Nearly the full gamut of commodities is represented in the foregoing. It includes coal, phosphate, sand and gravel, stone, clays, pumice and other materials of volcanic origin, iron, manganese, copper, cobalt, molybdenum, lead, silver, zinc, gold, barite, talc, asbestos and related minerals, fluorite, semiprecious gems, uranium, pegmatite minerals, and various others.

Some of the greatest impacts will come from still-pending coal production in the West, particularly on the Custer National Forest in Montana and on the National Grasslands in Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota. The range management required for environmental quality controls in connection with existing and pending mining operations is as broad and complex as the extant methods of prospecting, exploration, development, and mining. Some of the other significant problems foreseen involve phosphate mining, both East and West. Potential acreages involved are rather large, as many as 28,750 in Florida, for instance.

The SEAM project (Surface Environment and Mining) of the Department of Agriculture, involving the 11 Western States, is designed to gather information to serve local, regional, and national needs in connection with the environmental management aspects of mining. The project is designed to mesh with the Northern Great Plains Resources Study of the Department of the Interior and other agencies. Broad representation of disciplines and interests is contemplated in both studies. The results of those and other related programs will give States, local communities and interests, and Federal land managers much information needed for better, more comprehensive resource management that will serve both short and long term needs. Sincerely,

PHILIP THORNTON,

Deputy Chief, Forest Service.

Mr. UDALL. Under the present system and the present law without regard to the enactment of the administration's bill and the other proposals before us, does the Interior Department now administer, regulate, and control the mining operations on USDA lands?

Mr. WHITT. The guidelines that are established in the Department of Interior are considered in the Forest Service on the way in which mining under lease, license, or permit where applicable will take place on the National Forest System lands, but they are controlled by the Forest Service, Mr. Udall.

Mr. UDALL. If I applied today for a permit under existing law to mine coal or copper or other minerals on the Forest Service land, who passes on that permit?

Mr. WHITT. You would make contact with the Forest Service.

Mr. UDALL. You would pass on it using the guidelines laid down by Bureau of Mines and the Department of the Interior?

Mr. WHITT. I am not in the Forest Service, Mr. Udall, but my understanding is that you would go first to the Forest Service. I do not have the details on all of the procedures that would take place before the mining would go forward on those lands.

Mr. SAYLOR. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. UDALL. Yes.

Mr. SAYLOR. I do not want this record to get balled up with a statement like you have just given us here. Before you can do any mining in a National Forest, it depends upon whether lands have been set-aside in the 17 Western States as distinguished from the acquired forest lands in the East.

Mr. WHITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. SAYLOR. On the public domain lands of the West you do not get a permit at all. When you have proved to the Interior Department that you have done your assessment work, and made a valid discovery of a locatable mineral, you can get title of the property.

Mr. WHITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. SAYLOR. The Federal Government does not issue permits for locatable minerals in the West, is not that correct?

Mr. WHITT. That is my understanding.

Mr. SAYLOR. Then, with regard to the acquired grasslands that you have, or some of the Western forest lands, the Bankhead Jones lands, you have a permit system. Now you got rid of a lot of that Bankhead Jones lands because Congress gave you the right some years ago to sell some of that land; but the Department of Agriculture has complete control over that, do they not?

Mr. WHITT. That is my understanding, Mr. Saylor.

Mr. SAYLOR. There you can get a permit from the Forest Service, but the Interior Department sets up the rules and regulations with regard to how the mining is to be done, is that not correct?

Mr. WHITT. That is my understanding, Mr. Saylor. The basis on which I was asked to come before the committee was to deal with any of the technical questions relating to the matter of mining, and not the regulations and policies, Mr. Saylor.

Mr. SAYLOR. The third classification of lands that the Forest Service has under its jurisdiction are lands east of the Mississippi River, which are basically the acquired forest lands.

Mr. WHITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. SAYLOR. There you have a whole hodge-podge of diffe.ent types of titles, some you own in fee, some you have leases, some you only have rights-of-ways, flowing agreements, in others, the minerals are outstanding in third person.

In those instances, the people that want to mine in that area get a permit from the Department of Agriculture under the rules and regulations issued by the Secretary of Agriculture. Is this not correct? Mr. WHITT. That is my understanding, Mr. Saylor.

