United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of
Public Awareness (A-107)
Washington, D.C., 20460
Volume 6
Number 4
April 1 980
Earth Day '80
-------
Earth
Day '80
Farth Day, which will
mark its 10th anniver-
sary on April 22, ignited
a national citizens'
movement which has had a
revolutionary impact, providing
the creative energy to win new
landmark laws and to make
environmental quality part of
our daily affairs.
In this issue, EPA Journal
focuses on the significance of
Earth Day and the future of the
air, water, and land which
support us all.
EPA Administrator Costle
gives a global view, pointing
out that the planet's environ-
mental problems have common
causes that call for cooperative
international efforts.
Also, the Administrator
reports in an interview on his
recent environmental agree-
ment with China.
In an Earth Day proclama-
tion, President Carter asks
special attention to community
environmental activities and
educational efforts. Meanwhile,
U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson
describes what the first Earth
Day ten years ago meant and
explains why he proposed it
and what it accompli shed.
A special report in this issue
profiles 28 citizens who have
gained environmental victories
by individual or group initia-
tives. These people from
across the country, of different
races and occupations, have a
common goal—a wholesome
environment.
The principles for gaining
environmental success at the
grass roots level are explained
in an interview by EPA Deputy
Administrator Blum, who
learned valuable lessons while
winning protection for the
Chattahoochee River.
The purpose of Earth Day '80
is explained by Byron Kennard,
head of the group sponsoring
the anniversary celebration.
Future environmental chal-
lenges are analyzed by Danie!
Lufkin, an environmentalist and
prominent businessman in New
York City, who helped lead
Earth Day '70. Denis Hayes
reviews the past Environmental
Decade, including victories
that seemed impossible and
problems that were worse than
they first seemed. Hayes was
coordinator of the first Earth
Day.
The role of a special science,
ecology, in future environ-
mental quality is discussed by
teacher and writer Eugene
Odum in an interview.
In the third article in an EPA
Journal series on major Ameri-
can rivers, Truman Temple
reports on the mighty but aiiing
Colorado. D
-------
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of
Public Awareness (A-107)
Washington DC 20460
Volume 6
Number 4
April 1980
c/EPA JOURNAL
Douglas M. Costle, Administrator
Joan Martin Nicholson, Director, Office of Public Awareness
Charles D. Pierce, Editor
Truman Temple, Associate Editor
John Heritage, Chris Perham, Assistant Editors
Articles
EPA is charged by Congress to
protect the Nation's land, air and
water systems. Under a mandate
of national environmental laws
focused on air and water quali-
ty, solid waste management and
the control of toxic substances,
pesticides, noise and radiation,
the Agency strives to formulate
and implement actions which
lead to a compatible balance be-
tween human activities and the
ability of natural systems to sup-
port and nurture life.
A Global View
EPA Administrator Costle says
international cooperation is
needed in cleanup.
President Proclaims
Earth Day
The Nation is asked to rededi-
cate itself to a good environ-
ment.
Earth Day '70:
What it meant 6
U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson
explains the first Earth Day,
which he proposed.
Earth Day'80:
Its Purpose 8
The goals of this April 22 cele-
bration are outlined by Byron
Kennard, chair of the spon-
soring group.
Gaining Environmental
Success 10
Principles for environmental
initiatives at the grass roots are
discussed by EPA Deputy Ad-
ministrator Blum.
Earth Day Plus Ten:
The Unfinished
Agenda
Some remaining environmental
challenges, by Daniel Lufkin.
Ecology and the
Future 14
The special role of the science of
ecology, by Dr. Eugene Odum.
Environmental
Citizens 16
Profiles of 28 individuals who
have won environmental vic-
tories at the grass roots.
The Environmental
Decade
A look at the Nation and its envi-
ronment over the last ten years
by Denis Hayes.
Fresh Breeze from
China 34
A report by Administrator Costle
on his recent trip to China
The Colorado-
America's Hardest
Working River 44
Truman Temple reviews the
problems of this river which is
known as the "Lifeline of the
Southwest."
Departments
Almanac 33
Update 36
People 39
News Briefs 41
Around the Nation 42
Front cover Photo by Ansel Adams
of El Capitan. a granite, cliff sculpted
by glaciers Located in Yosemite
National Park in California, the cliff
was named El Capitan the chief -
by U S Army soldiers who dis-
covered Yosemite Valley in 1851
Opposite Celebration of the first
Earth Day. April, 1970, in New York
City's Union Square
(Article.'on P 6 )
Photo credits: Ansel Adams, Patricia
Duncan; Jason Laure/Woodfin
Camp; Peter Bloomer/fpg; Oregon
StateHighwayDepartment;Stephen
C Delaney. Richard Stack/Black
Star; Benyas-Kaufman/Black Star;
Donald Emmerich'; Jack Kight-
linger, the White House; Suzanne
Szasz'; David H Strother, National
Park Service; David Hiser'. Hope
Alexander".
In the Environmental Citizens sec-
tion, the article Pioneers in Recycling
was adapted from a piece in
COMPOST SCIENCE/LAND UTI
LIZATION by Nora Goldstein The
' Documerica
article Reporting the Facts was
from an Associated Press piece by
Lee Catterall
Design Credits Robert Flanagan.
Donna Kazamwsky and Ron Farrah
Earth Day logo copyrighted by Root
and Chester Design
Che I PA Journal is puh ! :
monthly, with combined issues
July August and November Decem
ber by the U S Environmental
Protection Agency Use of funds for
printing this periodical has been
approved by the Director of the
Office of Management and Budget
Views expressed by authors do not
. inly 'eflect EPA policy Corv
tributions and inquiries should be
addressed to the Editor (A-107)
Waterside Mall, 401 M St . S W ,
Washington. D C 20460 N<
missio11 • , r v to reproduce
contents except copyrighted photos
and other m.itei i.ils Subscription
S12 00 a year. SI 20 for single
copy domestic. Sib 00 if mailed to
a foreign address No charge to
employees Send check or money
or der to Super Ifltl
ments, U S Government Printing
Washington D C 20402"
Text printed
-------
-------
Environmentally Speaking
A
Global
View
By Douglas M. Costle
A decade ago, when the first Earth
Day was held, the international
contours of the pollution problem
were just beginning to come into
focus. Since then, the continued buildup
of environmental contaminants—combined
with advances in our scientific knowledge
—have cast the nature of the threats to our
global commons in much sharper relief.
Some common threads run through en-
vironmental problems in both the indus-
trialized and developing countries. First is
the recognition that air, land, and water are
finite goods . . . limited in amount. They
always have been, of course; there is no
more water on the globe today than there
was when the first humans emerged three
and a half million years ago. As long as the
number of human beings remained rela-
tively small, however, the finite quality of
natural resources posed no serious prob-
lems for our survival.
That balance has been severely disturbed
by rapid population growth—itself a prod-
uct of agricultural advances and improve-
ments in public health measures. This rec-
ognition that we can eat ourselves out of
house and home constitutes the second
thread running through environmental con-
cerns today. The industrialized world, in
general, has its rate of population increase
well under control. Progress is being made
in developing countries, but in some of
them, the old reliance on large families—
both for labor supply and as a form of
social security for parents in their old age
—impedes efforts to slow the increase in
human numbers.
A third common thread is the recognition
that valuable technologies, ranging from
the construction of large public works to
the production of chemicals, can have seri-
ous, damaging side-effects. In the United
States, we have our Love Canal; Third
World countries have had their share of
large and small chemical disasters, too.
I am not certain whether our new envi-
ronmental perception has arrived soon
enough to protect us from massive, irrever-
sible damage to life-support systems. But I
am certain that the spread of environmental
ideas has carried them far beyond any
supposed coterie of the elite into all cor-
ners of the world, and into all forms of
government.
Moreover, I am certain those ideas are
here to stay. Environmental protection will
undoubtedly suffer some setbacks in the
years and decades to come. For that mat-
ter, we don't always have the right answers
to every problem. Yet the understanding
that economic growth cannot any longer
be_ divorced from environmental health will
remain a permanent feature in future hu-
man thought and action.
It undeniably will be expensive to direct
our national and international actions to
reverse the damage already caused by our
pursuit of economic goals separate from
environmental values. Yet deferring the
necessary investment now can require
vastly larger spending in the future.
So far, for example, the clean-up at Love
Canal has cost the New York State govern-
ment $24 million; had the proper environ-
mental controls been in place, an invest-
ment of 52 million would have made that
site secure.
As a matter of prudence, all nations
must make sure that environmental invest-
ments pay their way in terms of avoiding
risk and providing benefit. But we must
also do our best to prevent inadequate con-
cepts of "cost" and "benefit"—based on
deficient economics and biased in favor
of resource-depletion—from reversing the
repair work we have begun on our global
home. We can pay for that repair work now,
at substantial economic cost and interna-
tional convenience. Or we can pay for it
later—at much greater cost.
This is not an empty piety, substituting
sentiment for common sense. Fred Kahn,
the Administration's anti-inflation chief
and an economist, put the matter well in a
recent speech. "The popular conception
that we must make choices between 'eco-
nomic welfare' and environmental protec-
tion or energy conservation," he said, "is
simply wrong. Environmental values are
economic values: it is in principle just as
important, in the interest of economic effi-
ciency and therefore economic welfare,
and mflational control, to conserve our lim-
ited natural resources, to make wise and
sparing use of our limited clean air, water,
and living space, as it is to economize in
the use of labor, capital, and energy
supplies."
Such environmental concerns—taken
together with many others that I might have
cited—confront us with a challenge that is
without historical precedent. We must.
somehow, find the means to carry interna-
tional cooperation to a new plane. We must
learn to act quickly and forcefully on mat-
ters where action by a single country—or
even a handful of countries—will not be
sufficient to protect our global commons.
To help me keep this in mind, I have
hanging behind my desk a photograph of
the Earth that was taken by the astronauts
on the Apollo 17 moon mission. In the
brilliant blues of the oceans, the white,
swirling forms of the clouds and the rich
earth tones of the continents, it is almost a
work of art.
Jim Fletcher, a former head of NASA,
saw that photo upon Apollo 1 7's return and
said simply, "Onthewaytothemoon, we
discovered planet Earth."
There's more to the impact of this view
of Earth than simply its breathtaking
beauty, however. The photograph also
brings home in a dramatic way the fact that
the Earth is an isolated lonely object in
space—a place that must husband its re-
sources with the greatest care because, in
the words of Astronaut Jack Schmidt, "It's
all we've got."
