We also indicated that we understood the experience subsequent to that time had been somewhat better but not sufficiently better in our view to justify the mass installation of this equipment on powerplants throughout the country.

Senator MUSKIE. At that point, I ask again who has proposed the mass installation of that equipment throughout the country?

Mr. Down. I think the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in effect has. This certainly is my understanding. When confronted with what the industry regards as an impossible situation, EPA's response has been "scrubbers are here and all you have to do is go ahead and install them."

It is true, Senator, that no company of the AEP system has been directed by the Environmental Protection Agency to install scrubbers. However, we are faced with the mid-1975 deadline in terms of meeting constant SO2 emissions in most States, and there are only two ways we know of, low sulfur fuel and technology.

In effect, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency says "If you can't find the low-sulfur fuel, you will install scrubbers because they are available."

Senator MUSKIE. Let me put it in a little different respect. There are three approaches now before this committee. One is scrubbers; one is intermittent emission technology, and the other is clean fuels, conforming fuels, so we are talking about three.

Is it more inaccurate to say that you propose the mass installation of tall stacks as the answer than it is to say that EPA proposes the mass installation of scrubbers?

Mr. Down. First of all, in terms of meeting constant emission limitations the intermittent control program does not do that. It is my understanding the constant emission limitations mean just that, and that you can achieve that only through some form of desulfurization technology or low sulfur fuel.

I agree whole heartedly with you that intermittent controls are a third method of meeting the ambient standards, which is the point that we are trying to make.

Senator MUSKIE. The point I am trying to get at with my question is the extent to which any one of the three have been mandated to the exclusion of the other two. Consistently in the statements presented today, we have heard that you have been mandated to install on a massive scale across the country today's scrubber technology.

I don't know of anybody who has mandated that. You say that is the effect of something or other. I can say that the effect of your testimony is that there should never be any scrubbers or that the present technology shouldn't be installed anywhere, and that there should be massive reliance on intermittent emission technology. I don't make that argument.

I have asked you the question so that you can clarify it because your statements are pretty strong in that direction. But I just don't know of any massive policy of scrubber installation.

With respect to the emergency energy legislation which we have been considering in this Congress and which is going to the floor

again today, we limit the required use of scrubbers. We limit it to very specifically described circumstances.

We don't mandate the massive installation. We are impatient that your industry has done so little to advance it. Frankly, with the attitude towards scrubbers that your statements disclose I don't know how we are ever going to get a practical, viable test of scrubbers.

You certainly don't put your weight behind it from your statements. You are all negative on it. Your advertisements—and yours particularly, Mr. Dowd-just utterly reject it.

Here is AEP's own advertisement, "Scrubbers Described, Examined, and Rejected." That is not the language of accommodation or the language of someone trying to make the technology work. It is a wholly negative attitude.

As a matter of fact, the advertisement doesn't spell out a real alternative except to release the enormous reserves of U.S. Government-owned low sulfur coal in the West, and then gasification, which I will get into later. That is about it.

Mr. Down. No, Senator.

Senator MUSKIE. This isn't an accurate description of your policy? Mr. Down. This is our ad and this is what it says. But I don't think it is a correct characterization to indicate that we have no solution.

Senator MUSKIE. I will put this ad in the record. It will speak for itself.

[The ad referred to follows:]

SCRUBBERS DESCRIBED, EXAMINED AND REJECTED

The Environmental Protection Agency recommends that electric utilities install "stack gas scrubbers" to control sulfur-oxide emissions and meet the standards that have been set.

WHAT IS A "STACK GAS SCRUBBER?"

There are many "stack gas scrubber" systems. All have been tested. Somethe most promising-more than others.

Simply stated, the scrubber is designed to eliminate most of the sulfur-oxide emissions by creating, in a chamber, a violent rainstorm of water laced with huge quantities of a chemical, limestone or lime for instance.

WHAT DOES CAREFUL EXAMINATION REVEAL?

