Mr. RUCKELSHAUS. I think it would not be in that all we really did, and the question of whether we were even going to do it this way was undecided for some time, because we were not quite sure how we could put this information out without misleading people and confusing a lot of people. So we thought that trying to make as clear a statement as possible of what the problems were and giving this information out was the best way to do it.

I do not suppose there is any perfect way to do it. It did not seem to be the kind of action that was addressed under 102. I certainly concur with your earlier preface to the question to Dr. Steinfeld, that there is a tremendous need for public involvement in the decisionmaking process and in all of these areas of the environment. I could not agree more, and we tried in our agency, not totally successfully, but I think we are taking steps that are going to make it easier for the public to be fully informed on the basis for decisions that are made prior to decisions being made.

In this instance, it was not so much a decision was made but just imparting of information that we have about some of the substitutes for phosphate-based detergents.

Senator SPONG. Thank you very much and, Doctor, thank you.

We are going to recess until 2 o'clock when we will hear from the remaining witnesses.

(Whereupon, at 1:05 p.m., the hearing was recessed, to reconvene at 2 p.m., this same day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

Senator SPONG. The hearings will be in order.

The next witnesses will be Mr. Jerome Kretchmer, Mr. Wallace Poston, and Mr. Christopher Ford; also Mr. Michael A. Bilandic on behalf of Mayor Richard J. Daley.

We thought you gentlemen might appear together, if you will.

STATEMENTS OF JEROME KRETCHMER, ADMINISTRATOR, NEW YORK CITY ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION ADMINISTRATION; H. WALLACE POSTON, COMMISSIONER, CHICAGO DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL; CHRISTOPHER FORD, ATTORNEY FOR LAKE COUNTY, FLA.; ACCOMPANIED BY PHILLIP R. EDWARDS, POLLUTION CONTROL OFFICER, LAKE COUNTY, FLA.; AND MICHAEL A. BILANDIC, MEMBER OF CITY COUNCIL OF CHICAGO, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL ON BEHALF OF MAYOR RICHARD J. DALEY

Mr. KRETCHMER. We appreciate being here. We sat through the morning testimony, I guess all of us did, and some of what I am going to say is, in effect, responsive to some of the questions you raised.

I will go through it rather quickly, but we would like to have it on the record, and we would like you to consider it. I am sure my colleagues will do the same.

Maybe we can answer your questions and tell you how we in the middle of this thing, dealing directly with consumers ourselves, have handled ourselves over the 15 days since the 15th of September.

Consumers in New York City, and I am sure in the rest of the Nation, are confused and angry as a result of the Federal Government's September 15 announcement on detergent phosphates.

We in New York City, along with public officials and environmentalists across the country, were dismayed by the September 15 announcement. It appears that the Federal Government has decided to accept almost in total the arguments of the detergent manufacturers. In effect, the Government is inviting the manufacturers to do nothing about the phosphate problem, while telling the rest of us to accept and adjust to pollution instead of stopping it.

I hope and believe your hearings today will help cut through the public's confusion and allay its anger. There are several points you should seek to establish, I believe, and then back them up with legislation. These points are as follows:

1. Phosphates are a major national water pollution problem.

2. Removing these phosphates from our wastes by means of sewage treatment, while a desirable goal, will be a long and costly project.

3. We must, therefore, act now to eliminate phosphates from detergents because this source accounts for more than one-half the total phosphate content of our municipal waste streams. Strong Federal leadership will be needed to accomplish this.

4. American consumers have been victimized for the past two decades by the cutthroat competion for their washday dollar.

5. We therefore must have strong control at the Federal level over the kinds and quantities of ingredients that are put into washday products.

6. This Federal control must leave room for State and local agencies to take even stricter measures if justified by local conditions.

I will elaborate briefly on these points, with particular reference to our experience in New York City and to the specific legislation you are considering.

By this time, there are hardly any disinterested experts remaining who do not perceive of phosphates as a major cause if not the sole cause of the accelerated eutrophication of our lakes and waterways. This problem is particularly severe in the Great Lakes and other bodies of fresh water. But even in New York City, where our waste flow ends up in the ocean, we have experienced algae bloom problems in Jamaica Bay, where tidal flushing action is limited, and there is evidence of similar problems developing in certain stretches of the lower Hudson River and Long Island Sound.

