By either changing the flow or dredging out the siltation, the value of the lake can be restored. There are any number of rivers, lakes, and basin estuaries that could be eligible for assistance and they must be saved if we are going to save our Nation's environment. There can be no question that whole areas are becoming dead seas. The eastern basin of Lake Erie is only one example. Presently, approximately 8 percent of the Nation's shellfish grounds have been declared unsafe for harvesting and human consumption purposes. As of January 10 of this year, the Environmental Protection Agency listed some 91 beaches in the United States as closed or posted as polluted. These are areas that can be and should be called environmental disaster areas. To solve the problems of these areas will take a special commitment. We need to make that commitment now.

My third point deals with legislation which would prevent pollution and health disasters throughout the Nation. The type of disaster I am referring to nearly occurred with the development and the beginning of marketing of NTA-the chemical replacement of phosphates in detergents. Without obtaining the approval of any Government agency, without clearance with any public health service as to the pollution and byproduct aspects of NTA, major corporations were prepared to move toward the manufacture of 2 billion pounds of NTA to be dumped into the Nation's waterways. This step was being planned by the private sector even though questions about the safety of NTA were raised in the early spring of 1970 by Dr. Samuel Epstein who testified before this very committee. Dr. Epstein reported that NTA could very well be carcinogenic or cancer-causing. As a result of the publicity given Dr. Epstein's findings, and Government research being carried out by the Bureau of Water Hygiene, on December 18 the Surgeon General "described Government studies that seemed to bear out recent warnings that NTA could prove even more dangerous than phosphates." The tests reportedly showed that a natural byproduct of NTA "is said to have caused birth defects in a significant number of rat offspring" as well as "a marked increase" in cadium toxicity. Fortunately for the health of us all, this replacement to phosphates has been abandoned. We have averted by luck an environmental health disaster of epidemic proportions.

Yet according to a brilliant article in the January 16, 1971, New Yorker magazine by Paul Brodeur we may be facing the same type of environmental health epidemic now because of our lack of public foresight on enzyme detergents. Mr. Brodeur traces the development and rising popularity of enzyme additives in detergents. He chronicles the increasingly overwhelming medical evidence that workers in enzyme additive plants can be severely allergically sensitized, with resulting serious damage to the lungs. In addition, there is increasing medical evidence coming on the scene that enzymes (which the FTC has just ruled can no longer be advertised as removing all stains) can cause allergies among housewives who use the detergents. While giving the medical evidence against enzymes, Brodeur chronicles the opposition of detergent industry doctors and spokesmen to these findings. The industry, which had to give in and develop special protections for workers in enzyme factories, seems resolved to press ahead and flood the marketplace and the American home with enzymes. I have just introduced legislation, H.R. 5775, to ban the use of enzymes in detergents.

Yet the larger problem, the problem of private industry introduction of new products into the marketplace without adequately checking all the possible environmental and health ramifications of these products remains. As Dr. Dubos, director of the Department of Environmental Medicine at Rockefeller University, who was one of the doctors involved in enzyme detergent research, remarked:

There must be an essential philosophy in our society that prohibits the introduction of any technical innovation until one has tested, insofar as one can, the consequences of its introduction both in the environment and upon the human beings who will come in contact with it. . . Millions and millions of people are using (enzyme detergents), and we have no idea what the result will be. It is criminal to have such a situation. At the very least, it is criminally stupid.

I agree with the Doctor. I am introducing legislation which would require pretesting and prior approval of products as well as the ban from interstate sales of any polluting substance. A "polluting substance" would be defined as any product which contains any biological or chemical formulation (either organic or inorganic) which when used, consumed, or discarded in any way emits or discharges effluents, wastes, pollutants, or any other byproduct into the air or water of the United States which have an unforeseen and undesired effect and which are of sufficient quantity or potency in the Secretary's determination as to adversely effect human health or the ecological system in which man exists. This would give the government the public sector the power to regulate products like detergents and detergent additives as well as products containing heavy metals before they come on the market.