Mr. SAYLOR. Then we are straight. We do not want somebody to read this record and think that we do not know that there is a difference in the types of land that the Department of Agriculture has under its jurisdiction

Mr. WHITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. UDALL. This is one of the many reasons why it is so valuable to have Mr. Saylor sitting on this committee. Stored in his mind. are so many facts and so much good information to keep us straight. I did not know on what basis he had been asked to appear here, and without any criticism of you, we would have been better off, for you are obviously a very skilled man in your own field, to have somebody to talk policy in terms of the regulations by the Department of Agriculture on minerals on its land. Apparently it is a very complex subject. according to Mr. Saylor's description of it.

Would there be any change in the way that mining permits or mining claims are administered in the event that the administration bill is passed?

Mr. WHITT. I am not aware of any, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. UDALL. Of course the complicated and many-faceted kinds of Federal lands, putting in the types of things that Mr. Saylor outlined, seems to me a very good argument for having enforcement vested in one place. If we are going to have a National Surface

Mining Law, we ought to have some one agency or some one department on top of the thing and giving us uniform, effective standards across the board. Those are my only questions or comments, Madam Chairman.

Mrs. MINK. Mr. Saylor?

Mr. SAYLOR. That is all.

Mrs. MINK. I have a few points with respect to your administration of soil conservation. I assume that your jurisdiction extends beyond public lands into private lands, as well.

Mr. WHITT. Our responsibility in the Soil Conservation Service. Madam Chairman, is essentially all on private lands. We have very few traces of land, very small acreage, which we own and control in the Soil Conservation Service. Those are largely our 20 plant materials centers where we do work on plants of various kinds, including the work we do at the Quicksand Kentucky Plant Materials Center that came into being some years ago as a result of the funds applied by the Appalachian Region Commission and that act established a plant materials center to give attention to the vegetation required for use on the lands that had been mined.

Aside from that, we have some very small holdings, for example, in Alaska where our office is located. Other than that, we essentially have no lands that we control.

Mrs. MINK. Under the administration bill, will the Soil Conservation Service and the Department of Agriculture have any role to play with respect to the adequacy of the State plans insofar as revegetation requirements, scil erosion, run-off, and so forth?

Mr. WHITT. We assume that we would as a result of the provision in the bill to have representation from our Department on the Advisory Committee that would be established, and secondly, in section 211 of the act which says the Secretary of the Interior may utilize the services of the Secretary of Agriculture and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and may transfer the funds to cover the costs thereof. We would be called upon for the expertise resident in the Department of Agriculture, primarily, I would say from the Forest Service, from the Soil Conservation Service, perhaps to a lesser extent the Agricultural Research Service that does some research related to vegetation and water control and research in the general area of water management.

Mrs. MINK. Do you have any field knowledge or experience with respect to the West Virginia strip mining area in particular? Mr. WHITT. Yes; to some degree I do.

In the State of West Virginia, the Soil and Water Conservation District in many instances enter into contracts with the mining operators or the owners of the land to reclaim these lands and to plant the protective vegetation and to deal with the problems of water management and drainage and so on.

In most instances, all that I am aware of, they call on our engineers and our agronomists, and people expert in plants in advance and counsel on the ways to reclaim those lands.

Mrs. MINK. We hear so often about the problem of acid runoff from the stripped areas, and the difficulty of doing any sort of effective revegetation of these areas which are so afflicted.

Would you care to comment on that problem?

Mr. WHITT. Not only in West Virginia, but in other States in which we have been called upon to provide assistance, the efforts that we have made have been to cover up the pyritic materials and have the materials that are somewhat higher in pH, or less acid, on the surface, so that you can, in fact, grow vegetation. This does require some movement of the overburden, and more desirable than that, the removal of the overburden in such a way that the more desirable soil material find their way to the top.

I have seen many instances, in Missouri, for example, the way in which the overburden was deposited determines the kind of plant cover. One pile of the overburden, half the size of this room was as bare as this table, and on the pile immediately adjacent was sweet clover higher than my head. The plant growth was dependent upon on the way in which the overburden was removed and deposited.

Mrs. MINK. Do you think the administration bill is effective with regard to regulating the way in which the contour will be returned to its original condition?

Mr. WHITT. I would say that the opportunity is provided in that bill to cause the proper local specifications to be established around the country to deal with the problem. I think that it would be essential to recognize the highly variable nature of the geology, the soil and the soil material that is involved, the climate that prevails. I think that it would be absolutely essential, based on the experience that we have had, to recognize these wide differences in establishing the local specifications for the way you attempt to reclaim areas.

