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rehabilitation opportunities and to include new groups of needy persons not previously eligible under the federally assisted programs.

In addition to their medical assistance aspects, the public assistance programs as they have been modified and strengthened by Congress in recent years provide the chief means of aiding those who live below the poverty level. Each month about 2.8 million needy aged, blind, and disabled persons are assisted, as well as 3.5 million dependent children. Social services without money payments reach several hundred thousand additional persons.

ADMINISTRATION ON AGING

The Older Americans Act of 1965 established a new agency within our Department-the Administration on Aging. It also authorized a program of support for community planning, services, and training in the field of aging, and for contracts for research, demonstration, and training projects. The dimensions of the needs in these areas are reflected dramatically in the number of older Americans and the paucity of the resources now available to serve them.

Prior to the Older Americans Act, only about 800 of the some 18,000 communities in the United States had established group planning coordinated programs for the elderly. By 1970, we estimate a need for 7,500 persons trained in the area of aging. Our 1967 budget requests increases in all programs under the act to begin to meet the identified needs.

DEPARTMENTAL LEADERSHIP

Mr. Chairman, as I have already indicated, first among the things that we must do in 1967 is the task of insuring that these many new programs and responsibilities get off to a good start and operate smoothly and effectively.

During the half dozen months that have passed since I became Secretary, I have devoted particular attention to matters of personnel and organization, and I would like to tell you what we have accomplished as soon as I complete my opening statement.

Although I am gratified by our accomplishments thus far, I nevertheless, see a need to strengthen and improve our organizational structure and our ability to provide leadership and staff support throughout the Department. A number of proposals to this end are contained in the budgets of the operating agencies and the budget request for the Office of the Secretary. I submit these proposals to you and urge their adoption.

CONCLUSION

That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman. I strongly urge your approval of our 1967 budget, which will enable us to achieve substantial progress in meeting identified needs in the areas of health, education, and welfare.

I shall be happy to try to answer any questions that the committee may wish to ask. However, before proceeding with the committee's question, I would like, with your permission, to highlight the organizational arrangements and staff changes which we have made and the approach we are taking to strengthen management and coordination of the complex and interrelated programs of the Depart

ment.

DEMONSTRATION OF NEW TECHNIQUES FOR ADVANCED WASTE TREATMENT

Senator BARTLETT. May I apologize for leaving now because of a prior engagement. I want to compliment the Secretary on an excellent statement. If at times he became restive under the deluge of questions, he should not have because I have sat through hearings when a Secretary rattled through his statement and departed without a single question being put to him. This shows, I think, the deep interest the committee has.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, if I may make a request? It is that there be supplied for the record a statement in whatever detail might be available relating to your statement near the bottom of page 18 where you spoke about demonstration of new techniques for advanced waste treatment. If you would produce something for the record on that, I would appreciate it.

Senator HILL. It may be provided. (The statement follows:)

ADVANCED WASTE TREATMENT

Most people living today have been affected, either directly or indirectly, by water shortages or by a polluted water course. Our increasing population and industrial development are skyrocketing demands for usable water and simultaneously the type, quantity, and complexity of wastes produced are increasing. We are, unfortunately, setting the stage for even greater water supply and water pollution problems in the future.

In earlier days, “dilution" and "stream self-purification” were relied upon to remedy pollution and the most readily available or most economical fresh waters were used as supplies. During this century, biological waste treatment has been used to supplement dilution and self-purification for pollution control, and gradually deteriorating qualities of water supplies or more remote sources have been used.

Present-day pollution control methods have served the past but will not be adequate for the future. New or improved technologies must be and are being developed to deal with our water problems; one of the most promising is advanced waste treatment. This technique is being developed through research of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration.

What is advanced waste treatment? What do we aim to achieve by research in AWT? The purpose in researching and perfecting AWT techniques is to provide systems for treating wastes to any desired level of quality, at the necessary rates, and at practical cost not only to alleviate pollution but also to meet the water quality demands imposed by reuse of waste water for municipal, industrial, agricultural, and recreational purposes.

The types of AWT processes now being researched range from extensions of biological treatment methods to complex physical-chemical separation techniques. Some of the techniques being studied, such as reverse osmosis, were considered until recently to be only laboratory curiosities. Other examples are the use of activated carbon pellets which absorb a wide variety of pollutants onto their surface and the use of specially adapted microorganisms to break down certain pollutants such as nitrates into simpler forms. Research is also being done on distillation, extraction, ion exchange, and even on ways to beneficially use the foam so common in many waste waters as a pollutant separation device.

As progressively more AWT processes are developed, perfected. installed and used, a higher and higher quality of effluent water will be achieved. As the quality increases, the water will increase in value to the point when the treated water will be too good to discard. At that point, the treated water may be deliberately reused for various purposes including municipal supply. When this deliberate reuse occurs, water renovation will be a reality; the treatment of waste water and the simultaneous provision of water supplies will then have been achieved.