Problems. Horrendous problems. Scrubber systems do remove sulfur-oxides. But in the process all of them are plagued with one or more problems that make them unrealiable and impractical for a major electric utility.

Many scrubber systems produce a byproduct that clogs the operation or erodes or corrodes the mechanism. Faults that cause shut downs. An impossible situation for an electric utility that must have a reliable power supply operation that will work all day, every day.

If the system doesn't clog and shut down it creates massive amounts of sludge. Some like the most popular and most studied system, the wet lime or limestone scrubber-do both.

To understand the vastness of the amount of ground-polluting sludge produced, consider this. If limestone scrubbers were applied to a 12,000 megawatt coal-fired system they would in only five years produce enough of this "oozy gook" to destroy and cover 10 square miles of America to a depth of 5 feet. How's that for a system that's supposed to solve pollution problems!

If it doesn't have either of these major faults chances are it will have some of several less dramatic problems. And chances are it hasn't been tested at a coal-burning plant.

WHAT MAKES AMERICAN ELECTRIC POWER REJECT SCRUBBERS?

The problems revealed. The score card on scrubber tests. Time and time again proven too unreliable, too impractical for electric utility use.

But a greater overriding reason is the sincere belief that there are better ways to solve the sulfur-oxide emission problem.

One way is to release the enormous reserves of U.S. Government-owned low sulfur coal in the West. And at the same time continue the investment of time, energy and money in the development of the technology to clean high-sulfur coal before it is burned.

Such a positive program, we think, is in the best interest of the people we serve and the country we live in.

Mr. Down. The AEP system is complying on over 60 percent of the capacity right now through developing the Nation's low sulfur fuel resources. This is another way of meeting constant emission limitations which I understood you to say before the break was required by section 110 of the Clean Air Act.

Senator MUSKIE. It is. I will get further into the question of intermittent control strategy. I have overused my time.

Senator Buckley?

Senator BUCKLEY. I think perhaps I will be moving in the same direction in this line of questioning. First of all, I would like to ask you to be a little more specific, if you would, when you say that industry was being confronted with an impossible situation.

First of all, that assumes that the only practical option available to you is the scrubber, but that a scrubber, in fact, is not available because it doesn't work or because it cannot be produced in time or both?

Mr. Down. Both. But even if it could be produced in time, it still doesn't work at this stage of its technological development. This is our engineering judgment.

Senator BUCKLEY. Does your engineering judgment give any indication as to when the remaining problems can be ironed out?

Mr. Down. This is a very hard kind of question to answer. We feel that eventually, in perhaps 5 years, by 1980, the reliability problems may be solved. First of all, Senator Buckley, it is my understanding that when the scrubber works it works. It does take the sulfur out of the gas fumes.

The problem with it is that it doesn't work often enough. It is down quite a bit of the time. That kind of a problem we feel will eventually be overcome. We may be talking about a time frame of perhaps the remainder of this decade. But beyond that there is another problem associated with scrubbers. That is the waste disposal problem. We are far from sure that that is the problem is really capable of a satisfactory solution.

Senator BUCKLEY. Then the available alternative, if current law is to be observed, would be to find a sufficient supply of low-sulfur fuel. Would that be correct?

Mr. Down. In terms of meeting constant emission limitation. Let's assume the Clean Air Act requires constant emission limita

tion-I am not sure that it does, but let's assume for purposes of argument that the act requires constant emission limitations-then either you take it out of the stack gas, and we say the scrubber technology has not advanced to that stage, or you take it out of the coal before it is burned. We are much more optimistic on that.

Again, we are talking about sometime in the early 1980's before such a front-end process, gasification or liquefaction, would be available.

The third way is low-sulfur fuel, and the only low-sulfur fuel that is abundant in this country is coal. This is the route that we have pursued on the AEP system. As I testified earlier this morning, we have about 7,000 megawatts of capacity already in compliance with standards that may not be applicable to us until the middle of the next year.

