WATER POLLUTION CONTROL LEGISLATION

THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 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. Thomas F. Eagleton (vice-chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Senators Eagleton, Tunney, Cooper, Beall, and Buckley. Also present: Richard B. Royce, chief clerk and staff director; Bailey Guard, minority staff director; Barry Meyer, counsel; Thomas C. Jorling, minority counsel; Leon G. Billings, Richard W. Wilson, and Harold H. Brayman, professional staff members.

Senator EAGLETON. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

The Senate Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution of the Committee on Public Works is now in session to continue public hearings relating to matters of water pollution.

Our first group of witnesses comprising an environmental panel will be Barbara Reid, legislative director, Environmental Action: Lloyd Tupling, Washington representative, Sierra Club; George Alderson, legislative director, Friends of the Earth; and Carl Pope, Washington representative, Zero Population Growth.

Miss Reid, are you the ad hoc chairman of this group and, if so, you may proceed.

STATEMENT OF MISS BARBARA REID, LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR, ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION, INC., WASHINGTON, D.C.

Miss REID. Thank you, Senator.

My name is Barbara Reid. I am the legislative director of Environmental Action, Inc.

Speaking for myself and the other members of this panel, we wish to thank Senator Muskie and the other members of this subcommittee for providing us with the opportunity to present our views on the pending water quality legislation, particularly S. 523 and S. 1014.

Our remarks will primarily be directed toward the enforcement section of both of these bills.

As I am sure the members of this subcommittee realize, legislation has been on the books in this field since 1948 and before that, the Refuse Act of 1899. We have had many hallmark pieces of legislation passed by the Congress and signed into law by the President.

The problem of water pollution is still with us. Indeed, the problem seems to grow faster than our ability to deal with it, either in terms of treating wastes through partially Federal financed waste treatment plants, or in terms of stopping the production of that waste from both industrial and municipal sources.

The water in the United States is not only dirty, it is also, in many instances, dangerous. Furthermore, it is rapidly deteriorating. It is not an exaggeration to say that a national crisis is looming directly ahead of us.

In 1965, Riverside, Calif.-population 85,000-was hit by a waterborne epidemic which affected 18,000 residents.

In 1968, Angola, N. Y.'s water disinfection system failed, resulting in a 30-percent rate of gastroenteritis. The town uses the same lake for sewage disposal and drinking water.

In 1969, in Worcester, Mass., more than half of the Holy Cross College football team was stricken with infectious hepatitis because of the failure of a control procedure system.

In 1970, residents of Fall River, Mass.-population over 100,000 were instructed to boil all their drinking, cooking, and washing water for a 2-week period because of massive bacterial pollution.

Although these isolated, but farflung, cases would give cause enough to worry, it is likely that they represent the tip of the iceberg.

Senator EAGLETON. Miss Reid, I am sorry to interrupt, but since it is germane, I would like to interrupt you at this time and ask your

comments.

You state, here in your prepared statement, and I quote:

The water in the United States is not only dirty; it is also, in many instances dangerous. Furthermore, it is rapidly deteriorating. It is not an exaggeration to say that a national water crisis is looming directly ahead of us.

Miss Reid, I would like to ask your comment on a statement issued today, March 18, by the American Waterworks Association, 2 Park Avenue, New York, in which that organization says as follows:

"The biggest media propagated misconception of all is that water pollution control will improve the quality of our drinking water," Mr. Johnson said. That is Eric Johnson, executive director of the Waterworks Association.

Mr. Johnson goes on to say:

Nothing could be further from the truth. Pollution control may benefit fish but it does almost nothing to improve water for people. Water for people is a manufactured product.

Would you care to comment on the statement Mr. Johnson issued today?

Miss REID. That is hogwash.

I would like to quote a finding by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare of the Public Health Service in a report they published just this year:

It may be concluded on the basis of survey findings that while the overwhelming majority of the people of the United States can be assured that the water they drink today is safe, several million drink water containing potentially hazardous amounts of chemical or bacteriological contaminations. Clearly there is an immediate need in many localities for upgrading present water treatment and distribution practices.

Senator EAGLETON. Fine.

You may continue.

Miss REID. Not only are many cases not so easily solved or so severe as to warrant special attention, but there are numerous inorganic chemicals and trace elements which abound in our water in tiny but significant doses. These are neither detectable nor filterable, but they are being shown to cause marked human and animal damage.

Industrial wastes are often so unpredictable and hard to detect that no savings to a company is worth the risk of dumping them into the waters. Mercury pollution, in particular, is now believed to be extensive in this country and pleasure fishing has been banned in several States.

Yet, the Justice Department has negotiated deals with mercury polluters along the lower Mississippi tributary system, cutting their disposal allowances from 5 pounds to 1 pound per day. In terms of human health requirements, the action of the Department verges on criminal.

Because of the power of many companies and the relative weakness of various town and city agencies, a deal is often likely to be made behind the citizens' backs. This deal is that the town provide sewage service for the company in return for the company not moving elsewhere. If the town is lucky, the plant will consent to provide its own primary treatment before dumping the waste into the town's system. In most cases, the town's system cannot handle so much extra sewage, and it begins to consistently release partially-treated or untreated sewage into the water. Even if it can handle the volume, it can rarely detoxify the contents and it then becomes morally and legally responsible for any contamination. If the company is very powerful, it will convince the town that it is a citizen and shouldn't have to pay extra for sewage service.