The most important factor in determining the types of processes to be incorporated in a particular AWT system is: For what specific use is the treated waste water intended? For discharge to a stream to control pollution, high

efficiency removal of oxygen-demanding organics (BOD) and algae nutrients may be the goal. Reuse for irrigation may require only slight treatment and disinfection purposely leaving nutrient materials in the water; progressively more treatment will be required when water is reused for industry and recreation. Reuse for municipal water supplies would require the complete removal of all suspended and organic matter, reduction of inorganic salts, and the complete destruction of microorganisms. Such systems are even now being studied in pilot plants.

At least at first, AWT will consist of a tertiary system to receive and treat the wastewater from conventional, well-operated primary-secondary waste treatment plants; in the future, it is conceivable that today's conventional processes may be entirely displaced. The system will purify wastewater to any level required in order to restore and maintain our Nation's water at the quality needed for repeated reuse. This requires that the AWT system be able to remove the wide range of natural compounds and man-made chemicals that appear in wastewater. Unfortunately, present-day water and waste treatment methods are not capable of removing certain types of these pollutants. The materials which resist treatment include both simple inorganic salts and highly complex, synthetic organic chemicals.

In the presently envisioned advanced waste treatment system, alum or lime coagulation-sedimentation may be used to increase the efficiency of removing suspended (and colloidal) solids and to reduce the concentration of phosphates. Coagulation-sedimentation is considered as an "advanced" process because it is not conventionally used to treat municipal waste effluents and because suspended and colloidal solids must be removed before using other "advanced" processes to treat the effluent. In general, standard water treatment flocculation tanks and sedimentation basins would be used to achieve the coagulation-sedimentation treatment.

After removing the colloidal and suspended solids and phosphates from the waste waters, the soluble refractory organics may be removed very efficiently by passing the wastewater through a bed of activated carbon granules. The carbon, when used in countercurrent flow fixed-bed contactors, adsorbs up to 20 to 30 percent of its own weight in mixed organics from wastewater. The carbon bed can remove in 40 minutes more than 98 percent of both the BOD and total organic matter in the wastewater. To minimize cost, the activated carbon should be regenerated and reused. Fortunately, the activated carbon bed after being saturated with actual waste organics can be regenerated by burning the carbon. A series of 15 successive saturation-regeneration cycles were performed with satisfactory regeneration efficiencies. This process is being studied in a 300,000-gallons-per-day pilot plant at Pomona, Calif., under a joint research project of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration and the Los Angeles County sanitation districts. The process also has been used for about 1 year in actual municipal service in a 2.5-million-gallons-per-day plant of the South Tahoe Public Utility District at Lake Tahoe, Calif.

Except for dissolved inorganic salts added during each use of a water, a municipal waste water, treated with the two preceding processes in series, will have been restored to a chemical quality generally comparable to that before it. was used. The salts added during each pass through a municipal supply system will normally be about 300 to 400 mg/1. Since many water supplies contain these same dissolved salts at approximately this concentration, one municipal use of water generally doubles the salt content of the water. Fortunately, a single-pass through a electrodialysis unit reduces the concentration of dissolved inorganic solids by 40 to 50 percent, which is approximately equal to the salt eontent added during the use. This process is being tested by extended benchscale tests and operating pilot-scale studies at 75,000 gallons per day.

As evidenced in the description of the processes, an advanced waste treatment process will rarely stand alone. Instead, systems of individual processes in series or in parallel are required to meet particular needs. Included in the systems must be one or more of a variety of ultimate disposal processes. These processes are methods for the permanent, safe disposal of the inevitable sludges and waste concentrates generated by the treatment processes. Disposal techniques being investigated include: incineration, digestion, or wet oxidation of organics; conveyance of various sludges and solid residues to the ocean or remote dump sites; deep-well injection of brines into porous strata; and others. Possible beneficial uses of waste concentrates as soil conditioners, fertilizers, or chemical raw material should be included in the ultimate disposal category.

The type of water renovation sequence described above is an existing technology within our present capability. On September 8, 1965, Dr. Donald F. Hornig, the President's Special Assistant for Science and Technology, testified before the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and stated that:

"At my request, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has just completed a feasibility analysis of a 100-million-gallons-per-day wastewater purification plant which could be added to a secondary sewage treatment plant of the kind now used in New York City and northern New Jersey. Their report indicates that such a plant could be built for $33 million and would produce potable water at a cost of about 16 cents per 1,000 gallons. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has had a modest research program in waste water purification underway and the plant they considered would use the best proven, presently available technology. Almost certainly these costs could be reduced still further through a R. & D. program. The suggested plant employs aeration, chemical coagulation and sedimentation, carbon absorption, and chlorination to purify the effluent from a secondary sewage treatment plant. If the product water is mixed with water from other sources in a large system, no further treatment is necessary. For a completely closed system in which all water is recycled, a buildup of salinity would occur and a desalting unit would be needed. Because of the very low salt content, electrodialysis could be used and the additional cost would be only a few cents per 1,000 gallons depending on the amount of salts to be removed. The costs quoted above include cost of land, treatment, and pumping costs to return the water to the distribution system. Direct delivery of purified waste water to a city distribution system is possible and can be completely safe. If it is too unattractive esthetically, the purified wastewater can be used for recreational and decorative lakes, watering parks and golf courses, industrial processes, or can be recharged to the groundwater. It must be noted, however, that there is very little practical difference between purification and direct reuse of waste water and the present widespread practice of discharging of wastes to a river from which a downstream city takes its water supply."