During the controversy over phosphates, the detergent industry has had a continually shifting position on the role of phosphates in eutrophication. First, we were told that phosphorus is only one of several nutrients necessary to stimulate algae growth and that it was not necessarily the controlling one.

Secondly, we were told that, while phosphates do contribute to algae growth, the level to which we would have to reduce phosphorous concentrations in the receiving waters to have a beneficial effect is so low that even removing all the phosphates from municipal waste streams would not do any good at all. But recent studies have shown that certain species of algae are highly sensitive to phosphorus concentration without any evidence of a so-called threshold level, and without regard to the concentration of other nutrients.

Mr. RUCKELSHAUS. I think it would not be in that all we really did, and the question of whether we were even going to do it this way was undecided for some time, because we were not quite sure how we could put this information out without misleading people and confusing a lot of people. So we thought that trying to make as clear a statement as possible of what the problems were and giving this information out was the best way to do it.

I do not suppose there is any perfect way to do it. It did not seem to be the kind of action that was addressed under 102. I certainly concur with your earlier preface to the question to Dr. Steinfeld, that there is a tremendous need for public involvement in the decisionmaking process and in all of these areas of the environment. I could not agree more, and we tried in our agency, not totally successfully, but I think we are taking steps that are going to make it easier for the public to be fully informed on the basis for decisions that are made prior to decisions being made.

In this instance, it was not so much a decision was made but just imparting of information that we have about some of the substitutes for phosphate-based detergents.

Senator SPONG. Thank you very much and, Doctor, thank you.

We are going to recess until 2 o'clock when we will hear from the remaining witnesses.

(Whereupon, at 1:05 p.m., the hearing was recessed, to reconvene at 2 p.m., this same day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

Senator SPONG. The hearings will be in order.

The next witnesses will be Mr. Jerome Kretchmer, Mr. Wallace Poston, and Mr. Christopher Ford; also Mr. Michael A. Bilandic on behalf of Mayor Richard J. Daley.

We thought you gentlemen might appear together, if you will. STATEMENTS OF JEROME KRETCHMER, ADMINISTRATOR, NEW YORK CITY ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION ADMINISTRATION; H. WALLACE POSTON, COMMISSIONER, CHICAGO DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL; CHRISTOPHER FORD, ATTORNEY FOR LAKE COUNTY, FLA.; ACCOMPANIED BY PHILLIP R. EDWARDS, POLLUTION CONTROL OFFICER, LAKE COUNTY, FLA.; AND MICHAEL A. BILANDIC, MEMBER OF CITY COUNCIL OF CHICAGO, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL ON BEHALF OF MAYOR RICHARD J. DALEY

Mr. KRETCHMER. We appreciate being here. We sat through the morning testimony, I guess all of us did, and some of what I am going to say is, in effect, responsive to some of the questions you raised.

I will go through it rather quickly, but we would like to have it on the record, and we would like you to consider it. I am sure my colleagues will do the same.

Maybe we can answer your questions and tell you how we in the middle of this thing, dealing directly with consumers ourselves, have handled ourselves over the 15 days since the 15th of September.

Consumers in New York City, and I am sure in the rest of the Nation, are confused and angry as a result of the Federal Government's September 15 announcement on detergent phosphates.

We in New York City, along with public officials and environmentalists across the country, were dismayed by the September 15 announcement. It appears that the Federal Government has decided to accept almost in total the arguments of the detergent manufacturers. In effect, the Government is inviting the manufacturers to do nothing about the phosphate problem, while telling the rest of us to accept and adjust to pollution instead of stopping it.

I hope and believe your hearings today will help cut through the public's confusion and allay its anger. There are several points you should seek to establish, I believe, and then back them up with legislation. These points are as follows:

1. Phosphates are a major national water pollution problem.

2. Removing these phosphates from our wastes by means of sewage treatment, while a desirable goal, will be a long and costly project.