Industries are being subsidized to continue their waste discharges into the public streams while getting it treated at public expense. Many factories do pay user fees, most of which, however, do not pay for the true cost of their usage of the local waste treatment plant. Too often the toxicity of the wastes is not taken into account.

We strongly suggest the Federal Government require municipalities to levy such charges, for both the Federal and local share of the construction and operation of waste treatment plants. At the very least, section I of S. 1013 should be built upon to provide not only for industrial payment for the Federal cost of construction, but the continued operation of the plants, as well. The municipalities should not have to assume the burden of allocating this cost. The pressures upon them by local industry are too great.

This is rightly a function of the Federal Government. Without such a provision, the system merely encourages industry to continue polluting, and rewards factories by making their waste disposal cheaper.

Since the 1965 act, procedures for securing abatement of water polbution have relied on complicated standard-setting procures on the State level. First, the river or lake in question was given a general designation-recreational, industrial, et cetera. Then water quality standards were developed which would achieve the designated use, or at least maintain it.

States were also required to develop implementation plans to achieve such water quality, rationing, in effect, the amount and quality of wastes discharged by each particular plant in the area. Abatement actions undertaken by the Government had to link the effluent proin the implementation plan.

duced with the water quality of the river or stream as it was outlined Fortunately, both S. 523 and 1014 contain provisions whereby violations which occur on the basis of effluent regulations alone constitute grounds for proceedings against a plant. However, the setting of effluent regulations is still presumably linked to water quality in that promulgating such effluent standards must be related to achieving the water quality demanded by a particular use.

We are here entering the realm of speculative scientific knowledge at best. While we may have a very good idea how the introduction of some organic materials will affect a river, we have scanty knowledge on the effect of toxic metals, for example.

Even more disquieting is the fact that the use of a water body is essentially an administrative decision, with the burden of proof upon the public, not the industry, that a discharge will have an adverse effect upon the quality of water.

Just whose rivers and streams are we talking about? Whose responsibility is it to prove present or future damage?

I submit that the burden of proof lies with the present and future polluter. It is his responsibility to prove that his particular wastes will have no adverse effect on present water quality or damage future water uses.

In the eyes of environmentalists, it is intolerable to allow a lake or river to be regarded as a raw material for industrial processes. Citizens must have the ability to more directly influence water use designation. The laborious process of compliance begins here. Options should be more fully explored such as the possibility of overturning a water use decision through hearings, referendums, et cetera. It must be made clear that any mandatory review of State and Federal standards include explicitly a review of water use designations.

There is an increasingly widespread sentiment that standards should not be based on past profit motive considerations, but on providing an adequate margin of safety for the health and welfare of humans, fish, and wildlife.

The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 require such a margin of safety in Federal emission standards. Existing technology is far more advanced in controlling water pollution.

Senator EAGLETON. Ön the Clean Air Act, your analogy between the Clean Air Act and legislation in the Water Pollution Act, is the margin of safety factor in the Clean Air Act related to human health? Miss REID. And welfare, such as corrosion of metals.

Senator EAGLETON. The basic criterion for minimal standards, so far as air is concerned, is that which would be adverse and deleterious to human health in the air?

Miss REID. Yes.

Senator EAGLETON. And we have to go further in water than we do in air?

Miss REID. Yes; I think so because drinkable water may not protect recreational purposes or fish and wildlife.

To come to grips with our water crisis. we must: (1) Open up the process of setting water use designations; (2) explicitly put the burden of proof upon industry in determining the level of discharges; and (3) at the very least, enact more far-reaching policy language aimed at a water quality for all our rivers and lakes that would insure the health and welfare of humans and protect fish and wildlife.

Both the concept of Federal user fees for industry and breaking the linkage between water use-water quality and effluent regulations are central to confronting squarely the issue of decreasing industrial wastes in this country. Not only must we assure that wastes be adequately treated, but we must push forward in incentives to decrease the volume of this waste.

We can build treatment plants for decades, but the water quality in this country will not really improve until we start dealing with the source, itself.

Dealing with these problems may mean some radically different legislation than the two bills before us today. However, taking into account the present language before us, we have prepared an outline of 12 major points which we feel are vital to any strong piece of water quality legislation this year. Other members of this panel will deal. with these points in more detail. They are as follows:

(1) Statutory deadlines must be provided for both the adoption of standards and compliance with these standards. S. 523 provides for a 3-year deadline on compliance.

(2) The burden of proof in dealing with how an effluent will affect a particular water quality must rest with the polluter.

(3) The Administrator must be required to begin abatement procedures upon discovery of a violation. Neither bill provides for a mandatory abatement process.

(4) Penalties should match the crime. Fines should be on a per diem basis, with stiff criminal penalties for intentional violations. Mandatory minimum fines should be assessed the moment the Administrator detects a violation. Citizens should be able to report violations and receive part of the fine levied if their information leads to conviction. This latter provision was contained in Senator Muskie's 1970 bill which did not pass. The provision did not reappear this year. (5) Citizens must be allowed access to the courts in order to bring suit against polluters, as well as against the Administrator if he fails to uphold the act. This provision must be at least as good as that included in last year's Clean Air Act. The S. 523 version most closely resembles this minimum.

(6) A mandatory monitoring system by industry is necessary. The administration bill requires such a system.

(7) The Federal Government should assess user fees upon industries that make use of local waste treatment facilities, commensurate with both the quality and quantity of the wastes treated. S. 1014 requires charges to be levied against industry for the Federal cost of the project, but this levy is the responsibility of the Federal Gov

ernment.