"1" values given in parenthesis.

WATER POLLUTION CONTROL LEGISLATION

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 1971

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AIR AND WATER POLLUTION
OF THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC WORKS,

Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 4200, New Senate Office Building, Hon. Jennings Randolph (chairman of the full committee) presiding.

Present: Senators Randolph, Tunney, Boggs, Baker, and Buckley. Also present: Richard B. Royce, chief clerk and staff director; Barry Meyer, counsel; Bailey Guard, minority staff director; Leon G. Billings, Philip T. Cummings, and Richard W. Wilson, professional staff members; and Thomas C. Jorling, minority

counsel.

Senator RANDOLPH. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

In the absence of Senator Edmund Muskie, the chairman of our Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution, and of our cochairman, Thomas Eagleton, the chairman of the full committee will do the chores this morning.

We are appreciative of the presence of the Honorable Philip A. Hart of Michigan.

Senator Hart, you may proceed in your own way and we anticipate that your counsel will be helpful to the subcommittee during these current hearings.

STATEMENT OF HON. PHILIP A. HART, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

Senator HART. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

Actually, I almost thought I should cancel this appearance this morning because your hearings and those of Senator Muskie have been so productive that I was hard put to persuade myself that I have anything to add.

Really, except for an article that appeared in the Detroit Free Press a few days ago, written by Saul Friedman, I would not have come. But, as I see it, that article illustrates vividly the need for the citizen suit provision, the sort that is now before you and your subcommittee, and because of the mutual interest that you and Senator Muskie and I have long had in this area, I thought it not out of order to use this hearing this morning as the means of bringing it to the committee's attention.

Mr. Friedman's concern is the dumping every day of 67,000 tons of taconite tailings, courtesy of the Reserve Mining Co., into Lake Superior.

Senator RANDOLPH. Would you tell us about that company just so the subcommittee can know?

Senator HART. Reserve Mining is owned principally by two steel producers, Armco and Republic. It sits on the side of the lake that the Audubon Society has suggested may soon be more deserving of the name "Lake Inferior" than Lake Superior.

Actually, Superior is always thought of as the jewel of fresh water lakes. It is in the remote reach of our country. It is massive and magnificent. About 67,000 tons of taconite tailings go into it every day.

According to the Friedman article, this stuff has been discharged in increasing amounts since 1956. It clouds the lake. It increases algae. It kills fish food and newborn salmon and trout. He cites numerous scientists who have criticized this activity as unreasonable.

He writes that in April 1969, that is 2 years ago, the Interior Department released a study by the Regional Coordinator for the area, concluding that the taconite was damaging the ecological balance of Lake Superior. Pollution control experts in Minnesota. in Wisconsin, in Michigan, and here in Washington all agree with the report's findings. Several in the EPA Water Quality Office have since asserted that the discharge is inexcusable in light of the permanent environmental damage which may result. Finally, Saul Friedman writes, the company's own study recently confirmed that it is spoiling the lake.

Now, notwithstanding all of this, the only Federal enforcement action taken against the Reserve Co. has been an interminable. unproductive enforcement conference authorized by the Water Pollution Control Act. The conference convened in May 1969, again that is almost 2 years ago, and allowed Reserve a full 15 months to develop a proposal to deal with the problem.

When the proposal was finally submitted this year in January, a committee was created to advise the conference of its suitability. The committee has now rejected the report, and the conference is busily determining what should be its next move. Not surprisingly. Murray Stein, the chairman of the conference, says in retrospect it has been a cumbersome and ineffective device in ending the pollution of the lake.

The problem of Lake Superior, as I view it, has not been the absence of Government enforcement tools. Federal authorities have had forceful court remedies available to them right along. The real difficulty has been that those most concerned about Reserve's activities the general public-have been without similar means to curb those activities. They have had to watch despairingly while bureaucratic delays breed ever increasing amounts of algae in

their lake.

Senator RANDOLPH. At that point, Senator Hart, I notice in your formal testimony-your prepared statement-you mention the unproductive enforcement conference authorized by the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.

That act was passed by the Congress in 1965.
Senator HART. Thanks to your leadership.

Senator RANDOLPH. That is not a measure that has passed just in the last 1 or 2 years, and I am wondering whether the mechanics built into that act were faulty.