Mr. CARTER. In fact, the cost per pound or per ton-I have forgotten which is more for recovered aluminum than it is for aluminum ingots; is it not? Almost a dollar a pound more?

Mr. DOMINICK. I am not able to speak to that directly. Perhaps one of the other

Mr. CARTER. Well, will you take my word for it?

Mr. DOMINICK. All right.

Mr. CARTER. Have you made studies about conversion of solid waste to fuel?

Mr. DOMINICK. Yes, we have.

Mr. CARTER. Would you speak to this and tell us just what you have done along that line?

Mr. DOMINICK. Yes, the demonstrations that I mentioned, many of them go to the concept of recovering municipal solid waste for energy purposes, and the San Diego demonstration will recove through pyrolysis this waste and convert it to an oil compound.

The Baltimore project will do the same. However, the waste will not be converted to a fuel source to be later burned but will be converted to steam. The steam itself can be used in the generation of electricity or other production of power.

Mr. CARTER. About throwaway bottles and cans, do you recommend that they be removed from the market and that actually all bottles should be returned to the place where they are bought?

Mr. DOMINICK. We are not prepared to make any specific recommendations on such a discrete and specific question as returnable bottles or beverage containers at this time. We are studying very intensively the experience that the State of Oregon is having with a mandatory deposit system and we anticipate that some very good experience will come out of that system.

Mr. CARTER. If we don't do something like that, we are going to have 48 billion cans and 26 billion bottles and jars around this country to plague us, are we not, if we don't do something with it?

Mr. DOMINICK. The problem of beverage containers is a serious problem visually. It has a serious impact on litter. It is clear that the numbers of these materials is increasing and I take your figures for the gospel here.

Mr. CARTER. Thank you, sir. That is some accomplishment.

Along that same line, in recovering wood from solid waste, do you think that a tax benefit should be given to those companies which recover this wood for further use, for instance, in the manufacture of pulp paper?

Mr. DOMINICK. We feel at the present time one of the best incentives for use of this so-called secondary material is through Federal procurement policies, and we feel that a continuation of effort by GSA and others to specify that a certain percentage of various paper grades contain postconsumer, secondary materials will have significant impact on the use of those materials.

Mr. CARTER. So actually industry gets a better benefit out of cutting their trees for pulpwood paper, does it not? It is a better tax benefit?

Mr. DOMINICK. It does. It has favorable capital gains treatment on it.

Mr. CARTER. This really does work at a disadvantage to recycle the wood products, doesn't it?

Mr. DOMINICK. Yes, it does.

Mr. CARTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ROGERS. Dr. Roy?

Mr. Roy. I want to ask about the major technical assistance program. You state that there are 20 such programs at the present time to be completed or scheduled for fiscal year 1973. I wonder how many requests you have pending for major technical assistance.

Mr. DOMINICK. I will turn to Mr. Hale on that question. We do have an enumeration here which can be very easily submitted for the record.

Mr. ROGERS. Without objection, it will be so ordered, but go ahead. [The following information was received for the record:]

PENDING REQUESTS FOR TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

The technical assistance effort is divided into two parts, major technical assistance, which are projects lasting an average of six months, and production technical assistance, which can be accomplished over the telephone or with a few weeks work.

In the area of major technical assistance, there are currently twenty projects in progress.

In the area of production technical assistance, there are currently 87 requests being acted on. The status of requests for production technical assistance can be broken down as follows:

Mr. HALE. I think to talk about pending request for technical assistance, it is necessary to discuss the concept behind technical assistance. This is that we have been very aggressive ourselves. In most cases, we made the first contact rather than the city coming to us. For that reason, we don't have a backlog as you could have, say, in a lot of grant application areas. We do have some backlog for less intensive kinds of technical assistance effort given mainly through the regions and we are trying to fill those on a first-come; first-served basis.

Mr. Roy. Do you anticipate that the advent of revenue sharing in additional requests for technical assistance?

Mr. HALE. Again, let me discuss the philosophy of major technical assistance efforts. We feel at this point, once we have completed the first 20 projects, it's really time to try to use some other devices to disseminate the information we have learned.

There are very few communities that we could really go to and deliver this kind of assistance directly.

Mr. Roy. I have been talking to county commissioners in my district, and I find that some of these county commissioners plan on spending money on solid waste disposal.

I see under this plan, that there are grants planned for the State level and that 47 of these States have some kind of plan, although frequently they are general, for the near future.

What do the county commissioners do when they decide they want to do something about solid waste disposal? Do they first go to their State to see if their State has a plan?

Mr. HALE. The commissioners will work with the State agency, not only to see what is planned, but also to try to get some technical assistance from the State. Various alternatives are looked at, simply because it is a lot more efficient to go to the Federal Government to pull together that kind of information. We are usually able to provide that kind of assistance.

They would probably embark on their own planning effort, and the effort, and the time and resources required can vary very substantially. I would cite particularly the case of Alabama where counties have been able to complete what we think are very good plans, and implement those plans on very short time schedules, in a few monthsperhaps 3 or 4 months for the average type of county.

Mr. Roy. Does someone have to approve these county plans?

Mr. HALE. That depends largely on State legislation. There is no Federal legislation that would require that kind of approval. Some States do have approval requirements written into their legislation, although at this point that is the exception rather than the rule.

Mr. Roy. I won't go into that further because I presume we are going to be asking the question when we look at whether or not there should be a requirement of State legislation and some type of more comprehensive regional planning.

I want to know what a self-financed regional disposal authority is, and what an example of a self-financed regional disposal authority is. Mr. HALE. Let me take the best example that we have in which we are involved directly-the regional disposal authority in Des Moines. There are a number of others.