It ;s a fragile craft. Just how fragile has
been shown only too painfully by the reve-
lations in recent decades about how we
have harmed it. The damage continues. But
there is a new awareness now of how we
have misused the Earth and also, of the
care needed to preserve both it, and us. n
APRIL 1980
-------
Earth
Earth Day '80 symbolizes the
past, present, and future. It is
a reminder of the 1 970's, when
an upwelling of citizen concern
Said the foundation in the Na-
tion's laws for protection of the
environment and human health.
It stands for the present, when
issues such as energy are call-
ing for a creative response in
environmental protection. The
need for fuel for a mobile so-
ciety must be matched with the
need to wisely manage nat-
ural resources. Earth Day '80
also symbolizes a future when
changing American values will
produce greater respect for
the land, the air, the water, and
wildlife. In addition, initiatives
by citizens, groups, and com-
munities will shape fresh ap-
proaches in recycling, pollution
control, energy conservation,
transportation, and urban
growth.
In the following articles and
interviews, various leaders give
their interpretations of Earth
Day. They include the Presi-
dent; a U.S. Senator; EPA's
Deputy Administrator; the
coordinator of Earth Day '70;
the; head of Earth Day '80; an
ecologist; and a business
leader. A key part of this issue
is a series of brief articles
profiling 28 citizen environ-
mental leaders—the people
who have played the crucial
role in this country's environ-
mental awakening and who are
building an environmental ethic
for America's tomorrow.
-------
President
Proclaims
Earth Day
President Carter, declar-
ing that the Nation "must
achieve another decade
of environmental prog-
ress," issued a proclamation
designating April 22 as "Earth
Day."
It will be the 10th anniver-
sary of the first Earth Day,
which environmentalists now
hail as having opened an era of
activism and progress in fight-
ing pollution, preserving natural
resources, and safeguarding
public health.
In his proclamation, the Pres-
ident asked that special atten-
tion be given to community
activities and educational
efforts directed at protecting
and enhancing the life-giving
environment.
President Carter said that in
celebrating the new Earth Day,
we should "rededicate our-
selves to our great goal—free-
ing the people of this Earth
from disease, pollution, and
the spread of toxic chemicals;
from the lack of basic necessi-
ties; and from the destruction
of our common natural and
cultural heritage."
He added: "Let us rededicate
ourselves to the creation and
maintenance of safe and
healthy surroundings, to the
wise husbanding of the natural
resources that are a pillar of our
well-being, and to the protec-
tion of free-flowing streams,
majestic mountain forests, and
diverse cityscapes pulsing
with life."
The text of President Carter's
proclamation follows:
"Ten years ago, the United
States turned over a new—and
greener—leaf. On the first day
of the new decade, the National
Environmental Policy Act be-
came the law of the land. This
law is one of our Nation's
fundamental charters: it is a
pledge from each generation
to the next to protect and
enhance the quality of the
environment.
"Through the National Envi-
ronmental Policy Act, which
created the Council on Environ-
mental Quality, the Nation
affirmed the fundamental im-
portance of the environment to
our well-being. Our environ-
ment shapes our lives in end-
less ways: it can be dangerous
or it can be safe; it can produce
a bounty to sustain us or it can
be laid bare; it can frustrate our
relationships with nature and
with other people or it can pro-
vide opportunities for seeking
peace and harmony.
"As the United States en-
joyed
-------
What
It Meant
By U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Ten years ago this month, the envi-
ronmental issue came of age in
American political life. When April
22, 1970, dawned, literally millions
of Americans of all ages and from all
walks of life participated in Earth Day cele-
brations from coast to coast.
It was on that day that Americans made
it clear that they understood and were
deeply concerned over the deterioration of
of our environment and the mindless dis-
sipation of our resources. That day left a
permanent impact on the politics of Amer-
ica. It forcibly thrust the issue of environ-
mental quality and resource conservation
into the political dialogue of the Nation.
That was the important objective and
achievement of Earth Day. It showed the
political and opinion leadership of the
country that the people cared, that they
were ready for political action, that the pol-
iticians had better get ready, too. In short,
Earth Day launched the Environmental
Decade with a bang.
Now, ten years later, it has become pop-
ular in some circles to write the obituary
of the environmental movement, to refer to
the passing of the "golden era" for envi-
ronmentalism. It is asserted that public
interest has waned, that new worries have
captured attention, that inflation, the en-
ergy crisis, and international conflict have
superseded if not wiped out public con-
cern over environmentalism.
Those who write that view are unin-
formed and far removed from the environ-
mental scene or the politics surrounding it.
In fact, the politics of environmentalism are
so pervasive, from the grass roots to the
national capital, that it is hard to believe
even the most casual observer could miss
it. To anyone who has paid attention, it is
clear that the environmental movement
now is far stronger, far better led, far better
informed, and far more influential than it
was ten years ago. Its strength grows each
year because public knowledge and under-
standing grow each year.
How Did Earth Day 1970
Change the Nation?
My primary objective in planning Earth Day
was to show the political leadership of the
Nation that there was broad and deep sup-
port for the environmental movement.
While I was confident that a nationwide
peaceful demonstration of concern would
be impressive, I was not quite prepared for
the overwhelming response that occurred
on that day. Two thousand colleges and
universities, ten thousand high schools and
grade schools, and several thousand com-
munities—in all, more than twenty million
Americans—participated in one of the
most exciting and significant grassroots
efforts in the history of this country.
Earth Day 1970 made it clear that we
could summon the public support, the en-
ergy, and commitment to save our environ-
ment. And while the struggle is far from
over, we have made substantial progress.
In the ten years since 1970 much of the
basic legislation needed to protect the en-
vironment has been enacted into law: the
Clean Air Act, the Water Quality Improve-
ment Act, the Water Pollution and Control
Act Amendments, the Resource Recovery
Act, the Resource Conservation and Re-
covery Act, the Toxic Substances Control
Act, the Occupational Safety and Health
Act, the Federal Environmental Pesticide
Control Act, the Endangered Species Act,
the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Federal
Land Policy and Management Act, and the
Surface Mining Control and Reclamation
Act. And, the most important piece of envi-
ronmental legislation in our history, the
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA),
was signed into law on January 1, 1979.
NEPA came about in response to the same
public pressure which later produced Earth
Day.
As the Council on Environmental Qual-
ity's retrospective introduction to their
tenth annual report states:
Continued on page 38
APRIL 1980
-------
Earth Day
Its Purpose
By Byron Kennard
In 1970 Earth Day was organized pri-
marily by students. It occurred largely
on campuses and was mostly about the
need to control pollution. The event
was a manifestation of the times, a period
of intense social and political activism. In
1980, what is Earth Day to be?
First of all, we environmentalists have a
lot to celebrate. Ten years ago, before the
first Earth Day, hardly anyone could tell you
what the word "ecology" meant. Now vir-
tually any schoolchild can define it. This is
a profoundly significant change. We may
not have yet rescued the physical environ-
ment from threats to its health and stability,
but certainly we have equipped society with
many of the tools needed for the task. I am
not just talking about the legal, political,
and institutional advances of the past ten
years, important as they are. To me, the
rock upon which our movement is truly
built is the steady, ever-growing public
commitment to a clean, safe, healthy envi-
ronment which Earth Day 1970 helped to
inaugurate. Earth Day 'SOwill celebrate and
reaffirm that commitment.
Earth Day '80 also will demonstrate that
environmentalism is not only alive and
well, it is mature and diversified. From our
historic and much-honored roots in classic
conservation to the demand for clean air
and water which swept the country on April
22, 1970, right up to the present moment,
we have continued to grow and change, in-
corporating new knowledge and perspec-
-------
tives constantly. Today, the environmental
movement is a huge tent embracing many
themes and causes: cancer prevention,
energy conservation, workplace safety,
neighborhood preservation, transit reform,
alternative technologies, and labor-inten-
sive economic development, to name only
a few. And on top of this, we have provided
the steam for much needed creativity and
growth in the American economy. Hun-
dreds of thousands of new jobs have been
created by the movement for environmental
protection, and thousands of new busi-
nesses, many of them small, have grown up
as well. This socially-mandated market for
pollution control is one of the most produc-
tive, constructive forces in the economy.
It deserves applause and on April 22, 1980,
it will get it.
In keeping with the diversity of the envi-
ronmental grassroots origins in 1970, Earth
Day '80 will focus on local and regional
scales of endeavors. This April 22, we hope
to direct the Nation's attention to the ex-
traordinary amount of community-based
innovation and initiative now occurring in
America in an effort to protect and enhance
the quality of life. Earth Day '80 is planned
to be a great display of this grassroots
ferment and experimentation. By no means
have Americans lost their skill and zest for
ingenuity and innovation, and revival of
this old know-how and confidence in local
communities around the theme of social
and technological alternatives is one of the
most hopeful signs around. Just when a lot
of people were about to write off the Amer-
ican environment as a lost cause, neigh-
borhood, civic, and voluntary associations
of many kinds began devising and pro-
moting new ways of planning and doing
things, often with the help and support of
gutsy, change-oriented public officials.
These constructive changes take many
forms, from efforts to improve the quality of
food and nutrition to holistic health pro-
grams which conceive of individual well-
being in the context of the total environ-
ment; from efforts to revive existing down-
town centers to the preservation of existing
housing stock in older neighborhoods; and
from efforts to protect remaining farmland
and open space surrounding the cities to
the protection of the vast Alaskan wilder-
ness.
This new wave of citizen and community
actions is not restricted to actual physical
improvements in the environment or to the
creation of new technological hardware,
however socially "appropriate." It also in-
cludes a tremendous amount of social
innovation; improved governmental proc-
esses, better planning techniques, new
research methodology, such as technology
assessment, and novel models for political
and community action, such as citizen
networking. For example, look at the rise
of demand in the 1970's for more citizen
participation in the conduct of government.
Participatory democracy, the politics of the
1980's, is actually becoming more than a
slogan as politicians and administrators
alike confront the necessity to review social
mandates for public institutions and pro-
grams. In some places, in some ways, the
movement for citizen participation
(spawned in part by environmentalists) is
producing markedly better policy out-
comes. Renewing the legitimacy of social
institutions through the medium of citizen
participation in governmental processes is
a bright hope in the 1980's and a further
cause for celebration.
Earth Day '80 is a way of parading all
these new, small, brave efforts so that
everyone can see them. Of course, not for
a minute do I or anyone I know assert that
these efforts have succeeded in rescuing
the environment from the peril that con-
fronts it. As Buckminster Fuller once ob-
served, commenting on the human predica-
ment, "What we have here is a nip and tuck
situation." It is too early to tell if com-
munity-based innovation and initiative is
equal to the task of redeeming the species
from its self-inflicted wounds. But the
important thing is that these efforts exist.
