Mr. PERKINS. I will ask unanimous consent that in lieu of the remarks I made you let the remarks I have prepared be inserted in the record.

Mr. BLATNIK. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(The prepared statement of Mr. Perkins is as follows:)

STATEMENT OF HON. CARL D. PERKINS, BEFORE HOUSE PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE, MARCH 16, 1961

Mr. Chairman, in 1956 I supported the legislation which became Public Law 660 and favored the original provision of $100 million for construction grants contained in H.R. 9540 rather than the $50 million provided in the act as passed. In 1959, I testified before the Labor-Health, Education, and Welfare Appropriations Subcommittee and urged that the full $50 million authorized be appropriated rather than the $45 million in the President's budget.

Last year I supported H.R. 3610 which would have brought the construction grants authorizations more in line with needs, than voted to override the President's unfortunate veto of this important peace legislation. Today I appear before you in support of H.R. 4036 and to speak in favor of the amendments which would increase and improve the construction grants provisions of Public Law 660.

In the 5 years since my first support of construction grants for the control of water pollution, I have watched closely the progress of this program, both nationally and in my own State of Kentucky. The more than 60 percent increase in municipal waste treatment construction this program has stimulated nationally is ample proof of its effectiveness and need. This has also been our experience in Kentucky. In this time 49 grants totaling $5,082,000 have been made to Kentucky communities in support of pollution abatement works costing nearly $22 million. In the Seventh Congressional District of Kentucky, which I am privileged to represent, eight communities have benefited from this program thus far, having received a total of $1.16 million in grants for projects costing almost $4 million. These communities are: Morehead Owingsville

Ashland

Flatwoods

Prestonsburg
West Liberty

Effective as this program has been to continue at the present level of grant assistance would only further delay meeting our responsibilties for cleaning up the pollution in our streams. At the present time in Kentucky there are on hand or in preparation 70 applications requesting $4,669,000 to assist in construction needed now which will cost in excess of $19 million. The Seventh Congressional District is represented therein as follows:

These communities have requested grants of $808,000 to support construction costing $2.7 million.

Mr. Chairman, although we have made substantial progress since the passage of Public Law 660, it has not been enough. We have not cut into the backlog of needed construction that existed in 1956 and have rarely been able to keep up with population growth since. Unless we increase our efforts, further ground will be lost to water pollution and this is something this Nation cannot allow to happen.

If we are to catch up and keep up with municipal water pollution, construction of municipal waste treatment works must average $600 million during the next 10 years. Under the present $50 million program, construction has been increased to an annual average of $360 million. With the $125 million proposed in H.R. 4036 we can attain the needed $600 million. Therefore, I urge early and favorable action on this important bill.

Mr. BLATNIK. We have here Mr. Ted Venetoulis, who is on the staff of Mr. Jim Wright, a member of this committee. Mr. Venetoulis would like to present a statement to the committee on behalf of our colleague, Mr. Wright.

Without objection, Mr. Venetoulis, will you take the stand?

STATEMENT OF TED VENETOULIS, LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT TO HON. JIM WRIGHT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

Mr. VENETOULIS. My name is Ted Venetoulis. I am legislative assistant to Congressman Jim Wright of Texas.

I thank you for the opportunity you have given me to submit this

statement.

Mr. BLATNIK. The statement of Mr. Wright will be made a part of the record as if read at this point. Without objection, it is so

ordered.

Mr. WRIGHT. The business of developing and conserving the natural resources of a nation is not new. The problem has been with other cultures and other civilizations which have had their brief, triumphal moments of glory, only to fade and wane never fully to

recover.

Some 400 years before Christ, Plato wrote as follows:

There are [areas] which can now keep nothing but bees but which, not so very long ago * * * produced boundless [nurture for civilization]. The annual supply of rainfall was not lost, as is at present, but was stored in potter's earth which was able to discharge the drainage of the heights into the hollows in the form of springs and rivers * * The shrines [of decayed civilizations] that survive to the present day on the sites of extinct water supplies are evidence for the correctness of my present hypothesis.