I think one of the reasons, as Congressman Saylor points out on the work being done in Pennsylvania, is that they have done exactly that. They have recognized the need to give attention to the kinds of soil they are dealing with, the proper shaping, and control of the water that falls in those areas.

Mrs. MINK. I have noted in various statements that were submitted in the Senate hearings that insofar as surface coal mining is concerned in the Western part of the United States, there is no known, proven method for effective reclamation.

Would you comment on that with respect to your area of expertise?

Mr. WHITT. I have seen some effective reclamation in those Western areas in Colorado, in Wyoming. I have not been over every acre that has been mined and reclaimed or attempted to be reclaimed, but I could not agree with the statement that there is no proven method known to reclaim these lands, at least the areas that I have seen, Madam Chairman.

Mrs. MINK. In your view, are there practices currently available that would be effective in the Western portion of the United States with respect to surface coal mining?

Mr. WHITT. In the areas that I have made personal observation, the answer is yes.

Mrs. MINK. Thank you very much, Dr. Whitt, for coming to the hearings.

Mr. Baise of the Environmental Protection Agency has been excused and he will return to the hearings tomorrow afternoon at 2. Mr. Saylor?

Mr. SAYLOR. I would like to apologize to you and to Mr. Udall for not having been here this morning. Mother Nature just moved in on us last night up in the hills of Pennsylvania; it was not possible for me to get here on time. Therefore, I would like to ask your permission to place my statement in the record together with section by section, analysis, of the bill that I introduced, and I ask that for the purpose of enabling it to be of some assistance to the staff as they prepare the final bill.

Mrs. MINK. Without objection, so ordered.

[The statement referred to follows:]

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN P. SAYLOR, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Mrs. Mink and Mr. Udall-I feel signally honored that you have asked me to be your lead-off witness for these hearings on a subject which is crucial to the well-being of our Nation-the mining of our natural wealth.

Since this is a precedent-shattering set of hearings for our distinguished Committee, perhaps you will allow me to digress for just a moment in order to admit that I came here this morning with some trepidation.

It's not a big thing-but it is bothering me.

Very frankly, just how do I address you?

If I say, "Mr. and Mrs. Chairmen," or "Mr. and Mrs. Chairpersons," I am surely going to get in hot water, with at least two people.

If I say, "Madam and Mr. Chair-something," that will be cumbersome.

If I say as I am tempted to do-"Patsy" and "Mo," the dignity and seriousness of these hearings might be jepordized.

Come to think of it, I believe you two may have scheduled me first, as the ranking Republican on the Committee, just to see how this minor procedural matter would fall into place.

I have the greatest admiration for you both and I surely do not want to offend either of you. But really now, why didn't you have your two staffs get together and publish an official etiquette book for the convenience of your witnesses? That surely would make my lead-off situation a little easier.

You will, I am sure, excuse me if I use a number of different forms of address in the hopes of covering all my bets.

Before turning to the subject of surface mining, I wish to congratulate the Chairman of our Committee, Mr. Haley, and both Chairmen of the two subcommittees, for the agreement which produced these joint hearings.

As a Member of the Committee who has had some slight experience with the traditional, and sometimes exasperating problems of Committee "jurisdiction," I realize the nature of the implications of these hearings for future legislative subjects.

But allow me to congratulate you both on establishing a precedent-breaking format. The subject we are to discuss today, and in future days, is not neatly dividable.

The subject of surface mining is surely and traditionally a matter for the Mines and Mining Subcommittee.

But there is no question that the "environmental storm" which has swept the country in the past few years, has made us look at the problems related to surface mining in a broader context.

For that reason, I am particularly pleased that the Environment Subcommittee is an integral part of these hearings.

In the next few days, and during the "mark-up" sessions, we shall hear a great deal about the compatibility or incompatibility of mining with the "environment" or the "quality of life" in the United States.

I will state at the outset, and in unequivocable terms, that mining and environmental protection and enhancement cannot be incompatible.

To come out with so strong a statement may shock some of my good friends in the environmental "movement." It should not.

I believe that most of those who have considered themselves in the vanguard of the public's awakening concern with environmental protection, also realize that what they seek to protect, is that which they have.