The tremendous number of new chemical products coming on the market present us with a clear and present danger of environmental disaster. I hope that this Congress can act in this area.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that I support those provisions of your legislation which would require the States to meet Federal water quality standards within 3 years without permitting the degrading of the quality of any body of water. The provisions requir ing that any new facility use the latest control technology and, to the extent possible closed-cycle systems are also a must if we are to have clean water. We must remember that even if we provide tertiary treat ment in all our municipal systems we will not have solved the pollu tion problem; there are still 300,000 water-using factories in the United States discharging three to four times as much oxygen-demanding wastes as the sewered population of the United States, and that the volume of industrial waste is growing several times faster than the increase in sanitary waste and sewage. We must begin providing bette regulation of industrial polluters.

I would like to address your attention for a moment to the need fo establishing industry-by-industry standards. It seems to me tha whether you have a steel mill or petro-chemical industry or paper mill the water is used in the same way by the same industry and I thin that there ought to be national standards that would govern the opera tion of a given plant wherever it is located so that we do not have t suffer the effects of competition by various communities in the countr competing for plants on the basis of a lesser pollution control standard

I think that if we were to require that in order to get the tax credit provided by my Ways and Means Committee there would have to b

a uniform or approved approach for the use of water by a given industry, it might provide for a real cleanup and it would eliminate the competition between States and communities on the basis of more lax pollution control effort.

Finally, I hope that your legislation will prohibit the issuance of any kind of license or permit to pollute by either the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Corps of Engineers, or a special permit issued by the President of the United States. That practice which was well established in Ohio by our State Water Pollution Control Board has prevented public action to restrain the polluters. This has provided a legal barrier contrary to the public interest. Ohio presently issues 1,300 permits of this type which are permits to pollute.

The volume of permits has not gone down. At the present rate of termination of permits, it will take 600 years to solve Ohio's pollution problem under this program of licensed pollution.

It is my hope, Mr. Chairman, and members of this committee, that your legislative approach will repudiate a State's right to countenance pollution in either navigable waters or waters which supply navigable streams. If your action can prohibit the issuance of pollution permits by State and local authorities, we will have made substantial progress in meeting this critical problem in America which is just as important an approach as appropriating Federal funds to meet the problem.

Senator EAGLETON. Thank you, Mr. Vanik.

I will yield to Senator Tunney.

Senator TUNNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am going to have to leave, Congressman Vanik, to preside at an 11 o'clock hearing, but I have long known of your interest in this problem of pollution, having served with you for 6 years in the House, and I think that your statement today is outstanding. I can tell by the way in which you delivered it that you must have mesmerized your you

constituents the same way that did me.

Thank you very much.

It is a really fine statement.
Senator EAGLETON. Thank you.

Congressman, I have one question zeroing in on that portion of your presentation that talked about pollution disaster. I was intrigued with that concept.

As you know, for instance, with respect to streams changing their riverbed, there are two doctrines. There is the doctrine of accretion and the doctrine of avulsion.

Do you see a difference between a pollution disaster such as Lake Erie that develops over a series or sequence of years from a series and multiplicity of sources-put that on one hand-and pollution disaster that results from one single event, to wit, Santa Barbara or some of the oil spill disasters that have occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, on the other hand?

Are disasters all of the same type or are there differences and do those differences in your mind call for different treatment insofar as Federal funding to alleviate the ill effects of a disaster is concerned? Mr. VANIK. I would say there certainly should be two kinds of approaches. There is the spill type which is an accidental thing which results from lack of care and control. Then there is the other type like

the Lake Erie problem which is accumulated. I would say that the approach for sudden disaster is an immediate clean-up so the spread can be avoided and controlled along with the imposition of safeguards in commercial operations.

We must separately attack the problem of accumulated residual pollution which must be removed from lake basins. Up to the present we have done nothing on this problem in Lake Erie where heavily polluted matter rests on the lake bottom.

In the last Congress we were able, for example, to get $20 million authorization for the Great Lakes problem. It ended up with an $800,000 appropriation in fiscal 1971 to give us a technical study as to what to do. Up to this moment, not one penny of that money has been spent by the administration or by the authorities that have control of it to at least gain the technology for solving the problem.

It seems to me that there should be two approaches within the concept of the disaster area approach. One to take care of the immediate problem and the other to take care of the problem of acretion.

