hope, however, that the panel in response to the questions that are being put today will give some thought to the possible action-forcing processes that can be put into operation.

I know Don Price will probably allude to this problem this after

noon.

I think Laurance Rockefeller has given us a good start by suggesting that there be a Commission on Environmental Policy and Organization. We need to talk about how we can get something underway, it seems to me, and we need to think in terms of what those action-forcing processes might be in the executive branch of the Government, and then I think too another point is the role of the private sector.

All of us who have had to deal with legislation involving the quality of the environment in one form or another know that there is no substitute for well-organized private groups who are dedicated to the public interest in sounding the alarm so we can get and have support. I think it would be a great shame if this colloquium today had no follow-on. I hope you gentlemen will be thinking about actionforcing processes in this whole discussion.

As I say, I think we are doing an excellent job of raising the substantive issues.

Congressman Blatnik?

Mr. BLATNIK. Mr. Chairman, thank you. You captioned the morning session so effectively and I would agree with you thoroughly. If I may reserve my comments for the afternoon, there's a quorum call on the floor.

Cochairman JACKSON. There were probably two or three by now. Congressman Ottinger?

We will resume, by the way, at 2 o'clock.

Mr. OTTINGER. I would like to thank you, Senator Jackson, and Congressmen Miller and Daddario for arranging for this opportunity and to follow on with your statement just made and perhaps make a suggestion on an action, because I think we have heard some very interesting statements from each member of the panel expressing their concern for various aspects of the environment. Yet, the facts of life are that virtually everyone on the panel has responsibility for some very serious element of aggravation damaging the environment.

The Agriculture Department is promoting pesticides that we are learning now are building up in the bones of animals and in human beings that are very dangerous.

Interior I don't think has done what it could on strip mines, importation of impure oil, or action on the redwoods.

HEW, in the field of pollution and pesticides and so forth with respect to their danger to health.

HUD, in putting the renewal projects in a way that damages the environment.

Science Adviser, of course, has an overall responsibility within the State itself.

Laurance Rockefeller raised the question of the problem of the highways and their damaging effect on the environment, yet is promoting publicly the Hudson River Expressway that would go right

down the shores of the Hudson River. The State of New York has just put through a power bill which specifically by its terms allows the placement of powerplants without regard to the effects on

environment.

We have three departments not represented that are very very principal in this. The Department of Transportation that finances highways without regard to their effect on environment. The Federal Power Commission that licenses powerlines overhead, crisscrossing our Nation; the Corps of Engineers that builds dams, damaging all kinds of elements of the environment. I think the question is how do we make it possible for these various departments, for the States, for the private interests also not represented to tackle these problems more effectively; and, I make two suggestions:

One, I think we need to have an intervener or lobbyist on behalf of these environmental considerations, and that there ought to be a commission that can intervene in the proceedings of each one of these departments where it affects the environment and at least get a public focus on it. If there is going to be a license presented to the FPC for powerlines, have this commission, with expertise built in, with staffing pattern, actually be able to go in and stop the proceedings for some time and raise the question of damage to the environment. Perhaps it would be too much to give them a veto power, but perhaps give them, with respect to the Commission, where they do have a serious objection, to require two-thirds of the majority of the Commission or some other consideration with respect to the departments so that we do get a meaningful focus, and we do have a chance for these organizations that we have mentioned that can be lobbyists, whether it is fishermen or what it is, to become active on behalf of the environmental considerations.

Secondly, a matter of vehicle for better communications between the scientific community and the public sector, both executive and legislative. To make us better aware of the threats to our environment such as one just becoming known now in the scientific community with respect to pesticide residues in our bodies, and we have started an effort on this.

I and Congressman Miller, Congressmen Blatnik, Reuss, in a bipartisan effort on the Republican side, MacGregor, O'Konski, and Senators Muskie, Nelson, and Hansen-are getting a group with the Smithsonian Institution tentatively to do some of the coordinating between the scientific community and Congress, and we would hope to get some industrial participation in that, to focus on these problems that create a panel for all of us to be able to test out our ideas and proposals against a really distinguished scientific group.

I'd appreciate your comments on both these suggestions.

Cochairman JACKSON. Well, the Chair would observe, I'm afraid that to respond in full to all of the questions you have posed would take the balance of the afternoon. I'm not sure that the agenda provides for a question that will take so much time, but I commend you for raising these questions.

Mr. OTTINGER. It is really two questions: One of communication, and the other of intervener.

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Cochairman JACKSON. Yes; but in fairness here, I think certain comments have been made with reference to the panelists, and I think they should have an opportunity to respond. I think that question was put first, if they have any brief comments, because the hour is growing late, and I think they should do that now.

First, Secretary Baker?

Secretary BAKER. Since I was mentioned first, Mr. Chairman, in reference to pesticides inside our bodies, the statement is not strictly accurate as it stands, I'm afraid.

First, there are really no scientific results that indicate a dangerous buildup at this time among the population of the United States of pesticide chemicals in the human body.

Second, the statement overlooks a major effort that is underway in the Department of Agriculture and in the experiment stations around the country to develop nontoxic control measures such as sterility techniques, sex attractants, biological controls in addition to safer chemical methods.

Cochairman JACKSON. Anyone else wish to respond?
Secretary Udall?

Secretary UDALL. Congressman Ottinger has been one of the most. vigorous battlers for a better environment, and I want to indicate to him my feeling that there is room for improvement in terms of the decisionmaking process. I don't know but that a good congressional group sometimes represents an intervener, and it can sometimes be very effective. In fact, Congress is, in a sense, a watchdog and a supervisor of all our activities.