Surprisingly, the plan described specifically in the quotation, could not have been offered a year or so ago. Now, it can be proposed, confidently. Even with its realization, it should only be regarded as an "early model" of future advanced treatment processes which will be more efficient and more economical. Also a whole range of new advanced techniques are now being researched not only by the Federal Government, but by State and local governments, by universities, and by industry. It is only through the cooperation and the concerted efforts of all levels of government, of industry, and of the general population that we can abate and eventually control pollution of our water resources.

NEED FOR CHANGE IN LEGISLATION

Section 4 of the 1961 Amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act called for an augmentation and acceleration of research efforts to achieve :

A. "Practicable means of treating municipal sewage and other waterborne wastes to remove the maximum possible amounts of physical, chemical, and biological pollutants in order to restore and maintain the maximum amount of the Nation's water at a quality suitable for repeated reuse";

B. "Improved methods and procedures to identify and measure the effects of pollutants on water uses, including those pollutants created by new technological developments"; and

C. "Methods and procedures for evaluating the effects on water quality and water uses of augmented streamflows to control water pollution not susceptible to other means of abatement."

The 1961 amendment authorized up to $5 million per fiscal year and up to $25 million in total to support all of the above research. In 1961, with the knowledge then available to assess the scope and significance of the Nation's water pollution problems, this amount of budgetary support seemed reasonable. In the 5 years since 1961, however, it has become increasingly apparent that the water pollution problems of the Nation, and the costs to solve these problems, greatly exceed original estimates. Current estimates of cost now range upward to $400 million, a considerable increase over the $25 million originally proposed. In the 4 years since 1961, the research program has expanded in accordance with requirements of section 4. Minimum budgetary requirements to effectively carry out research in the three above areas in fiscal year 1967 would greatly exceed the $5 million annual limitation that now exists and by fiscal year 1968 the $25 million total limitation would have to be exceeded also if the research program is to proceed

at a reasonable pace in accomplishing objectives set forth by the Congress in 1961. It is, therefore, apparent that some change in the existing budget limitation must be obtained from the Congress.

ORGANIZATIONAL CHART

Mr. GARDNER. I will try to be brief about this chart since the hour is late, but I do want to give you an idea of how we look at this organization.

First, with respect to the Office of the Secretary, the Secretary and the Under Secretary will work very closely. My Deputy Secretary will know what I am doing at all times and I hope I will know at all times what he is doing.

It is really quite important that we work closely together so that at any time you deal with Wilbur Cohen you can feel you are dealing with me and we are operating as one team.

If I may now I will go down directly to the layer of the operating part of our agency. This is the heart of what we are doing. These are the nine constituent agencies, one of which seems is about to leave us, but I put tremendous emphasis upon these agencies, on their reporting directly to me without any intervening layer whatever. Every one of these operating heads will, I hope, be a very strong operating head. I have no inclination to homogenize the Department, no inclination to have any but good strong people here who speak directly

to me.

You are familiar with all of the agencies so I will not comment on them.

Now, let me come back to the layer of the Assistant Secretaries. You are less familiar with these, so I will speak in more detail.

You see five more-or-less classic functions that cut across almost everything.

The Comptroller is a very important function in this Department, as is the Assistant Secretary for Administration, the General Counsel, and the Assistant Secretary for Legislation. Skipping now to program cordination, this is the role to be played by William Gorham who has been brought over from the Pentagon. He is applying program planning and evaluation techniques to our agency and doing it with good sense and imagination.

All of these positions play a very, very important role in coordination as you can see, because budgetary and legislative matters concerning all of the agencies are considered by these men.

Particularly, in view of my belief that these operating agencies ought to be independent agencies and that they ought to have stronger heads; I have to ask myself how do I make it a department? These Assistant Secretaries play a very strong role.

Then there are four Assistant Secretaries who are in charge of substantive fields. I imagine we will be losing one, the Environmental Health Assistant Secretary, but the main one is Education and since the operating agencies report directly to me, the role of the Assistant Secretary is advisory. It is a role of policy development, a role of being my right arm with respect to a given subject matter field.

As Assistant Secretary for Education, Frank Keppel will concern himself with education wherever it occurs in this Department. We will try to iron out conflicts within the agencies and we will concern

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