They may be small signs, but they are vital
ones. Certainly, they are widespread
throughout the country. There are even
solar houses in Alaska! To me these efforts
are the most hopeful signs on the land-
scape of the future. They deserve support
and recognition. They deserve to be cele-
brated. Along with the congratulations we
can extend each other for having endured
and advanced so far since 1970, Earth Day
'80 is about our shared human potential for
building a good life on this beautiful little
planet. D
Byron Kennard is Chair of Earth Day '80.
the organization sponsoring the event.
-------
Gaining
Environmen
tal
Success
An Interview With
Barbara Blum
EPA Deputy
Administrator
Q
You helped lead the suc-
cessful attempt to protect the
Chattahoochee River in
Atlanta. How was this
accomplished?
A
First, we thoroughly de-
fined the problem. Atlanta
had a rare resource: Its water
supply, the Chattahoochee
River, was also the last remain-
ing wilderness river in any ur-
ban area in the United States.
There was a need to quickly
protect both the water supply
and the beauty of the area from
rapid urban development occur-
ring in the new South.
Secondly, we methodically
pursued a very broad base of
community leaders who, in
turn, influenced their constitu-
encies. We "sold" the problem
and the solution.
Third, we became very in-
volved in the political process.
We helped to defeat a Senator
who was the major opponent of
our initial legislation. We took
then-Governor Carter and other
leaders on canoe trips down the
river, and they volunteered to
help us in every way possible.
At every step of the way, we
involved the public. We held
town hall meetings. We met in-
dividually and in groups with
Chattahoochee property
owners.
In short, today there is a
Chattahoochee National Recre-
ation Area because citizens of
the city and the State let their
elected officials know what they
wanted.
Q
Have local environmen-
tal issues changed since the
first Earth Day 10 years ago?
A
Earth Day 1970 was pri-
marily students on campuses
talking about the need for
pollution control. Today, envi-
ronmentalists can be found
everywhere—in Congress, in
the White House, in State gov-
ernment, in every community,
every walk of life, and every age
group.
In 1970, environmentalists
were worried about what comes
out of smokestacks. Today, we
are concerned with everything
from the decision-making proc-
ess in corporate boardrooms, to
enforcing laws and regulations
on the books, to the harmful
effects of a whole range of new
pollutants in the food we eat,
the water we drink, and the air
we breathe.
We've come a long way.
We've institutionalized the en-
vironmental ethic in the law, in
the lab, in corporate decision-
making, in the neighborhood.
Q
With changed environ-
mental problems, do grass-
roots approaches need to
change?
A
Yes and no.
There will never be a substitute
for the nitty-gritty work of com-
munity organizing—licking the
stamps, researching and writing
testimony, and knocking on
doors. The need for this kind of
effort will never abate. Fortu-
nately, many grassroots groups
have learned how to do all of
this and do it well. This must
continue.
However, I feel strongly that
the time has come to forge new
coalitions with the urban
dweller, with labor, with the
farmer who loves his land. A
few years ago, some friends of
mine started a group called En-
vironmentalists for Full Employ-
ment. Its purpose was to form
an alliance around jobs and
economic development, on the
one hand, and to preserve
the environment and worker
health and safety, on the other.
The Urban Environment Confer-
ence, a coalition of environ-
mentalists, labor leaders, and
urban minorities, has success-
fully laid the blocks for yet
another strong, viable bridge
between people who hadn't be-
fore realized that they had deep
and abiding common interests.
A year ago, EPA, other Federal
agencies and three national
organizations took the partner-
ship another step forward by
sponsoring a conference on
major social, economic and
health issues associated with
the quality of city life. In many
ways, the conference was a
"first," giving rise not only to a
consensus on many issues but a
new commitment at the local
level to resolve them.
Q
What are some princi-
ples citizens could use in
working for a cleaner, safer
environment?
A
Several things, I think, are
critical.
First, get involved with
organizations who share your
concerns and objectives.
Second, once you're in a
group, push for imagination and
creativity in recruiting allies.
Your agenda and priorities are
important, but so are those of
others. Forge strong, new alli-
ances. Learn from other people.
Build a broader constituency,
and increase the chances of
winning.
Third, get involved in the
political process at every level
of government.
Fourth, pursue more and
more programs and strategies
that integrate environmental
protection with other ecologi-
cally desirable goals like energy
conservation and economic de-
velopment. Take the Blue Hills
housing development in Kansas
City, Mo., for example. Spon-
sored by a neighborhood asso-
ciation working with a commu-
nity-based credit union, the
group has designed a low-rise
250-apartment building for low-
income persons that is entirely
run on passive solar energy. It's
efforts like this—doing more
and more to integrate environ-
mental protection with other
community needs—that is so
essential.
Remember: Nothing happens
unless you work to make it
happen.
Q
This Earth Day is being
described as community-
focused. Should more of the
environmental job be done at
the community level as op-
posed to EPA and State
agencies?
A
think we'd be kidding
ourselves to say it should be
more one than the other. The
fact is that a!l of these efforts
are critical—and if one or the
other is a weak link in the chain,
the net effect is bad for all
concerned.
Saying that, let me add that
a healthy citizen movement at
the community level is absolute-
ly vital to getting the cleanup
job done. These groups monitor
the work of government agen-
cies and local businesses. They
bring to bear viewpoints and
facts that otherwise could be
overlooked or never taken in the
decision-making process. They
perform research and analysis
that can be more to the point,
more timely, and more daring
than that of others. They educate
the public on significant issues,
helping them to be better citi-
zens, wiser shoppers, and so on.
In other words, these commu-
nity groups are catalysts and
critics, in the best sense of the
word. It is difficult to imagine
that our country would have
come this far environmentally
without a high level of commu-
nttv concern and action.
Q
Are there some environ-
mental problems that can't be
solved at the grassroots
fevel ? Toxic substances, for
example? Or energy-
environmental issues?
A
- _ I'd have to borrow on the
theme of my answer to the
last question. Not ail environ-
mental problems are given to
I0
EPA JOURNAL
-------
complete solution at the grass-
roots level. Many are. But there
is no problem we face that does
not require, indeed demand,
public support in order to arrive
at a meaningful solution. Take
toxics, for example. Here's a
highly complex issue—one that
requires tremendous technical
expertise and sound regulation
by government agencies. But
solving the problem also re-
quires a heavy dose of grass-
roots involvement in the legis-
lative and regulatory process
and in educating the general
public.
Q
Q
What further steps could
EPA take to promote environ-
mental understanding and
participation at the grass-
roots?
The record so far indicates
that EPA does a better job of
this than almost any govern-
ment agency. We place a prior-
ity on public participation and
understanding of the issues.
We're insisting, for example,
that major regulatory actions be
accompanied by a plan that de-
tails how critical public view-
points will be plugged into the
decision-making process. We're
making small grants to citizen
groups around the country who,
without a financial boost, would
be unable to testify on impor-
tant matters that merit their in-
volvement. A major theme of
EPA's effort is to hold agency
managers accountable for iden-
tifying, up front, those publics
that stand to be affected by vir-
tually every major issue we face
and then to make certain these
viewpoints are heard long be-
fore decisions are cast in
cement. EPA, in other words, is
moving to spend our public
participation dollars alongside
our program dollars.
What more can we do? First,
work this program into the roots
of the Agency. Beyond this, I
believe that Regional Offices
should spend more and more
time discussing environmental
issues wtih civic and church
groups, with community lead-
ers, and with executives in a
non-adversarial setting. A two-
way dialogue is a key, and that
means we're going to have to
listen carefully, not just talk.
APRIL 1980
Some critics say that en-
vironmentalism doesn't have
the support it once had
because of the energy crunch.
Do you believe this is true?
A
No, most emphatically no.
By most standards that gauge
public sentiment, there is
strong commitment to environ-
mental protection. People, un-
derstandably, also are con-
cerned about resolving our
Nation's economic and energy
difficulties. But these goals are
not mutually exclusive. It's not
only possible—it's absolutely
essential—to have a clean,
healthy environment and a
stable, productive economy
plus the energy we need. Envi-
ronmentalists recognize this—
in fact, they were among the
first to do so.
This is not to say the job of
reconciling these interests is an
easy or overnight matter. It's
just not. But there is undeniable
evidence that the Nation's
energy needs can be met in a
way that doesn't destroy the
environment or endanger
human health and safety. This
is an important goal of the
Carter Administration, and at
EPA, we are doing everything to
see that power plants convert
from oil to coal in an environ-
mentally sound way. We are
helping to expand the use of
solar energy and other forms of
energy that are environmentally
benign. We're in the forefront
of the effort to encourage en-
ergy conservation. And we're
actively involved in helping
companies develop technologi-
cal innovations to assure that
this Nation meets our energy
needs without endangering hu-
man health or the environment.
These are not the kinds of ac-
tivities that should repel any-
one. They should attract more
arid more public support, and I
beiieve they are—if for no other
reason than they add up to a
common-sense approach that
serves everybody's interests.
Q
Would you predict what
Earth Day 1990 will be like?
Will we even need it?
A
think we'll need it. There
will continue to be plenty of
cause for celebration and for
renewing our commitment to
environmentalism. Environmen-
tal protection is not a passing
fad or fancy, it is not something
that warrants only a year or 1 0
years of intense work, only
then to be forgotten. It is a con-
tinuing venture—one that re-
quires constant vigilance and
new approaches to meet current
needs.
I have no crystal ball. But by
Earth Day 1990, I envision that
our Nation will have come
closer to achieving a society
that places equal priority on
economic and environmental
values, that does a far better job
of weighing not only the costs
but the risks inherent in every
decision we make, that restores
small business to its proper
place in the American way of
life. I see, too, a society that
has generated vast new techno-
logical innovations in produc-
ing our food, providing our
transportation, and heating our
homes in a manner that is envi-
ronmentally sound. All of this
will be cause for celebration.
But in 1990 just as in 1980
there will be need to recommit
ourselves to the fundamental
premise of environmentalism—
that is, recognizing the inter-
dependence of human beings
and the planet Earth and staving
off any irreparable damage that
can be done to either.
Q
Are you encouraged by
environmental cleanup
progress so far? Has a good
beginning been made? Are we
halfway?
It's trite to say that we
have made significant progress,
but that we have a long, long
way to go. It's also true.
With conventional pollutants,
we have striking progress.