The problem we have in Lake Erie is that the material rests at the bottom of the lake and fresh water flowing over it becomes contaminated. We have to prevent new pollution from coming in but we will never have a clean lake until we get out of the lake the accumulation that has developed over the last 100 years.

Senator EAGLETON. Senator Boggs.

Senator BOGGS. It will take years to wash that out.

Mr. VANIK. It will never wash out, Senator. Unless we either dredge the lake scientifically with approved technology, unless we increase the flow of the lake. We might have to just take care of the problem right where we are.

Senator BOGGS. That is a serious aspect.

Mr. VANIK. Yes; it has to be taken out. The material that has been building up at the bottom must be removed and either must be pumped out or aerated or it must be dredged out. And I see no other real solution to that problem.

Senator BOGGS. I want to thank you for your testimony, Congressman. You are an outstanding authority on this subject, and we value your testimony.

Mr. VANIK. I invite you to come fishing because I will furnish all of the line. You don't need bait. The fish are anxious to get out of the lake.

Senator BOGGS. It sounds good. That reminds me of one time when I was coming up what we call Herring Creek in Delaware. It was at night and I was with another fellow in the boat. We had been to one party and we were going to another. It was dark, and I had a small flashlight. All of a sudden, these fish started jumping up in the water. These small, flat fish kept jumping-literally thousands of them. It was the first time I had ever seen such a phenomenon. I confess that it scared me a little bit.

The fish even started jumping into the boat. They really did. We went ashore and told the story of what happened. They said, "Go back and get some more so we can have them for breakfast.”

We did, and we got about 40 of them, each about 3 inches long. We scaled them and cooked them just like bacon. You eat the whole fish, and they are delicious. It was the first time I had ever caught fish that way-just letting them jump into the boat.

Senator EAGLETON. Are you sure they jumped in after the first party after the second party? [Laughter.]

Senator BOGGS. That question was raised. I would like to get down there this summer to make some flash photographs of these fish. Most people don't believe it. They charge it up as being a good fish story. But it does happen.

Mr. VANIK. Your fish are jumping up because they are so happy about the water. My fish are jumping out of the water to leave it. [Laughter.]

Senator BOGGS. I have a couple of questions, Mr. Chairman.

In your service on the Ways and Means Committee, you must think a lot of various ways to pay for pollution control. What do you think of the user-charge approach? Do you believe we can make progress if we try to have local communities carry on with effective user charges after we once get caught up with the problem?

Mr. VANIK. We pay user charges in practically all of our communities. We assess people on the basis of their water consumption. Unfortunately, there aren't many industries that pay user charges. They just take water from the lake or from the river. One industry, for example, bought the Ohio Canal which drains off the Cuyahoga River upstream. Most of the industries get water free. They pay no user charge at all and simply use the water and then return it to the system, used and filthy. They pay no charge for either taking it out or for the pollution they put in it.

I think, to be fair about it, a user charge ought to be extended in some way to the industrial users of water.

Senator BOGGS. Thank you. I have one other question, Mr. Chairman. Premarket testing, which is certainly a very good suggestion, is the subject of an administration bill, as well as S. 573, introduced by Senator Muskie. I think there is a need for premarket testing. In view of considerations like your own, the legislation introduced, the public concern, I believe that most industry for its own protection would want premarket testing in a way that would be fair to all.

Mr. VANIK. I think that the new product could be tested without disclosing its quality to a competitor. There would be protection against competition through disclosure of content. It is no profit to a company to bring out a product that is going to be rejected. I would think it would serve industry as well as the public to provide a pretest, after which the product could go into the market.

Senator BOGGS. Thank you.

Senator EAGLETON. Thank you.

Senator EAGLETON. Our next witness is from the National Governors' Conference, Hon. Kenneth M. Curtis, Governor of Maine.

STATEMENT OF HON. KENNETH M. CURTIS, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF MAINE

Senator BOGGS. I want to join you in welcoming the Governor. I must step out for a few minutes, and I hope I will have an opportunity to return. Go right ahead.

Governor CURTIS. It is also a pleasure for me to appear for the second year in a row before this subcommittee.

It is a particular pleasure because unlike last year all of the legislation under discussion represents a recognition of the magnitude of our water pollution problem.

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