3. We must, therefore, act now to eliminate phosphates from detergents because this source accounts for more than one-half the total phosphate content of our municipal waste streams. Strong Federal leadership will be needed to accomplish this.

4. American consumers have been victimized for the past two decades by the cutthroat competion for their washday dollar.

5. We therefore must have strong control at the Federal level over the kinds and quantities of ingredients that are put into washday products.

6. This Federal control must leave room for State and local agencies to take even stricter measures if justified by local conditions.

I will elaborate briefly on these points, with particular reference to our experience in New York City and to the specific legislation you are considering.

By this time, there are hardly any disinterested experts remaining who do not perceive of phosphates as a major cause if not the sole cause of the accelerated eutrophication of our lakes and waterways. This problem is particularly severe in the Great Lakes and other bodies of fresh water. But even in New York City, where our waste flow ends up in the ocean, we have experienced algae bloom problems in Jamaica Bay, where tidal flushing action is limited, and there is evidence of similar problems developing in certain stretches of the lower Hudson River and Long Island Sound.

During the controversy over phosphates, the detergent industry has had a continually shifting position on the role of phosphates in eutrophication. First, we were told that phosphorus is only one of several nutrients necessary to stimulate algae growth and that it was not necessarily the controlling one.

Secondly, we were told that, while phosphates do contribute to algae growth, the level to which we would have to reduce phosphorous concentrations in the receiving waters to have a beneficial effect is so low that even removing all the phosphates from municipal waste streams would not do any good at all. But recent studies have shown that certain species of algae are highly sensitive to phosphorus concentration without any evidence of a so-called threshold level, and without regard to the concentration of other nutrients.

Industry's current position, and the one the Federal Government has apparently decided to go along with, is that instead of removing the phosphates from detergents we should invest billions of the taxpayers' dollars nationwide to remove these compounds during the sewage treatment process.

We estimate that it would cost roughly $20 million per year to treat all of New York City's waste flow to remove phosphates to the 80 percent level-about double our current sewage treatment plant operating cost. When we consider that about 60 percent of these phosphates are directly attributable to detergents, we see that the Federal Government is asking the citizens of New York City to subsidize the detergent industry to the tune of $12 million per year.

I note that Mr. Ruckelshaus has suggested the Federal Government might come up with $500 million in Federal funds to subsidize improvements in municipal treatment plants so that they will effectively remove phosphates. While I welcome this apparent commitment, my enthusiasm is tempered somewhat by the fact that the Federal Government has so far come up with only about 2 percent of the funds it is obligated to provide for the $1.9 billion sewage treatment plant construction and upgrading program we already have underway in New York City, a program that does not include plans for phosphate removal.

Let me emphasize that I support the concept of removing phosphates in the treatment plants. However, we must face the fact that the country is already afflicted with an immense backlog of basic primary and secondary treatment facilities to build, and that it will be decades before we can hope to dent the phosphate problem by this

route.

Furthermore, most of the suggested phosphate removal methods involve addition of a chemical precipitating agent that drops the phosphate out as a sludge. The amount of chemical required will vary according to the phosphate concentration in the wastes. Also, we must not forget that disposal of sludge from sewage treatment plants is already a major part of our solid wastes headaches, and we should therefore not leap to increase the volume of these sludges still further.

We can see, then, that any steps taken to reduce the concentration of phosphates before the treatment process will be beneficial, even if we do eventually upgrade our plants. The only way we can do this is, of course, to reduce substantially or eliminate entirely the phosphates in detergents.

Apart from this question of phosphate removal, I believe the American consumer is in a state of confusion over just what is needed to do an acceptable job in the laundry room and how the individual can best serve the interests of both environment and family health. I further believe that the September 15 press conference served only to increase this confusion. What are the facts?

Before the forties, consumers used soap products to do the family wash. In areas where the water supply was high in minerals, washing soda (sodium carbonate) was added to the wash water to soften the water and prevent deposition of gray mineral scum on the clothes. The advent of synthetic detergents, however, with their added phosphates, eliminated the need for extra softeners, and by the mid-fifties, detergents had all but replaced soaps.