For us and for our time, however, the conservation and development of our natural resources is more than a problem. Second only to the great twin challenges of keeping the peace and preserving our freedom, it is the most important problem which confronts us. Indeed it may well have a crucial bearing upon the other two, for throughout history wars have been fought and freedoms have been lost when the slender patrimony of a ravaged land could no longer sustain its people.

EXPLODING POPULATION

One of the most crucially significant facts of our time may be read in the statistics of population growth-both in the United States and throughout the world.

From the time of the Great Flood of Noah until the birth of Christ— about 2,300 years according to the scholars-the population of the world grew very slowly. At the beginning of the Christian era there were only some 250 million people on the entire earth, and for very many generations the birth rate was very nearly canceled out by the death rate.

Not until after 1500 had the world achieved a total population of 500 million people. Then began a sudden and dramatic upswing which for the past 400 years has been increasing by geometric progression. By 1900, we had approximately 12 billion people in the world, and a mere century and a half later that figure has almost doubled. The burgeoning population of an ever more crowded earth is right now reaching toward the 3 billion mark.

Within 2 hours of the time this is read, there will be 5,000 more people on our planet. When this year is ended, there will be about

48 million--a number larger than the total population of France-this many more than there are on this New Year's Day.

Or, let's put it another way: There were 1 billion people in the year 1835. There were 2 billion in the year 1935. There will be 3 billion in the year 1965. And if the present pace is maintained there will be 6 billion in the year 2,000.

I. WATER

Water is our one truly indispensable commodity. It is more important than oil, gold, sulfur, or uranium. It is at once the world's cheapest and most priceless ingredient. It is by any measurement the most important resource of the earth, for without it we cannot live.

I am convinced that the most urgent domestic problem, at least in the western half of the United States, is that of developing long-range solutions to the ever-growing demand for usable water.

In the past 7 years more than 1,000 American communities have suffered serious water shortages. In many of these communities this has resulted in water rationing. In at least some it has required the hauling of water in tank cars. In almost all of them it has seriously inhibited civic and industrial development.

The problem will inevitably grow, drought or flood, feast or famine, because our civilization is using increasingly more water per capita. Where the whole Nation required only 40 billion gallons daily in 1900, we used over 260 billion gallons a day last year. The President estimates that by 1975 the daily national requirement will be 453 gallons. The State of Texas today, with an increase of only some 20 percent in population, is consuming almost 22 times as much water as it was just 10 years ago.

During the past 5 years we have come a long way in our recognition of this problem. But we have a long, long way to go. The problem is growing faster than our solutions. During these years the Congress has authorized about 3 billion dollars' worth of new river and harbor developments in the Nation, but these are not keeping pace with the demand.

A landmark program was begun 4 years ago with the enactment of the pollution control law, which recognizes the Federal responsibility in assuring the quality of the Nation's available water supply. But the results are dwarfed by the continued and increasing need.

In the omnibus rivers and harbors bill enacted by Congress in 1958, a section was added which belatedly recognizes water supply itself as a measurable benefit for the calculations of the Corps of Engineers in determining economic feasibility of water resource development.

Strides are being made in seeking an economical means for converting sea water to our needs. The research has been productive of much valuable information, and the goal seems to be almost in sight. But it remains somewhere over the horizon. We should move in this direction as rapidly as possible.

Tentative research by the Public Health Service on the Red and Arkansas River Basins has developed the plausible theory that undesirable minerals, salts, and sulfates someday can be isolated at their sources and removed from the streams, thus vastly improving the quantity of quality water for the region. The State of Texas is engaged in similar work on the Brazos, but actual performance of the

needed improvements is still in the talking stage. Extra impetus for this program could be productive of desirable results.

Experiments underway in Oklahoma City indicate that we may be on the threshold of finding a means to retard evaporation, which is the greatest thief of water in the Southwest and perhaps in other parts of the Nation as well. The waxlike substance, hexadecanol, shows promise that proper development and application may be able to slow by some 30 percent the inexorable process by which literally billions of gallons of our precious surface water are vanishing each year into the air. But the end result desired in these experiments is still just beyond our grasp.

