Mr. DINGELL. I wonder if it was to get them in. I know the church was set up for sinners, but I am not sure that they gave it to the devil, too.

Mr. HERTER. Well, the make up of the delegation is a very impor tant issue and we will advise you formally and informally as to our thinking as it develops.

As I say, by early March this ought to be pretty much decided. They will obviously want to consult with you and other members of the Congress about Congressional representation.

Mr. DINGELL. Thank you.

Mr. Everett.

Mr. EVERETT. Thank you.

Mr. Herter, in your May 4 letter you indicated that the President established a Cabinet Committee on the Environment and the committee in turn established an International Standing Committee. Whatever happended to this committee? Is it still functioning? I notice the Cabinet level council was abolished.

Does this International Committeet or Standing Committee still exist?

Mr. HERTER. You put your finger on a very interesting point. The Standing Committee still exists. However, because we are very much concerned with the shaky foundation for its existence since its parent committee has been abolished, we are in the process now of establishing a new means of authority. Perhaps I could ask Mr. Salmon to speak briefly on this. He has been working on this problem.

Mr. EVERETT. You might indicate too who is on the committee and how many times they have met, and what action has been taken.

Mr. SALMON. Yes, sir. The Group of Alternates to the International Standing Committee of the Cabinet Committee on the Environment meets regularly once a month and includes designated alternates to the department head or agency heads on the International Standing Committee.

The major agencies and departments of the Federal Government represented on the committee include AID, Commerce, Labor, HUD, Department of Transportation, EPA, the Council on Environmental Quality, the Bureau of the Budget, the Office of Science and Technology, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Department of the Interior, and the Council of Economic Advisers. These people attend regularly and participate in the work of the committee, which is carried out in seven task forces. The task forces deal with the subjects that are mentioned on the top of page 2 of Mr. Herter's testimony; specifically the 1972 U.N. conference, the 1971 conference of the ECE, the programs of the OECD, and the activities of the NATO-CCMS program. Mr. EVERETT. Have there been reports filed which have grown out of this international group?

Mr. SALMON. To date there has been no formal report filed. The principal work of the committee results in position papers that representatives take to meetings, such as the Preparatory Committee meeting for the 1972 U.N. conference, the first meeting of the Environmental Committee of the OECD and the conference and programs of the ECE.

Mr. EVERETT. Are those actions available to this committee for consideration or review?

Mr. HERTER. No earthly reason why not. We would be glad to make available copies. We have developed through one of the task forces what is now about a 125-page document on all the existing international activities concerned with the environment and the organizations that undertake them. This is about to go into final form and once it is in final form we would be very pleased to make one available to you. It is an extremely useful document, just as a reference document of what is taking place throughout the international world on this subject.

I might point out, Mr. Counsel, that at the first meeting of the International Standing Committee over which the Secretary of State presided, Cabinet officers were present, and since that time I have chaired on behalf of the Secretary of State these monthly meetings at which alternates to the various Cabinet and agency heads are present.

Mr. EVERETT. Mr. Herter, in your statement you have interpreted the National Environmental Policy Act as not applying to the jurisdiction of other countries. You also indicate that it does apply to the high seas, Antarctica and one other area.

Mr. HERTER. Space.

Mr. EVERETT. And space.

Has the Department determined that it will need additional statutory authority to carry out the goals and policy of the National Environmental Policy Act?

Mr. HERTER. I will ask Mr. Salmon, please, to answer that.

Mr. SALMON. With regard to Public Law 91-190, section 3, we have advised Chairman Train in our memorandium of October 6 that we found that no change in our statutory authority or regulations was necessary for the Department to be in compliance with the Act.

Mr. EVERETT. How about your 102 statements that preceded that required all Federal agencies reporting on legislation or on major Federal actions to develop procedures and in reverse the State Department quite often is required to report on legislation and major Federal actions growing out of other Federal agencies. Do you have procedures developed that the State Department would follow in this regard.

Mr. SALMON. We do, sir. Again, the memorandum of October 6 outlines the procedures that we have taken within the Department for informing various portions of the State Department and the other foreign affairs agencies about the requirements of the act and the procedures that have been put forward from time to time by the CEQ. With regard to receiving from other Federal agencies their draft environmental impact statements, we have informed the CEQ that Mr. Herter is the authority within the Department of State who should receive these statements, and we have set up procedures for handling these statements within the Department, receiving opinions from various offices, and channeling those opinions back to the action agency.

Mr. EVERETT. Now with respect to programs that originate within the State Department, there are some of those that do come within 102 (2) (C) requirements?

Mr. SALMON. At the present time, as Mr. Herter mentioned in his testimony, the International Boundary Commission, which uses chemicals to assist in maintaining vistas along our border with Canada, went through the procedures this summer of getting their program reviewed by other interested Federal agencies and reporting the results of that review and the advice given to the CEQ. I believe in this case the Chairman was independently informed of this program and we received a very nice letter in response.

Mr. EVERETT. Where you solicit comments from other Federal agencies, at what point is the public brought in with respect to public disclosure, if any, of those statements, agency comments, your draft statement, your final statement, or whatever you want to call it?

Mr. SALMON. Our opinion at this point. although we have not had a formal project to present to other agencies and the public in the form of an environmental impact statement, is that that statement would be available to the public as soon as prepared.

Mr. EVERETT. All right. As soon as you have prepared the statement it is available. Now when you solicit comments from other Federal agencies, once those comments are received by your Department, would you have any objection of making the agency comments available to the public at that point?

Mr. SALMON. At this point I would assume that those comments from other agencies, from State governments, local governments and the public, would be available to the public when received.

Mr. EVERETT. Is this in your procedures or have you thought about incorporating this in your procedures so that the public would know that they could get this information and where they could obtain it? Mr. SALMON. This is our understanding of the procedures as recommended by the CEQ.