We're more than halfway home
in applying solutions. Much of
the pollution control machinery
is in place; now it will take
some time to determine if it
really works as everybody
intends.
With other issues, however,
we are only on the threshold of
solutions—for example, deal-
ing with the full range of
chronic health effects, the
ozone problem, the build-up of
carbon dioxide, the issue of
acid rain, underground water
contamination, and so on.
I am encouraged, in any case.
We've got a better handle on
these concerns than we once
did. There's a broader apprecia-
tion of the need to face up to
the issues early and a broader
understanding that the right
remedies must be applied.
Q
Environmentalism tra-
ditionally has been nature-
oriented. Are human health
conditions now receiving
more consideration?
A
If we've learned anything
in the last decade, we've
learned that it's quite impossi-
ble to separate the two. The
environmental movement may
have started with a heavy em-
phasis on nature, but today its
focus has broadened. We've
learned a lot about the health
effects of pollution—cancer, for
example, and birth defects.
What we've learned has inten-
sified our concern about the
damage pollution can do to not
one, not two, but all forms of
life.
Since 1977 when Doug and I
joined EPA, we've insisted that
our staff recognize this and take
steps to deal with it. No other
course of action is realistic, not
only in terms of the laws we
administer but also in terms of
the threat pollution poses.
Q
Is there any special mes-
sage you would like to give?
A
As we begin the decade of
the 1980's, environmental
efforts at every level of gov-
ernment and in every commu-
nity deserve strong support as
never before. There are those
who denigrate environmental
concerns in the name of what
they see as more pressing
issues—energy and the econ-
omy, to name only two. Others
believe that environmentalism
has gone as far as it can and
that to press for more would
somehow not be in keeping with
the national interest.
As you can tell, I reject both
philosophies. They misinterpret
the message that environmen-
talism conveys. They misrepre-
sent the true options that are
before us. And they deny a
growing body of evidence that
suggests that if we don't pro-
tect the environment now, we
will suffer the consequences
and pay a steep price for our
national neglect. D
11
-------
Land use pattern in Orugon.
with Mt Hood us a backdrop.
*"• ' ;
Earth Day
Plus Ten:
The Unfinished
Agenda
By Dan W. Lufkin
In the course of a decade, the envi-
ronmental movement in the United
States has drastically changed our
way of thinking about the way we use the
resources of our planet. On a superficial
level it has introduced into the national
vocabulary such terms as "ecology", "bio-
degradable", and "environmental impact."
On the deepest levels of consciousness
and conscience, it has altered our basic
perceptions of our relationship to the earth,
the water, and the air—the life support
systems on which our species, not merely
our Nation, depends for survival.
The simple realization that natural re-
sources are not infinite—and that we are
nearing the end of the cycle for many of
the most essential of them—has produced
a result more chilling than the ominous
existence of the hydrogen bomb. For as
Robert Frost so prophetically put it—now
we know that the world can end either in
fire or ice; the fire of our geo-political pas-
sions; or the ice of our indifference to the
fragile, finite balance of nature—the deli-
cate web of our interdependence with
the world around us.
Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the
ardor of that small, pioneering group of
environmentalists may have cooled some-
what, but it has by no means disappeared.
Very properly, the fervor of the "move-
ment" has given way to the more mature
and pragmatic process of translating ideal-
ism into legislation, regulation, and en-
forcement.
The challenge has been not only to
maintain the desire to improve the quality
of the environment but to devise and install
the means for the prudent development,
management, and utilization of our re-
sources. The drama of confrontation has
given way to the more plodding, step-by-
step process of implementation——both at
the national level and in States and commu-
nities across the nation. Grandiose notions
of a massive environmental victory to be
won in a single battle have been deflated by
the reality of a thousand lesser skirmishes
on scattered local fronts.
But even more significant has been the
gradual trend away from military rhetoric
and confrontation tactics to the far more
productive strategies of cooperation and
mutuality of purposes and objectives.
Not that every interest and constitu-
ency has been won over to environmenta I
priorities. By no means. Given our pres-
ent mix of high inflation and impending
recession, this would require a degree of
objectivity and altruism of which our
society is not yet capable.
And yet, we are making progress. Many
of the most intensely feared aspects of
environmental protection are now accepted
practice. While we may hear complaints
of "overregulation", the principle of regu-
lation itself, on national, State and local
levels, has not only been accepted but is
generally recognized as having salutary
economic as well as ecologic benefits.
Sensitivity to the hazards of water and air
pollution, toxic substances, noise, and
other environmental problems is no longer
confined to a small intellectual elite.
The principles of environmental protec-
tion are now deeply ingrained, not only
in our national consciousness but our na-
tional character. We may differ as to prior-
ities, means, and timetables—but there
is general agreement concerning objec-
tives.
As a Nation, we have over the past
decade rethought our notions of who we
are and what we are doing. We have in-
stinctively incorporated the environmental
impact into every consideration of new
processes, products, systems, methods of
transportation and modes and forms of
habitation. We may reject one conclusion
or another, but, at least we chew it over
carefully before we either swallow it or
spit it out.
As national policy I believe we recog-
nize that we can no longer satisfy our short-
term needs to the long-term detriment of
our environment. We understand that we
must take long-range effects into consid-
eration in the activities of our personal,
business, and institutional lives. If at
times we lack the vision and the courage
to do what is needed, it is not that we reject
the goals but that we draw back from the
painful process of reaching them.
There is, however, one critical area of
environmental protection about which I
cannot be quite so sanguine. And it is the
foundation upon which all other envi-
ronmental resolves must be built—the
I.1
EPA JOURNAL
-------
intelligent planning for our land—before,
not after, the fact of its misuse.
Nowhere is our weakness of nerve more
apparent than in our abject failure to come
to grips with this most urgent and essen-
tial aspect of environmental protection—
land use planning.
For the past decade—at every level of
government—we have marched bravely up
to the brink of legislation, regulation, and
decision-making regarding one of the most
finite of all our natural resources. And
then, we have turned back or thrown up
our hands, or what is even worse, pro-
duced a policy and then walked away from
it, leaving the false impression that we
have somehow addressed the problem,
whereas, in fact, we have done nothing.
'Land use decisions go far beyond issues
of zoning, open spaces, farmlands, indus-
trial growth, or airport and power plant sit-
ing. Every other element of environmental
protection or degradation is at some point
or other connected to the way we use our
land. Decisions to encourage suburban
sprawl, to build highways, to tax farm-
lands, to harvest timber, to zone for indus-
try, to site sewage and waste treatment
facilities, to permit housing developments,
all impact not only on the land itself—
but on the purity of the air and water, on
the practicality of mass transportation, on
the availability of housing, on intelligent
solid waste management, on the survival
of agriculture, and of wildlife—in short,
on the total quality of our lives.
Yet almost nowhere are rational politi-
cal decisions being made to preserve and
manage the uses of land in such a way that
they will enhance a style and quality of
life that most of us could agree is not only
desirable but indispensable to our ultimate
survival in harmony with our resources.
Whereas many other environmental con-
siderations have been woven into the fabric
of our everyday lives—in pollution-control
devices on our cars, in biodegradable de-
tergents, in the burning of low sulfur coal,
in the installation of industrial scrubbers,
in non-aerosol propellents, in primary and
secondary sewage treatment—land use
planning is still a territory considered too
wild and unfamiliar to tame or even explore.
One major exception to this record of
national neglect is the State of Oregon,
whose statewide policies, plans, and proc-
esses are living proof that land use plan-
ning is capable of a rational and balanced
approach which can unify, and not polar-
ize, the diverse interests of a State.
No other State has a land use planning
program like Oregon's. In no other state
is there a State agency with both grant
issuing and enforcement powers to create
stringent conservation zones for farm and
forest land and place boundaries around
every urban area beyond which urban uses
cannot occur.
The heart of the Oregon land use pro-
gram, which is administered by a State
agency, the Land Conservation and Devel-
opment Commission (LCDC), is the estab-
lishment of urban growth boundaries by
the communities themselves. These lines
are not rigidly drawn around current city
limits but allow for reasonable expansion
and growth by the year 2000. Outside
the urban boundaries land already com-
mitted for non-farm uses can proceed as
scheduled, but all other land must be
zoned for farm, forest, and recreational
use.
Inside the perimeters, communities can
plan for the most expansive possible de-
velopment of housing, industry, mass trans-
portation, and other urban uses. Thou-
sands of acres of under-utilized land exist
in our cities, and the Oregon program rests
on the belief that growth should take place
in these more concentrated areas before
being permitted to spill over randomly
into the countryside.
This makes irrefutable sense. Within
these boundary lines the facilities are
already in place to support human popula-
tions; water systems, sewers, solid waste
disposal, railroad lines, mass transit, shop-
ping areas, hospitals, schools and so
on. Such centers of housing and business
are energy efficient and resources conserv-
ing. Environmentally, they are far easier
on land, water, and air than are the incur-
sions that are taking place into our remain-
ing open spaces.
As one measure of the economic ration-
ality of the Oregon program, many major
business interests, including the State
Home Builders Association, have defended
the program against attempts to repeal
the State planning powers. That such plan-
ning is politically popular is indicated by
the 61 percent affirmative vote it received
when the issue was again placed on the
ballot in 1978, in a defeated recall motion.
Many opponents of land use planning
claim that what works in Oregon cannot
possibly be duplicated in the more
crowded, industrialized States of the
East and Midwest or the new burgeoning
megalopolis of the Sunbelt.
This is nonsense. Oregon is not some
pastoral Brigadoon which comes up for air
every 100 years but is otherwise quaint,
rural, and changeless.
While still largely rural, Oregon has
one of the most rapid growth rates in the
country—over 17 percent since 1970
compared with California's 12 percent.
There is considerable industrial expansion
anticipated in theState and tremendous
demands on the land from all forms of
agriculture and development as well as
housing.
With more than 800,000 people pro-
jected to be added to the State's census
by the year 2000, the land use program
is clearly designed to accommodate, not
exclude, this projected growth, as well
as to guarantee the economic, transporta-
tion, housing and recreational amenities
that are at the core of every State's quality
of life.
Why Oregon, then? Are Oregonians so
uniquely unselfish and altruistic—so un-
worldly that they are handcuffing them-
selves in the event of future population or
industrial booms?
Not at all. This program has succeeded
because Oregonians have had a vision of
the kind of State they want to have in the
future—and the bi-partisan political cour-
age and leadership to make the hard choices
necessary to guarantee that vision.