In short, we have come a long way, but not nearly far enough nor fast enough. We need a bold, imaginative approach. Penurious, pennywise efforts will not reach the goal. We desperately need an urgent attack on all fronts of the water supply problem. This will cost money. We would be foolish to expect otherwise. But we need it, and we need it now, and the tendency to delay is probably our greatest danger.

Nothing could be more costly than delay. Oklahoma estimated that last year it lost $200 million in new industrial plants because of the lack of water or the poor quality of water where available.

Personally, I would greatly prefer to see increased initiative come from the States. This is a problem which should rightly be undertaken by the State governments. But the problem is immediate, and if State governments do not display the imagination and the initiative to meet this crucial and growing problem head on at the local level, great pressures will develop in the western part of the United States for broader Federal action in this field. Those pressures, coupled with a recognition of the indisputable need, will in the foreseeable future become well-nigh irresistible.

There is one particular area in which I believe Federal action would be timely and helpful. The Federal Government could begin a program to supplement the activities of States and cities by assisting them in the financing of long-range water pipelines to serve their growing domestic, municipal, and industrial needs.

Happily, there are ample abundant water resources flowing unused through the country. Even in the dry State of Texas, approximately eight times the total annual requirement passes through the State's streams. The problem is increasingly one of finding ways to move the water from places where it is not needed to places where it is. Most of this burgeoning need is making itself felt in our cities and towns. More and more local governments are learning that the nearest available solution to their water problem lies many miles away. The city of Dallas in 1956 completed a project for piping water from the Red River, more than 50 miles distant, and its problem is still not permanently solved.

The Denver Water Commission has filed a plan calling for 37 miles of tunnels and 51 miles of connecting canals to bring more water to the city.

Oklahoma City has been planning a pipeline to convey water from a point in southeastern Oklahoma approximately 125 miles removed. The city of Fort Worth during the past several years has considered three proposals, each of which involves the piping of water

from relatively far distances one from Richland Creek, one from the Brazos, and one from Oklahoma.

These are but a few random examples. Multiply this picture by several hundred smaller cities whose phenomenal growth is thrusting upon them the necessity to look around for the nearest dependable water supply and you will have a general idea of the enormity of the problem.

The time has arrived in our water planning when most western communities, and many eastern ones as well, must begin to think seriously not only of impounding water but of transporting it, often over wide distances.

For most such communities one staggering barrier looms between them and realization of the goal. This is the hurdle of financing. The unprecedented growth which most cities have encountered of recent years has forced upon them many unusual expenses and required them to assume growing obligations of bonded indebtedness.

Many communities are nearing their debt limitations for municipal bonds, and in addition the tight money squeeze has made it more and more difficult for them to finance such costly projects as lengthy pipelines, indispensable though such projects may be to their future. Clearly the bottleneck is the problem of financing.

In previous Congresses, Senator Johnson and I have introduced bills which aim at establishing machinery by which the Federal Government will be able to aid States, cities, and water districts in overcoming the roadblock of financing which lies across the path to their future growth and development.

While recognizing water supply as primarily a local responsibility, these measures would permit the Federal Government to guarantee bonds for such developments. I believe this is a proper and constructive role for the National Government to assume. It is the partnership principle of the "helping hand."

Under the terms of such bills as previously presented, the Corps of Army Engineers would review each proposal for building water transportation facilities. The corps would determine, first, whether a given project is feasible; second, whether it will enhance overall water conservation in a river basin, and, third, the extent to which it would affect flood control and navigation.

The Secretary of the Army has taken the postition that this role might more appropriately be performed by the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of Reclamation. As I see the matter, the appraisal could be performed by either agency.

If a proposed development passes these stipulated criteria, the Government would be authorized to purchase up to one-third of the bonds at the going Government interest rate of 22 percent. Assuming $2 million worth of 40-year bonds purchased, the economy in interest alone would result in a saving of approximately $240,000 to the city or water district involved.

In addition, when it is found that such a development would aid. flood control by relieving an overabundant area of potential flood waters, the Government could participate in the actual cost of the project to the extent of such flood control benefits derived.

An example would be water taken from the Missouri River, where the recurrent overburden has become a curse to downstream inhabi