The new plants that we have announced, 2,600 megawatts in Indiana, that will be in service in 1978 or 1979, will be fueled by low-sulfur-conforming Western coal; a new plant of 1,300 megawatts in West Virginia, which should be in service hopefully in 1978, will be fueled by a conforming low-sulfur West Virginia coal from new reserves being developed.

We submit to the committee that there are a number of routes. The AEP system has chosen to develop as expeditiously as possible the Nation's low-sulfur coal reserves.

We are also providing the necessary transportation facilities. So it is not a question here of attempting to avoid compliance. There are situations where despite our best efforts in developing these low-sulfur coal reserves we are not going to be able to meet the standards within the time frame presently required, particularly in Ohio.

In those situations, we are asking that the Clean Air Act be clarified to permit the use of intermittent controls, not necessarily as the ultimate solution to the problem but simply to give us time, to give the Nation time, to let the technology develop, front-end or back-end processes, and to give us time to develop the Nation's low-sulfur coal reserves.

This is our basic position and we think it is the only one, under the circumstances.

Mr. LALOR. If I may make a comment, I think when we hear you gentlemen asking about scrubbers, my own impression is that we sound negative, as if it won't work, it is impossible, it costs a lot of money.

I would hope that our approach would look positive to you instead of negative. What I think we have all been trying to say is we are determined to meet the ambient air quality standards which are set to protect the public health and the public welfare.

We are not arguing about that for a minute. What we ask is that we be allowed to meet those ambient air quality standards in a variety of ways, that you don't tell us exactly to meet them by uniform constant emission limits. The same emission limits throughout the country.

Let us come to you and prove we are meeting ambient air quality by using X at this plant, low-sulfur fuel at this plant, whatever is required. We will do that.

Senator BUCKLEY. In terms of the availability, and I appreciate what you are saying. Incidentally, I was informed that one of the reasons why the Congress moved towards emission standards from ambient standards, and this is before I was in this job, was that industry had asked that the same ground rules apply to every plant irrespective of location.

I take it this is not the position of the electric generating power industry. There has been no change in your course, so far as your industry is concerned?

Mr. LALOR. Not so far as we know.

Senator BUCKLEY. One of the things that this committee needs to inform itself of, in terms of examining the options, has to do with the availability, and in what time frame, of low sulfur fuel.

I would like to read you a statement from the Federal Power Commission's National Power Survey. It states:

Total reserves of coal in the Appalachian region of one percent or less sulfur content are estimated at 94,000 million tons, of which 82,000 million tons are bituminous and 12 million tons of anthracite. Of these reserves, 58 percent are in West Virginia, 27 percent in Eastern Kentucky, 10 percent in Virginia and one percent in Pennsylvania.

Is this correct information? Is there this large amount of potential low-sulfur fuel available? If so, under what time frame can it be made available to meet your needs?

Mr. Down. It is my understanding that those figures are essentially correct. But coal in the ground is one thing and whether this vast resource of low-sulfur eastern coal is in fact mineable I think is another thing.

I would ask that Mr. Martinka respond to that question, if he would, please.

Mr. MARTINKA. The figures that you quoted, Senator Buckley, are approximately correct or as correct as we can ascertain. However, it is also a fact that in the eastern United States the low-sulfur reserves are generally in thin seams.

The Bureau of Mines in its report called "Availability of Coal in Appalachia", which was released in July 1971, had the statement that approximately one-half of the coal in the Appalachian region is 28 inches or less in thickness. It may be of interest to point out that only about 15 percent of the coal currently mined comes from seams that are less than 36 inches thick.

The low seams are very difficult to mine, expensive to mine, and it is hard to find men to work in these seams. Labor turnover is very large.

Also, some of these seams are hazardous to mine.

On the other hand, we do have resources of coal in this country which come in mineable seams, very thick seams. Unfortunately, for those of us who operate in the East, they lie in the Western United States. The coal reserves of this country, eliminating the lignite reserves, which generally will not comply with the standards, and