This is Earth Day, 1980. Where will we
be as a Nation on Earth Day, 1990? If we
do not begin to do some coherent land
use planning in every State and local com-
munity, we will be well on the way to either
chaos on the one hand or centralized au-
thoritarian regulation on the other. Neither
of these alternatives is acceptable.
If we want to solve the problems of air
and water pollution, if we want to conserve
energy, if we want to slow down and even-
tually halt the destruction of irreplaceable
natural resources, including the land, we
will take another long look at Oregon and
learn how its example can be transplanted
to the soil of our own backyards.
This kind of self-discipline will not be
easy to impose. Already, we see intense
pressures to reverse much essential envi-
ronmental regulation in the name of energy
needs, or economic incentive, or freedom
of choice, or industrial growth.
We can't afford to let such issues, im-
portant as they are, obscure the central
facts of our times in the last quarter of the
20th Century. If there is to be a future for
our Nation and its people, we must begin
now to use our vanishing landscape far
more wisely. We must have cities that
work; intelligently planned, located, and
constructed housing for all; jobs conveni-
ent to that housing; transportation which
will not consume all the world's oil; water
that is clean and in assured supply; air
that is not destructive of life; fields and
forests to maintain our agricultural con-
tributions to the world; and land for recre-
ation, for beauty, and for planned growth.
This is not an impossible dream. Yet
it is the forgotten objective of the environ-
mental movement's unfinished agenda.
For all our wondrous works, soaring visions
and earnest plans, we sometimes forget
that we depend for life itself on six inches
of soil and the fact that it rains every now
and then. Q
Lufkin, a prominent businessman in New
York City, is former Commissioner of
Environmental Protection, State of Con-
necticut, and one of the original nine-mem-
ber steering committee of Earth Day, 1970.
APRIL 1980
13
-------
Ecology
and the
Future
An Interview With
Dr. Eugene P. Odum
Ecologist Eugene Odum ilointj
research in the field with small
animal ti';ip
You are on the Advisory
Board of Earth Day this
year. What is the value of this
event to public education?
A
It could be a time to re-
assess successes and fail-
ures in regard to maintaining
and improving environmental
quality. It's a good ten years
since the first Earth Day. Is the
road ahead any clearer than it
was ten years ago? That's the
question. At the time of the first
Earth Day there was a vague
feeling that things were getting
bad but it wasn't clearly under-
stood then that environmental
deterioration was connected in
with many of the other ills of
mankind, such as waste of en-
ergy, the gap between the rich
and poor in undeveloped coun-
tries, etc. So I think that 1980 is
a very opportune time to re-
assess, to see what the next
decade will present. Of course.
in my opinion, the 1970's were
the years of awareness, and
the 19 80'swill be when we
really begin to do something
about the long-range problems.
VX With efforts such as the
first Earth Day and envi-
ronmental education, has the
foundation been laid for an
environmental ethic in this
society?
A
Surely. An environmental
ethic as an extension of
personal ethics was laid out
many years ago by Aldo Leo-
pold in his famous essay, "The
Land Ethic." Usually, ethical
behavior follows, or has to go
along with some actual politi-
cal and economic action, which
serves to back up public opinion
once it has formed. Ethics, as
yet, has not had a big influence
on preservation of environmen-
tal quality because environmen-
tal values that benefit the public
rather than the individual, such
as the life-support value of air,
water, wetlands, and forests,
are not in the economic market
system. Our big problem for the
next decades is how to get the
goods and services of nature
properly coordinated with the
goods and services that are
man-made. Our present eco-
nomic system, of whatever
political stripe, tends to put a
really inflated value on anything
made by man and almost no
value on equally important
things made by nature. Obvi-
ously, a general acceptance of
Leopold's environmental ethic
will help correct this inequity,
but I don't see it happening
until non-market values and
esthetics become part of eco-
nomic and political ethics as
well.
Q
How do you account for
the limited support for land
use planning, certainly at
the national level ?
/\ You understand, of
course, that there is a lot of
support in Europe and in the
more crowded parts of this
country. I think it's simply that
in the U.S. as a whole we are
still in the pioneer stages. The
development of society, as well
as nature, goes through stages.
First in the development se-
quence is the pioneer period
when you exploit and you have
more resources than you can
use. There is no incentive for
any kind of conservation. Na-
ture behaves in the same way at
the beginning. If you put some
few organisms in a new pond,
they grow like mad and they use
up everything they can. When
they encounter limits, they start
conserving, using energy effi-
ciently, and recycling vital ma-
terials, and this signifies the
beginning of the mature or sec-
ond stage of development. So,
it's simply that the U.S. is just
beginning to enter the phase of
being a mature society which
has to put more and more of its
energy and economics into
maintenance, planning, and
growth in quality, and less into
promoting sheer growth in size.
The commonly heard argu-
ment about growth vs. no-
growth is not very rewarding. A
better subject for discussion
would involve by what means
do we make the transition from
haphazard growth to differenti-
ated growth that maintains
quality and equity. Or, to put it
in the developmental context,
how to make the transition from
pioneer to mature stage—a
transition that must involve
serious planning because so-
ciety, unlike most natural sys-
tems, is so highly charged,
energy-wise, that it will tend to
overshoot bounds rather than
adjust naturally to them unless
overshoot is anticipated and
strong negative feedback con-
trol instigated well before the
crisis.
The Colorado Front Range is
a good example of how quickly
attitudes can change in a region.
A decade ago no political leader
in Colorado would dare men-
tion the phrase "land-use plan-
ning" if he expected to remain
in office. But after 10 years of
haphazard mushroom growth,
air and water pollution, loss of
agricultural land, threatened
water shortages, and the pros-
pect of losing the highly valued
"western lifestyle," the Gov-
ernor of Colorado now has
enough public backing at least
to establish a State planning
commission, even though it, as
yet, has no power. So a start is
made. In New England, of
course, this shift in attitude
occurred earlier, so it's fairly
safe to talk about environmental
planning in that region. I pre-
dict at least a start on this will
be made at the national level
sometime in the 1980's.
Q
What is a good example
in Europe where land use
planning seems to work?
A
Well, England, and the
Low Countries (Belgium,
Luxembourg, and the Nether-
lands) are good examples.
There is an established tradition
in these countries for preserv-
ing villages, for keeping cities
livable, for providing green
belts and parks in urban cen-
ters, and so on. People are
already adapting to living in the
steady state in the sense that
they are not bucking for huge
increases in population or on
the laying down of endless con-
crete. We should not only profit
from European experience, but
also get a little ahead of the job
because the transition in Europe
didn't start soon enough to
avoid some environmental
stress. I believe Americans can
now begin to realize that plan-
ning is good business and not
something that's radical or un-
American, and that the public
good and the private good now
have to be matched.
Do you see any big gaps
in the American public's
understanding of the natural
environment and its im-
portance?
f\ Yes. The big gap is that
the public, as well as many
technologists, does not under-
stand that very large areas of
natural systems and agricultural
systems are necessary to pro-
vide the life-support for high-
energy urban-industrial sys-
tems. Too often environmental
problems are looked upon as
cases to solve one at a time or
after the fact. We must move
rapidly from looking only at im-
pacts on trees, as it were, to
looking at the forest as a whole.
The theory that the whole is
more than the sum of the parts
is not only an ecological para-
digm, but common sense wis-
dom as well. Everybody knows
it's true, but scientists, tech-
nologists, and bureaucrats, in
I i
EPA JOURNAL
-------
general, do not practice it be-
cause they are so wedded to the
Reductionist approach and lab-
oratory science that they miss
the real world, which is not
made up of uncoordinated
pieces and cannot be studied
in a laboratory.
Q
I thought they were start-
ing down that road in clean-
ing up the Great Lakes.
A
Yes, this is a good exam-
ple where dealing with the
whole watershed system does
pay off; in fact it's the only
approach that will work. It's just
that we shouldn't wait until
things get so bad before we act.
The fact that the Great Lakes
proved to be a remarkably well-
buffered system, able to take a
great deal of stress and then re-
cover when given half a chance,
is in itself proof of the tre-
mendous resilience of the nat-
ural environment.
\OC Related to this, why
should the average citizen
take the trouble to know
anything about ecology and
natural systems?
A
That's the beauty of it.
When you come to looking
at the whole, the public already
knows a lot. I once wrote an
'article called "Common Sense
Ecology," which points out that
most all the basic principles of
ecology can be expressed in
age-old common sense wisdom.
For example, the energy laws,
as they apply to man and nature,
can be expressed in a simple
common sense statement:
"Haste makes waste." When
you've got lots of cheap energy
(as we had for a short period in
this century), you haste and you
waste. But when supplies get
short and expensive, you'd
better stop hasting in order to
stop wasting. For example, we
don't need to rush into panicky
energy development programs
that cost billions if we stop
wasting the already available
energy. The new sources will
come in time. Atomic energy,
for example, needs more time
for removing the flaws. It's not
ready now. The public can un-
derstand this. Another common
sense dictum related to ecologi-
cal concepts is: "Don't put all
your eggs in one basket." It's
dangerous to depend only on
automobiles for transportation.
It's dangerous to depend only
on one strain of corn for the en-
tire agriculture. Monoculture, in
general, invites boom-and-bust
and that's not hard to under-
stand; you don't have to be a
technologist to understand that
some reasonable amount of di-
versity and choice is desirable.
It is simply that our obsession
with fancy technology has
blinded us to the overall truth
about life, the truths then tran-
scend all that is artificial and
superficial.
\Oc 'n terms of meeting
the energy needs of this
country, I gather that you see
conservation as first priority.
A
Yes, but I just wrote an
article called "There Is Some
Good News About Energy"
which suggests that "conserva-
tion" is the wrong word to use.
It puts people down. When you
say "conservation" the man on
the street says, "Well, you
mean I gotta do without." Pro-
fessionals define conservation
to mean "wise use of re-
sources" but to the public it
means, "do without." So, I be-
lieve we should talk about
"energy thrift" instead of en-
ergy conservation—that is,
reducing waste and becoming
more efficient, "Get more dol-
lars out of a BTU" would be a
good slogan for a national goal.
If we do this we won't have to
do without anything that is
really important. The U.S. gets
only half the money (GNP) out
of a unit of energy as does West
Germany and Japan. We can
become more efficient and
easily reduce per capita con-
sumption from the present high-
ly inflated level and thereby
reduce the need to import
energy, and at the same time
have a strong economy, less in-
flation, and a better environ-
ment since reducing waste
reduces pollution. All this is
well documented in the recently
released landmark National
Academy of Sciences study
titled "Energy in Transition,"
soon to be available in
paperback.
