows, whether this group of government activities will come up with a single version of a standard or whether there will be several standards recommended for implementation, but I fervently wish, that there was just one agency that was handling this entire problem with whom we could discuss the matter.

One facet of the Federal government that amazes me is that on the one hand, the Federal government is apparently raising questions about the expertise in the cellulosic insulation industry relative to quality control methods, etc., and yet at the same time, other sectors of the Federal government are funding the entry of relatively inexperienced groups into the cellulosic industry. Recently, I had the occasion to review an article that appeared in the St. Charles Chronicle, that is St. Charles, Illinois, on February 1, 1978, about the insulation industry. That article said in essence, that a Mr. Kelly from the Batavia office of the Kane County Community Agency said that he is investigating the possibility of getting Federal grants for building a recycling plant in his area. He went on to say that money is available from the Federal Community Services Administration in the Department of Commerce for the purpose and said such a facility is in operation in Remsen, Iowa.

Mr. Kelley said a corporation would have to be formed to operate the business. He did go on to say that they don't like to use cellulose, but it may be the only material available to take care of the many requests they have.

He further said that the operation will not compete with private suppliers of insulation because of costs. The production will be for economically deprived families who would not be buying from private dealers in any case.

Kelly said the plant could be operated with professional and volunteer help. Any program undertaken by his office must have at least 30% local sources of operation. Volunteer help meets the requirement. He went on to say that he had discussed the possibility of members of a local service club helping out in the current insulation program.

It is amazing that at this point in time when the Federal government is so concerned about the quality of cellulosic insulation in the market place, that such "less than professional" activities are still being implemented.