I am sure that if it were not for some of the congressional pressures that were present, many of the executive agencies would make what would probably be wrong decisions easier and not have to defend them, but I think a general vigilance both of congressional people and of the groups and organizations interested in the environment, that this is probably going to be the big factor. One of the things that I take the most encouragement from is simply the growth of sentiment in the Congress, the number of conservationist Congressmen, the number of organizations, however they define themselves, that are interested in the city problem, that are interested in the total environment problem and their vigor and growth.

The fact that an organization like the Sierra Club has increased, doubled its membership in 2 years, says something about the country that is rather healthy, it seems to me.

Cochairman MILLER. Tell them where the Sierra Club is located. Cochairman JACKSON. It might reveal where they operate, too. Well, the Chair would like to make an observation in the middle of this. The subject matter that we are discussing, it seems to me, leaves room for dissent and difference of opinion, as always. We are not dealing in absolutes. I know from my own personal experience in the House and Senate in 28 years that there are always those who have their own version of what conservation should consist of, and what the quality of the environment should be. If you disagree, you are an anti. The longer you struggle with this, the more you realize that there are three sides. There is your side, there is the other side, and there is the right side.

I want to make that observation because I don't think that it is possible to get unanimity of agreement. I don't think you should. Mr. OTTINGER. I think the question is what kind of device can you use to make it more effective. I wasn't trying to focus into the individual criticism of the departments, but there isn't enough of an effective mechanism to intervene on behalf of these questions.

Cochairman JACKSON. But, I am pointing out that there isn't within Mr. Udall's Department or within Mr. Freeman's Department a program that they can come up with but what there won't be some disagreement. We have been struggling with the redwoods bill and do I need to give any more examples? I'm trying to point out that there are differences of opinion. I think that there are, as Secretary Udall mentioned, a growing number of people who are deeply concerned about conservation, and I think this is all to the good. But, I think we must be careful and not try to get around to the point where we are dealing in absolutes, black or white. That's my observation. With that comment, I think Laurance Rockefeller would like to say something.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I think that black-and-white approach is a disaster. Any of these issues where you are looking for constructive compromise, if you take a black-and-white approach, you are never going to resolve it. You have a lot of hostility and you don't represent the public constructively. I think this is true of whether we have storage power on the Hudson or whether we have an expressway. The question is, How can we best meet the multiple needs of the people and preserve natural values and reduce public costs?

In other words, black and white is not the way to approach these problems. We are looking for the creative emerging areas.

Cochairman MILLER. Mr. Rockefeller, it has been my experience with freeways, as we call them in California: the fellow who has to give up his home or the person who lives right along the freeway and gets a lot of noise hollers very loud about them, but you never hear from the fellow two or three blocks off the freeway who now gets to his office in 20 minutes where it use to take him an hour.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. That is particularly true in New York. We have a railroad track between the homeowners and the freeway. They are already blighted by a four-lane railroad track.

Cochairman MILLER. So, I find that the great majority of the people like freeways, although they do destroy certain esthetics of the country, but we have got people to take care of and they come first. Cochairman JACKSON. Any further comments?

With that we will recess until 2 p.m.

(Whereupon, at 12:55 p.m. the colloquium recessed until 2 p.m. the same day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

Cochairman MILLER. Please come to order.

I want to welcome you back to the afternoon session.

Mr. Price has agreed to summarize what has taken place this morning, and try to put it in the form that he is perfectly capable of doing. I don't know of anyone more capable than he is in doing this for us, and he will go on.

Will you proceed?

SUMMARIZATION STATEMENT OF DON K. PRICE, DEAN, JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Mr. PRICE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was this morning a certain amount of play back and forth between Members of the Senate and House on the one hand, and the executive branch on the other over the issue, and there was an attempt to filibuster longer. I don't think a professor ought to get into this and make it a three-way fight, so I will do my best to be extremely brief, even though to be at the same time brief and useful in setting the comments this morning into some sort of order is not too easy a chore.

If I am to try that, I have to select very arbitrarily several groupings of topics, and I think I will pick four.

First, to define limits of the problem; second, the question how Government acts on the problem; then, third, a question logically coming before the action and more fundamental, how do we know what we are doing?

And, finally, what are the-how do we make decisions as distinct from knowing the facts within the structure of Government?

Now, first, what is the problem anyhow? It is attempting to start out with a very clear notion, and each one of us probably does this by saying the problem is the aspect of it that he is interested in. But, a century or more ago George Perkins Marsh boldly said that the problem with the environment was the fact that humans were involved in it. The problem has become so broad that it's hard to know where to stop. This morning we saw that it included not only the maintenance of the quality of the outdoor environment that we think of as the pristine environment of this continent before man began to spoil it, but it soon became clear that that problem made no sense. We could not really beautify the natural wilderness without taking into account the new structure of our cities and our industrial system. The internal social problems of the cities come into it, at least in a peripheral way and maybe more; and finally, I was interested to see that the discussion clearly tended this morning toward the same conclusion that some committees of the American Association for the Advancement of Science came to some months ago when they decided that the study of environmental quality could not be tackled without simultaneously considering the population problem.

Nobody in the AAAS summed it up quite so neatly as the phrase that someone used this morning that population is the real pollution of the environment, but still it came to the same thing.

And, yet, having said what I have just said, which is to take for granted the validity of each person's addition to this subject matter, I am left with a vaguely uneasy feeling that if we see the continuous complex here as one set of interconnecting realities that have to be understood as a total system, we may be broadening our interests so much that it's impossible to act on it at all.

This, I think is a problem which in my capacity as an outliner of what went on rather than a testifier in my own right I do not propose to try to solve, but I think it is enough to say that you can either try to look at all reality as the system which you are undertaking to deal with, or in order to make it manageable you can think of it as a set of inter