Let's take gasohol. I believe
anyone can see that in the long
run making alcohol out of high-
grade food is inefficient. Food
is too valuable to burn! It's like
throwing your furniture in the
fire to warm your house tem-
porarily, knowing you are going
to need that furniture for other
purposes later. Now if alcohol
can be made from ivasfe agri-
culture or forest products then
it can contribute to stretching
petroleum. Converting corn
grown with a high expenditure
of fossil fuel is obviously a
short-term political expedient
that offers no lasting solution
since you are in effect using up
more high quality energy than
you gain. And this is an im-
portant principle—there must
be a net energy gain or the proc-
ess will not survive in either
man's or nature's realm. These
are not difficult principles to
talk about. It's simply that
energy source minus energy
used to convert it must be a
positive number. It doesn't re-
quire knowledge of all kinds of
little animals or details of biol-
ogy or details of physics to
comprehend this. The holistic
part of ecology is, in this con-
text, easy, perhaps 3rd or 4th
grade level. And I'm pleased to
see that EPA is moving to put
more holistic principles into
practice; just recently EPA's
Washington office has issued a
notice asking for proposals
from universities for establish-
ing an "Ecosystem Research
Center."
VOC During Earth Day 10
years ago some scientists
voiced the fear that we
were an endangered species.
Is there greater optimism
about us and the environment
today? Are you optimistic?
A
I'm more optimistic be-
cause of progress we've talked
about and the changes in
public attitudes that are evi-
dent. The short term dangers
such as nuclear war, climate
changes, and the like are very
serious, of course. And I think
waste-prone civilization is al-
ready endangered and will
gradually be replaced by more
efficient and prudent societies.
In the last decade, authors and
learned committees who write
speculative books about the
future have attracted much at-
tention. These range from Her-
man Kahn who promotes a
glorious future for everybody
to Edward Goldschmidt who
says the world is already over-
crowded and must depopulate.
The series of "Club of Rome"
reports issued over the past
10 years is, I believe, the
most interesting and thought-
ful analysis of the "predica-
ment of man." The first re-
port entitled, "The Limits to
Growth" had a tremendous
impact. There was much hand-
wringing, denying, and misin-
terpretation, but it was really
intended to show what might
happen if we didn't make some
changes, and not a prediction of
of doomsday as such. The later
Club of Rome reports have tried
to answer the question, "How
can we prevent the boom and
the bust?" What kind of pro-
cedures? How can we plan a
little or create a mood to plan
on a global level?
What do we need to do
to insure that civilization will
survive?
/Y The latest Club of Rome
report, prepared by social
scientists and philosophers,
is called "The Human Gap."
It simply points out that the
greatest threat worldwide is
the widening gap between rich
and poor. The deleterious envi-
ronmental and social effect of
this widening gap is tremen-
dous and very frightening.
Democracy cannot work if the
rich-poor gap is very large —
Iran is a good example — be-
cause the masses of people, if
poor, will not vote for a demo-
cratic government. They want a
dictator to redistribute the
wealth down to them. It's a di-
rect challenge to the wide-
spread Western belief that
wealth will trickle down and
that technology will eliminate
every limit in nature. Intense,
energy-consuming civilization
can only exist if we maintain
the quality of the oceans, the
air, and the masses of the nat-
ural vegetation like tropical for-
ests since these are the buffers.
sinks, and recyclers that keep
things orderly despite the dis-
order that is inherent in man-
made creations. There are no
known technological substitutes
of these life-supporting "goods
Continued to page 40
APRIL 1980
-------
-------
Mountain
Monitor
While environmental activists
are rarely paid for their work,
few knowingly endure financial
hardship in order to participate
in environmental activities.
OneoftheseraritiesisRick
Webb, who is project coordina-
tor for the Mountain Stream
Monitors, a citizen
water quality monitoring project
in West Virginia. Normally a
construction worker and part-
time farmer in central West Vir-
ginia, Webb found that he could
not continue his regular work
and lead the monitoring
prog ram at the same time.
"Since I've started Mountain
Stream Monitors, my other jobs
have gone on hold," says Webb.
"I get a small salary as head of
the project, but it is really only
a part-time salary for full-time
work. The result is that my
family and I live in a half-built
house.
"Mountain Stream Monitors
was formed because we have
seen how coal mining has de-
graded water quality in other
parts of West Virginia, and we
wanted to make sure the same
thing didn't happen here."
"We're not against mining.
We oniy want it done in an
environmentally acceptable
manner. If we fail to control
acid mine drainage at the start,
the result is perpetual acid
drainage and a perpetual
problem."
One of the major problems,
Webb felt, was a lack of accu-
rate data on the effects of mine
drainage on water quality. "A
centralized agency like the
State Water Resources Admin-
istration cannot efficiently col-
lect the data," says Webb, "but
citizens living around the State
can do the job."
Webb and other interested
persons sold the idea of the
monitoring program to both the
State and to EPA. In order to
help them get started, EPA
awarded a grant for the project
to purchase water monitoring
and analytical equipment. Fur-
ther grants have helped defray
some of the administrative
costs of the project.
Work started on the Little
Birch watershed in central West
Virginia. Volunteers took water
samples from 50 locations
along the stream. The samples
were used to identify areas of
high pollution, which were fur-
ther investigated in order to
locate exact sources of mine
drainage. Volunteer monitors
then undertook long-term sam-
pling at permanent locations
near the pollution sources. A
similar procedure has been
used on the Little Kunawha, the
Salt Lick, the Elk and the
Gauley Rivers.
"The results of our work are
turned over to the State," says
Webb. "The data have been used
to support Section 208 (of the
Clean Water Act) water quality
management planning, the issu-
ance of discharge permits, and
management of the Federal
Surface Mining Act.
"Ourgoal is to insure that
any official decision which will
result in environmental harm
will be made with full public
understanding of the conse-
quences."
According to Webb, the
monitoring data have been
instrumental in ending or pre-
venting pollution on several
occasions.
When asked why he does it,
Webb replies, "I believe citi-
zens should take a stewardship
role in protecting the environ-
ment."
The results suggest that
for West Virginia streams
Webb might well be one of the
chief stewards.
A Citizen's
Grit
For people living on an island
near Portland, Ore., air pollu-
tion from the nearby Carborun-
dum plant had always been a
nuisance. Airborne grit would
accumulate on window sills and
porches, and would be tracked
onto rugs inside the mobile
homes where most of the island
residents live. On Hayden
Island, in the Columbia River
between Vancouver, Wash.,
and Portland, pollution from the
plant was something you just
had to live with. No one liked
the situation, but no one—or so
it would seem—was willing to
do anything about it.
That all changed when one
Hayden Island resident, Mrs.
Douglas Kemper, thought to
herself, "If the air pollution is
dirtying my porch and my rugs,
what is it doing to me?"
From that moment on,
Kemper became an environ-
mental activist.
It was a role for which
Kemper had no preparation. She
was not a member of any envi-
ronmental group, she had no
experience with citizen activ-
ism, and she didn't even know
which agencies enforced pollu-
tion control regulations. As one
government air pollution com-
pliance officer later remarked
about her, "You couldn't have
found anyone who knew less
about it than she did."
All Kemper knew was
that it seemed wrong that her
fellow residents of the Hayden
Island mobile home park and
people using the adjacent
pleasure boat marina should
havetoendurethefalloutof
particulate matter from the
Carborundum plant.
One problem Kemper
had to overcome was that she
and the other people on Hayden
Island lived in Oregon, but the
Carborundum plant was in Van-
couver, on the Washington side
of the Columbia River. Thus,
the source of the problem in one
State was harming people in
another State.
After learning all she could
about the situation—familiar-
izing herself with applicable
laws and regulations, studying
ambientair quality data, read-
ing about emission control tech-
nology, and reviewing pollution
control work already under-
taken by the Carborundum
factory's management—she
played a major role in setting up
a series of productive meetings
with the Kennecott Corporation,
the owner and operator of the
Carborundum plant, and State
and local air pollution control
agencies on both sides of the
Columbia.
By now people were listening
to Kemper. She had not
only done her homework, she
also demonstrated to Kennecott
and to the government agencies
that she had the support of more
than 800 other persons who had
signed a petition she had circu-
lated. The petition prompted
the Oregon Department of Envi-
ronmental Quality to offer com-
ments on clean-air strategies
being developed by the neigh-
boring State of Washington for
control of air pollution in the
Vancouver area.
Kemper's efforts helped
spur a recent announcement by
Kennecott Corporation that it
will spend $8 million to control
particulate emissions from the
plant in Vancouver.
Kemper was right:
pollution is something you
don't have to live with.
Clearing a Way
In recent years there has been
a growing awareness that in
many instances people can
make more progress by working
with nature instead of trying to
completely master natural
forces.
An example is the work
of George R. Palmiter, who last
APRIL 1980
17
-------
year received a $ 10,000 Rocke-
feller public-service award for
his long-standing and success-
ful demonstration of how some
rivers clogged with debris and
subject to damaging floods can
be controlled without being
destroyed.
Palmiter, a 50-year-old rail-
road brakeman, hunter, and fish-
erman who lives in Montpelier,
Ohio, began to experiment with
his technique on northwestern
Ohio's St. Joseph River during
a duck-hunting trip in 1959.
The river, he recalls, was so
jammed with trees that had
fallen into it that he could not
get his canoe through. He began
carrying a bow saw with him to
clear passages, and in the fol-
lowing years he noted that the
river had begun to enlarge the
cuts he had made.
In 1971 the St. Joseph and
the neighboring Tiffin River be-
came plugged with fallen elms
killed by the Dutch elm disease.
With a group of canoeists and
hunters he had organized, Mr.
Palmiter opened the worst jams
on the St. Joseph, and in 1975
persuaded local officials to try
his approach on stretches total-
ing 80 miles along both
streams.
Stream channelization was
the alternative, an expensive
process of straightening and
deepening streams with heavy
equipment. The process often
turns into little more than a
sterile ditch a stream abounding
with fish and providing habitat
for a wide variety of life in
woods and shrubbery along its
banks.
With an $80,000 grant from
Federal Soil Conservation
Service funds, Palmiter hired
44 unemployed workers and
completed the job. The rivers
were still in their natural,
meandering state, and the farm-
ers along the flood plains, as well
as fishermen and hunters, were
happy.
Palmiter's method of flood
control costs about $1,000 a
mile; stream channelization can
cost 100 times that.
The success of the St.
Joseph-Tiffin project resulted in
Palmiter's supervising a
similar cleanup of 53 miles of
Ohio's Blanchard, the river that
inspired the nostalgic song,
"Down by the Old Mill Stream."