The basic requirements, I think, to meet our criteria are twofold. First of all, it must be truly regional. That is, involve more than one local jurisdiction, as Des Moines does.

Second, it should have some kind of authority setup with a separate financing basis such as users' charges, so it is essentially a self-financing operation.

The Des Moines authority, for example, charges each of the users or communities a flat per ton fee to use the sanitary landfill that is established. By doing that, it can recapture the initial and daily operating costs out of operating revenues.

Mr. Roy. I see. I have no further questions.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Hastings.

Mr. HASTINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

There has been a lot of conversation about demonstration grants to primarily large cities throughout the country. Have there been any demonstration grants to rural areas?

Mr. DOMINICK. Yes, Mr. Hastings. The most successful of those has been in Chilton County, Ala., where the Government through Mr. Hale's office awarded a grant to that county.

They set up a system of local drop and collection centers and a system for adequate sanitary landfill. That system has been replicated in 50 other rural counties around the country, so there has been much in that area.

Mr. HASTINGS. That is a dropoff for paper, glass, metals?
Mr. DOMINICK. For municipal waste; yes.

Mr. HASTINGS. Municipal dropoff?

Mr. DOMINICK. There is no separation. It is simply a dropoff for all

waste.

Mr. HASTINGS. Is that individual or for a municipality?

Mr. HALE. Individual or family. Essentially two different kinds of systems are demonstrated. One is where you bring it to one of the central large bins and where you drop everything in the bin, which requires more work on the part of the homeowner.

We are also experimenting with what we call mailbox dropoff, where you essentially take it down to the mailbox.

We have also had good demonstrations showing how to run a good disposal operation much more cheaply than a normal urban area would do it, where we try to get around some particular financial problems such as in rural communities. I think we have particularly been very successful in some cities.

Mr. HASTINGS. Along the same line, there has always been the problem of the disposal of junk cars. It is a huge problem in the cities. It is also a huge problem in rural and small city areas.

Have there been any programs along that line which, of course, would not allow the individual homeowner or carowner to transport it to a site?

Has there been any demonstration project along the lines of the central, subsidized drop or whatever, to encourage people to bring that type of junk?

Mr. DOMINICK. This is developing quite rapidly around the country in a number of successful systems. Mr. Darnay, who is the division director for resource recovery, could speak to that.

Mr. DARNAY. The primary problem, Mr. Hastings, is the high cost of transportation of auto hulks that are abandoned in rural areas. The value of an automobile, in terms of the metals that are in it, is about $55. Now, frequently, to get an automobile out of a gully in a rural area and to transport it to the nearest processing center will cost you much more than that.

Generally, the problem is that of how to finance these extremely high costs of removal. We have worked on a model ordinance or a State law that would explore or suggest various ways of doing this, and this is obviously available.

Mr. HASTINGS. Then you have come up with some recommendations?

Mr. DARNAY. We have come up with recommendations along those lines and suggestions to the States and localities on how to deal with these problems.

To the best of my knowledge, we do not have a demonstration program that actually takes care of the physical removal of auto hulks in rural areas.

Mr. HASTINGS. Are those recommendations available? I would like to see a copy of those recommendations.

Mr. DOMINICK. We will get them.

[The following information was received for the record:]

State Abandoned Vehicle Act1

Suggested Legislation

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An Act to discourage the abandonment of vehicles, to provide for and encourage the rapid and efficient removal of such vehicles from

3 public and private premises, to assure that related resource recovery is facilitated, and for other purposes.

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Section 1. [Short Title.] This Act may be cited as the Abandoned Vehicle Act of 1972.

Section 2. [Findings and Policy.

(a) The Legislature finds: (1) that abandoned vehicles constitute a safety hazard and a public nuisance, detrimental to the health, safety and welfare of the general public; (2) that such vehicles produce scenic 5 blight which degrades the environment and adversely affects the proper maintenance and continuing development of the State; and (3) that such 7 vehicles represent a resource out of place, requiring state and local 8 governmental attention in order to ensure their expeditious removal and 9 recycling.

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(b) The Legislature therefore declares that it is the policy of this State (1) to prohibit the abandonment of vehicles and to enforce 12 such prohibition with adequate penalties; (2) to encourage the develop13 ment of procedures and operational techniques which will facilitate 14 the expeditious removal of abandoned vehicles from public and private 15 premises; and (3) to encourage state and local governmental units, 16 in cooperation with private sector to recover the resource represented 17 by abandoned vehicles to the fullest extent practicable.

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Section 3. [Definition of Words and Phrases.] The

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2 lowing words and phrases when used in this Act shall, for the purpose of this Act, have the meanings respectively ascribed to them in this 4 section, except when the context otherwise requires. (Sec. 1-101 UVC.)

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(1) "Commissioner" means the commissioner of motor vehicles of this State. (If the term "commissioner" is not appropriate in a 7 particular State, then the appropriate term and definition should be substituted.) (Sec. 1-109 UVC.)

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(2) "Department" means the department of motor vehicles of this State. (If the administration of this Act is not vested in the de

'In an effort to avoid unnecessary duplication in state law and to utilize existing recommendations for laws necessary to solve the abandoned vehicle problem, this suggested state abandoned vehicle legislation relies heavily upon the Uniform Vehicle Code (1968, Supp. 1, 1972). The abbreviation UVC and a section number appear in parenthesis after each section or subsection taken from the Uniform Vehicle Code. Occasionally a modification in a UVC section has been indicated by parentheses.