Mr. EVERETT. Well, there is some misunderstanding about this. The CEQ's guidlines say that there is a draft statement and a final statment and that the public does not get access to this information until the final statement is prepared and all agency comments have come in. Some of the agencies within the Government voluntarily make agency comments available to the public when they are received by the requesting agency.

We have had considerable discussion on this point and we were hoping that your agency would voluntarily make this information available to the public at this early date and incorporate this understanding in your procedures.

Mr. SALMON. I believe, sir, that when we get to the point of having a formal impact statement we would make it available to the public. It is our understanding that the purpose of 102 (2) (C) is to have a vehicle which is called the environmental impact statement to which the public or whomever, can attach their comments and views as to the environmental aspects of a proposed project.

Mr. EVERETT. There is quite a time gap here. If it is a draft statement, that is followed up by agency comments. If the public is going to participate in the decisionmaking process at all, it needs to get access to the comments as they come in to, say, the State Department. Mr. SALMON. Let me say with regard to the flood control project on the Tijuana River at the present time, the U.S. section of the IBWC has in process the environmental impact statement. It is our under

standing, and we will check this again with CEQ but it would be our effort to make this statement available simultaneously to Federal agencies, interested local governments and the public by notification in the Federal Register that the environmental impact statement exists. We interpret this notification as an acceptable means of informing the public that the statement exists; we would make copies available, hopefully, at no cost for review and comment.

We have not addressed the idea of public hearings on this particular project and we would like to wait on that for some time.

Mr. EVERETT. Do you have a meeting scheduled soon with the CEQ with respect to updating your procedures? They are in the process now of meeting with all Federal agencies and I was wondering if you had already met or there was a meeting planned with your Department in the near future.

Mr. SALMON. We plan to meet with the general counsel of the CEQ on Wednesday and at that time the first item on the agenda is the AID activity.

Mr. EVERETT. We would hope that you would develop in your procedures what you just told us, that you would like to see the information made available to the public at an early date and without having to wait until the final draft statement is filed and then made available to the public.

Mr. SALMON. I would like to add just one point, and that is I believe in Mr. Train's comments to you earlier he indicated that there should be an opportunity for preliminary review of statements by other agencies which involve what you might describe as foreign relations concerns or national security issues.

We have indicated to the CEQ that we think it would be appropriate that we review these statements before they are prepared in draft to insure that the way issues are phrased and presented does not injure our foreign relations or our national security efforts. When the draft statement is finished, it should be made available to the public and other interested agencies.

I believe Mr. Train passed those views on to you in his earlier testi

mony.

Mr. EVERETT. Thank you, Mr. Salmon.

Mr. Chairman, I yield at this moment.

Mr. ANDERSON (presiding). Mr. Dellenback.
Mr. DELLENBACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Do I understand correctly, Mr. Herter, from what you implied to counsel earlier, and I didn't find it as such in your statement but I assume you made the comment, that you would feel that while the provisions do not apply to foreign jurisdictions it would apply to the the high seas and to space. Is that correct?

Mr. HERTER. That is correct. This is counsel's interpretation. If it is not within the national jurisdiction of some other country, it would be subject to an environmental impact statement.

Mr. DELLENBACK. What then, would be the reaction of your Department to a space shot, for example. Would this call for an environmental impact statement?

Mr. HERTER. Well, I would assume NASA itself would have to make that decision but

Mr. DELLENBACK. From your statement would you feel that the Department involved in international relations should be called upon to make an environmental impact statement as opposed to perhaps the technical standpoint of NASA? How about the State Department telling us what it thinks about the environmental aspects of a space shot?

Mr. HERTER. Well, I think I could answer that by saying, sir, with respect to acts taken by other technical agencies, that do have foreign policy implications, or the possibility of them, the State Department's comments on their environmental impact statements reflect our foreign policy concerns.

Mr. DELLENBACK. How about the space shot that is coming up? Has the State Department made an environmental impact statement in connection with that proposed shot?

Mr. HERTER. I can't answer that statement, I don't know.

Mr. SALMON. No, sir, we have not prepared such a statement. Mr. DELLENBACK. Have you been called upon to make such an estimate?

Mr. HERTER. No, sir.

Mr. DELLENBACK. Do you feel, if called upon, that the Department of State should comment on a space shot?

Mr. SALMON. No, sir, I feel this would be the responsibility of the action agency, NASA, in this case.

Mr. DELLENBACK. Under the terms of the statute the agency which is primarily involved in a project also calls upon sister agencies which have any expertise in the field to make comments thereon. I would assume under those circumstances that what expertise does exist in a few of the international issues involved as far as space is concerned does bring State right smack in the middle.

Mr. SALMON. We would be involved in working closely with NASA should they propose and present an environmental impact statement. For example, we have worked closely with the Atomic Energy Commission on the environmental impact statements of their testing programs.

Mr. DELLENBACK. But you would wait for a request from the action agency, in this instance NASA, to make a request of you before you would make a comment on this proposed space shot?

Mr. SALMON. Yes, sir, that would be our position regarding environmental impact statements.

Mr. DELLENBACK. Mr. Chairman, I don't know whether or not we have asked NASA as to whether it intends to make an environmental impact statement in connection with the proposed space shot. I am not looking in the past, I am looking in the future. We have one coming up within the next month or so.

Mr. DINGELL. I don't feel that we have. It is a matter we could very well ask whether or not they have done so and what they propose to do. As a matter of fact, I think it would probably be well for us to engage in a little correspondence on this matter if the gentleman were to so suggest.

Mr. DELLENBACK. May I make that suggestion, Mr. Chairman? Because we are, of course, in the very early stages of what happens so far as the environment is space is concerned.