That effort was paid for with a
$32,000 Federal grant {Com-
prehensive Employment Train-
ing Act), and the workers in-
cluded 1 6 high school dropouts.
Getting Results
EPA Region 5 officially recog-
nized David Comey's work in
1974 when he was given the
First Annual Environmental
Quality Award "for services
that have immeasurably im-
proved the design and safety
review of nuclear reactors." At
that point he had been active in
the environmental movement
for six years. In 1968 Comey
had assumed leadership of a
New York group, the Citizens
Committee to Save Cayuga
Lake. The organization was
founded to deal with the pro-
posed siting of a nuclear reactor
on the lake by New York State
Electric and Gas.
Comey's first maneuver as
chairman gave a glimpse into
his creative and aggressive way
of dealing with his "opposi-
tion." Comey located the chil-
dren of the power company's
board of directors by searching
through the attendance rosters
at all the prestigious eastern
prep schools. He began meeting
with them, furnishing them with
reports on the possible environ-
mental problems that could be
created by siting a power plant
on the beautiful Cayuga Lake.
An army of convinced environ-
mentalists arrived home for
Christmas, Comey got a meet-
ing with the board directly, and
within two months the utility
withdrew its application.
New York State Electric and
Gas revived the plan ten years
later but quickly abandoned
Cayuga Lake as a possibfe site
when Comey threatened to
move back east. He had moved
to Chicago in 1970. Comey be-
came Director of Environmental
Research at Businessmen for
the Public Interest, a Chicago
public interest law firm. In this
position he assembled a crew of
summertime students of law,
science, medicine, and engi-
neering who collected data on
scores of major Lake Michigan
polluters. The resulting reports
led the way to a toughening of
the discharge permits that were
just beginning to be issued by
EPA. He also began to focus on
toxic substances, a subject
which appeared on the agenda
of other organizations years
later. Comey always seemed to
be asking the important ques-
tions about issues long before
they were considered by envi-
ronmental decision-makers. His
early concern for the still un-
resolved question of nuclear
waste disposal testifies to this
foresight.
Throughout his environmen-
tal career Comey remained con-
cerned and active in the nuclear
power controversy. He zeroed
in on nuclear safety, emergency
core cooling systems, pipe
welds, etc. Comey's next target
was the permissible level of
radioactive discharge; then
waste disposal; and finally the
jugular vein of the industry—
the cost effectiveness of nuclear
power compared to conven-
tional power plants.
He was chairman of EPA's
Carcinogen Policy Work Group,
and he served on many key
government scientific advisory
panels.
On Jan. 5, 1979, Comey was
driving on icy roads in Wiscon-
sin. He accidentally swerved
into another lane of traffic and
met an untimely death at age
44. As his eulogy stated,
"We are all saying David
will be missed. We are all
understating."
Noise Concern
Frank Sordyl's involvement in
the war against noise pollution
was prompted by an extreme,
personal irritation. Soon after
he moved into his home in sub-
urban Maryland, he found that
he was living under the flight
path for aircraft using Washing-
ton National Airport. The dis-
ruptions caused by the air traffic
made it difficult for him either
to enjoy the stereo system that
he built himself or to relax and
watch television. Furthermore,
his job as a biologist at the
National Institutes of Health
required that he keep up with
current literature in his field,
and he found it virtually impos-
sible to concentrate on his read-
ing because of the bothersome
noise.
Aside from the personal
aggravation caused by the over-
flights, Sordyl was also aware
of the harmful effects excessive
noise can have on humans.
These concerns moved him to
action. Because Maryland did
not have a citizen's organiza-
tion of its own, he started
working with a group called
Virginians for Dulles, which,
among other things, pushed for
a more evenly divided use of
the two major airports in the
Washington, D.C. area.
Sordyl also began to realize
the need for a Maryland organi-
zation that would demonstrate
the concern of its residents on
this issue and could quickly
respond to pronouncements
made by the Federal Aviation
Administration and area offi-
cials. Acting as one of the prime
movers in the development of
just such a volunteer organiza-
tion, he was instrumental in
forming Maryland Citizens
Concerned About Aircraft
Noise.
While working on the forma-
tion of the volunteer group,
Sordyl's vision of the enormity
of the noise problem expanded.
In essence, what he initially
sawasonlya personal problem
at the local level suddenly be-
came everyone's problem at the
national level. No longer was it
solely aircraft that disturbed
him, but everything infringing
upon peace and quiet. There
was, as he saw it, a need for a
national citizens' organization
EPA JOURNAL
-------
devoted to the protection of all
Americans from excessive
noise.
A major breakthrough came
in May, 1979, at the Commu-
nity Noise Symposium in
Washington, D.C., which was
sponsored by the National In-
formation Center for Quiet. The
symposium brought together
people from all over the country
who were involved in public
efforts to reduce noise levels.
Together with these concerned
citizens, Sordyl formed an ad
hoc committee charged with
the mission of organizing a na-
tional volunteer organization
against noise. As chairman of
that committee, he immediately
began to develop the structure
of such a group and in August
the National Alliance for
Quieter Communities was in-
corporated and he was named
Treasurer.
Although Frank Sordyl has
not yet been successful in cur-
tailing the aircraft traffic over
his Mary land home, he still be-
lieves that his volunteer efforts
have had a significant effect on
his personal growth and devel-
opment. He remarks, "I used to
view myself as somewhat of an
introvert who was uncomfort-
able dealing with large numbers
of people. My involvement with
noise control groups has made
me more assertive, more con-
fident that I have something of
substance to contribute."
After he retires from the
National Institutes of Health in
the spring of 1 980, he says he
plans to devote his full time to
volunteer work. His immediate
concern will be to arrange the
first conference for the National
Alliance for Quieter Communi-
ties. Always the fighter against
what he calls the "What can I
do alone?" syndrome, Frank
Sordyl will continue to spend
as much time and energy as
needed to motivate people to
protest excessive and
unnecessary noise.
Defending a
River
In the early 1 960's, the press
called her "the fiery housewife
from Micanopy." An associate
says, "She has turned arm-
twisting into an art form." The
"she" referred to is Marjorie
Carr, a defender of the environ-
ment and champion of free-
flowing streams. Largely
through her efforts, the Cross
Florida Barge Canal, called the
"wicked ditch" by some, is dis-
credited and about to be aban-
doned. Work on the canal was
stopped in 1971 when President
Nixon ordered a complete halt
to canal construction, saying
the free-flowing Oklawaha River
would be irreparably damaged
and the canal lacked economic
justification. The Florida legis-
lature voted in May, 1979, to
terminate the project. The U.S.
Congress has before it a bill to
deauthorize the barge canal.
Approval of the measure would
mark the end of a long, hard-
fought battle begun by
Carr in 1962. The canal—
nearly one-third complete—
would be dismantled and the
Oklawaha restored and made
a part of the National Wild and
Scenic Rivers System.
It all began at an Audubon
Society meeting in Gainesville
in November, 1962. A speaker
from the Florida Game and
FreshWater Fish Commission
was discussing the route of the
proposed canal. It was the first
time Carr had heard that the
beautiful Oklawaha lay right
in the canal's path.
Immediately, she sent a letter
to the U.S. Army Corps of Engi-
neers. The reply declared her
fears were groundless—that the
river would "be left intact ex-
cept the part between Sharpes
Ferry and Rodman Dam."
"It was like saying that one
is just going to cut off the
rooster's tail—right behind the
head," Carr said. "That 45-mile
stretch was the heart of the
river."
Moving quickly, Carr
organized a "Save the Okla-
waha" group within the Alachua
County Audubon Society. The
members copied maps of the
canal route and mailed them
throughout the State of Florida.
They wrote their Congressmen
and State officials.
The only thought at first was
to reroute the canal and save
the river. But an examination of
the Corp's predicted cost-bene-
fit ratios prompted the group to
attack on other fronts.
"The more we looked,"
Carr said, "the more we knew
that the canal would not be
justified from an economic or
any other standpoint."
The movement grew. At a
public hearing in Tallahassee in
1 966 more than 350 persons
representing every major envi-
ronmental organization in the
Nation were on hand. And,
perhaps the first time in Florida
conservation history, people
from the Florida Keys were
talking to persons from the
Panhandle and discussing the
formation of a united front.
By now, however, the
dredges were chewing their
way up the Oklawaha Valley.
The Rodman Dam closed on a
1 5-mile stretch of the river and
great trees which had been
washed into the muck of the
valley popped to the surface.
Others left standing in water
began to die. Water weeds
spread over the stagnant, rising
pool. These scenes of environ-
mental destruction were re-
layed to the people of Florida
by the news media and public
opinion clearly was on the side
of the canal opponents.
By this time Carr and
her colleagues had drawn sup-
port from the Environmental
Defense Fund. The EOF filed
suit in Federal court charging
the Army Engineers with violat-
ing the constitutional rights of
the people of the United States
by destruction of natural
resources.
Others would ally themselves
with Carr and her successful
cause.
Marjorie Carr would be the
first to say she didn't do it all.
But she was the catalyst. She
put together the Florida De-
fenders of the Environment
(FDE) in 1969, a volunteer or-
ganization that has prepared
and presented hundreds of spe-
cial reports on the barge canal
project. It was she who brought
together scientists and environ-
mental experts from Florida and
the rest of the Nation to suc-
cessfully combat the canal.
Soon, it is hoped, the Oklawaha
once again will run free. But
Marjorie Carr can't relax. Other
rivers—the Apalachicola, the
Withlacoochee, and the Su-
wannee—all need her help.
Grassroots
Clout
One of the biggest events in
Oregon in the 1970's was the
State's enactment of the "bottle
bill," and when Oregonians
began looking around for some-
one to congratulate for the ac-
complishment, one man didn't
want to accept any credit. He
was Rich Chambers, the Saiern
businessman generally ac-
knowledged to be the person
who in 1 968 first advanced the
idea of requiring deposits on all
beverage containers.
"I am in no way qualified for
such an award," Chambers de-
clared when he learned he was
being considered for public rec-
ognition. "Don Waggoner . . .
should receive primary con-
sideration."
It was more than modesty that
prompted Chambers to recom-
mend Waggoner for Oregon's
highest award for environmen-
tal achievement.
Don Waggoner, as the presi-
dent of the Oregon Environmen-
tal Council, was responsible—
said Chambers—for organizing
grassroots support and provid-
ing "bottle bill" advocates with
the ammunition needed to get
the measure enacted into law.
Waggoner had organized a
well-documented litter survey
that showed most of Oregon's
roadside trash was made up of
beverage cans and bottles.
Those findings were more con-
vincing to State legislators than
the testimony of bottlers and
representatives of the container
industry who had descended on
the State Capitol to argue
against the legislation.
Observers who closely fol-
lowed the situation can say that
Waggoner's litter survey was
the turning point in securing
APRIL 1980
19
-------
In each of these areas, a uniform re-
search approach is being pursued. Sources
of causes of these problems are being in-
vestigated to see how pollutants interact
with the Bay's ecosystem. Systems are
being set up for collecting, measuring, and
managing various types of environmental
and other related data. Finally, control
methods and alternatives for correcting the
problems are being investigated.
Providing the framework for the optimum
use of research results is the Environmental
Quality Management Study. For each of the
three technical problem areas, it is describ-
ing the management network currently in
place on the Bay. That is, the roles and
responsibilities of government agencies in
the management of submerged aquatic
vegetation, nutrients, and toxics are being
defined. Later the Bay management agen-
cies will be reviewed and catalogued, and
the effectiveness of existing Bay manage-
ment mechanisms will be analyzed. The
effort is to assure that all the related com-
ponents of the Bay Program work together
smoothly and efficiently to achieve the
objective of a better Bay. The management
program includes tasks to support and
refine the existing management strategies
and to analyze alternative scenarios for Bay
management.
Another aspect deals with public par-
ticipation. The Program has several organ-
izations under contract to raise the level of
public awareness about the Bay, to increase
public understanding, and to involve the
public in the Program.
The EPA has awarded grants to Mary-
land, Virginia, and Pennsylvania for pro-
gram coordination and management. The
States participate in the Program's deci-
sion-making and provide staff support on
working groups that develop technical
work plans.
Vanishing Underwater Plants
The decline of submerged aquatic vegeta-
tion is a principal area of concern because
so many species depend on these plants for
food and shelter. Not only do young striped
bass and shad make use of the vegetation
for their habitat, but also the famed blue
crab needs the shelter when it is molting
and vulnerable to predators. Beds of sub-
merged grasses are a significant source of
food for waterfowl, shrimp, and fish, and
also play an important role in reducing
wave action and the speed of currents,
allowing sediments to settle out of the
water.
The Chesapeake Bay Program has a num-
ber of institutions under contract to look at
different aspects of the aquatic plant prob-
lem. The Virginia Institute of Marine
Science and the American University, for
example, are gathering information for an
inventory of the vegetation throughout the
Bay.
Johns Hopkins University is charting the
life cycles of vegetation over the past few
centuries, using core samples from the Bay
bottom. The purpose is to find any changes
in the cycles that may be linked to human
activities.
The Virginia Institute of Marine Science
is also under contract to look at the role of
eelgrass, an important factor in the ecology
of blutifish, sea trout, weakfish, and the
species they prey upon. In another project,
it is examining some aspects that deal with
the planting of new eelgrass beds.
Are toxic herbicides contributing to the
problem of disappearing underwater aquat-
ic vegetation ? The Center for Environmen-
tal and Estuarine Studies of the University
of Maryland is trying to find the answer
under another EPA contract. Part of the
study is to learn about the pathways and
mechanisms by which herbicides and sedi-
ments travel through the Bay. Finally, the
Migratory Bird and Habitat Research Lab-
oratory of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Serv-
ice has the task of pulling together the data
from these and other studies to find the
relationship of the underwater plants to
migratory water fowl, and to present a
broad picture of the vegetation, trends in
its distribution, and causes for its decline.
Excessive Nutrient Enrichment
The process of nutrient enrichment, frequent-
ly called eutrophication, is a natural process
by which nutrients are supplied to bodies
of water. However, excessive quantities of
plant-nutrient minerals, especially phos-
phorus and nitrogen, have been entering
the Bay from a variety of sources. Enriched
by these minerals, algae thrive in a number
of areas, but when they die, they rob the
water of dissolved oxygen necessary for
the survival of other marine life. Green
scum floating on the surface of the water is
one symptom, and massive fish kills can
also result. Low levels of dissolved oxygen
have been observed in certain parts of the
Bay and its tributaries, notably the Potomac
River.
Scientists are now studying historical
data to identify trends in the Bay's water
quality and how the problem relates to an
estuarine system. They also are gathering
data to provide a clear picture of current
eutrophic conditions there. From this body
of information and from projections of
population growth and urban, rural, and
industrial development, researchers expect
to correlate nutrient loads with water qual-
ity conditions. If so many acres of land are
to be developed in a given area, for exam-
ple, what changes can be expected? What
will this do to the Chesapeake?
The answers will be the tools that the
public and government officials will need to
make informed decisions affecting the
future of the Bay—not only in its water
quality but in the economic and social
future of the region. Among those institu-
tions under contract to examine the eutro-
phication problem are the Chesapeake Re-
search Consortium, looking into historical
data and defining needs for future research
on the Bay; the Maryland Department of
Natural Resources, evaluating available
tools for predicting eutrophication and
comparing costs and accuracy of various
models; the Virginia State Water Control
Board, engaged in similar work in its area;
and the Hampton Institute, evaluating water
quality by means of a helicopter-borne
sampling system and correlating measure-
ments with observations made by
Landsat satellite.
Toxic Chemicals
Some substances such as trace metals
occur normally in nature, but the vast
majority of toxic substances are by-prod-
ucts of industrialized society. Many pesti-
cides, herbicides, chemicals in industrial
waste streams, organic chemicals, and pe-
troleum-based products are all potentially
toxic.
These toxic chemicals enter the Bay the
same way nutrients do, from either point
sources such as industrial discharges,
spills from vessels and shoreline storage
facilities, or from non-point sources such
as farmland and paved area runoff or
atmospheric fallout.
Research is focused on obtaining infor-
mation about the sources, pathways, and
final destination of toxic substances in the
estuary. From such studies, strategies can
be designed to reduce the environmental
hazards and protect the health of the Bay.
Among the approaches to the problem,
scientists will use an inventory of industrial
sources of toxicants to identify compounds
and test their potential for being absorbed
by Bay organisms. The Virginia Institute of
Marine Science under one contract will
identify toxics in sediments and oysters at
various sites. (Where oysters aren't found,
they'll substitute the brackish water clam.)
20
EPAJOURNAL
-------
Three particular areas stand
out as monuments to Wayburn's
efforts:
1. .California's Redwood
National Park. Wayburn initi-
ated the effort to gain national
protection for California's
coastal redwoods (Sequoia
sempervirens) in the early
1960's and foughtforthe estab-
lishment (in 1968} of and the
enlargement (in 1978) of the
Redwood National Park.
2. California's Golden Gate
National Recreation Area. This
110,000-acre urban park began
as a Wayburn dream in the late
1940's. For more than 25 years
he worked to guarantee the pro-
tection of the Marin Headlands,
Mt. Tamalpais State Park, the
Point Reyes seashore, and ulti-
mately the 110,000 acres which
start in San Francisco and
stretch northward to form one
of the country's finest urban
parklands. Wayburn, as much
as any individual, was respon-
sible for the establishment of
the Golden Gate National Rec-
reation Area.
3. Alaska's Federal lands.
Wayburn initiated the conserva-
tionists' efforts to guarantee
protection for some of Alaska's
most magnificent wild lands
and wild animal populations.
Following Administration ac-
tion. Congress is now making
final the extent to which Federal
land in Alaska will be protected
for the public. Wayburn
is continuing to spearhead the
drive to achieve maximum pro-
tection for this significant na-
tional treasure.
It was during a wilderness
hike in the Sierra Mountains in
1 946 that he became aware of
"meadows eroding, trails deep-
ening, shorter grass and gar-
bage pits—a frightening change
from pre-war trips."
Awareness and a profound
concern for future threats to the
Nation's shrinking open spaces
led him to volunteer leadership
in environmental causes.
He started in 1953 as presi-
dent of the Federation of West-
ern Outdoor Clubs and has
chaired or headed nearly a
dozen major conservation or-
ganizations or causes since
then.
Pioneers in
Recycling
Ten years ago, when Cliff and
Mary Humphrey started one of
the Nation's first citizens' re-
cycling centers in Modesto,
California, they were pioneers.
What started out as a drop-off
yard has grown into a two-acre
site handling over 400 tons of
recovered materials each
month.
But the road to resource re-
covery has been difficult. Aside
from a few Federal and State
grants and some publicly-
financed employees, Hum-
phrey's Ecology Action recy-
cling center has been operating
on donations and volunteer
labor. And persistence.
"We are beginning to make a
dent in the throw-away philos-
ophy, but there is still less re-
cycling in the country now than
there was 35 years ago during
WWII," comments Cliff
Humphrey. "It hasn't been easy
to hang in there for these past
ten years, but markets are now
opening up. The wine bottle
washing plant of Encore (Envi-
ronmental Container Reuse) in
Berkeley is a good sign, as are
the plants that make insulation
from recycled newspaper."
The official name of Hum-
phrey's organization is the
Ecology Action Educational
Institute, a non-profit, educa-
tional corporation. The Insti-
tute's major project is the
operation of their multi-face:ed
recycling service in Stanislaus
County. Ecology Action was
one of the first groups in the
country to initiate the recycling
of separated domestic items
such as bottles, cans and news-
papers. In ten years of opera-
tion. Ecology Action has re-
covered over 20,000 tons of
recyclables at a market value
of $750,000.
The Humphreys first began
their recycling efforts in Berke-
ley in 1968, with a Saturday
drop-off yard program. When
they moved to Modesto in
1 970, they set up a 24-hour
drop-off yard, and soon after
developed ten drop-offs at
supermarkets throughout
Modesto. (A drop-off is where
people can leave materials to
be recycled.)
When it appeared that Ecol-
ogy Action had reached a par-
ticipation plateau, Cliff Hum-
phrey and his staff decided to
experiment with curbside
collection in hopes of increased
participation.
Ecology Action assured the
public through an annual door-
to-door campaign and city-wide
mailing that collection vehicles
would come by their houses on
a certain day. This technique
has proven very effective. Ecol-
ogy Action also sponsors vari-
ous events—a bikathon, canoe
races, and picnics—both for
publicity and to raise funds for
the recycling project.
Over the last ten years. Ecol-
ogy Action has received approx-
imately $70,000 in donations
from the community. Over the
same period of time, they have
received two environmental
education grants from the
Department of Health, Educa-
tion, and Welfare, and one
EPA implementation grant
totaling $80,000. Before they
received the $ 1 00,000 grant
this year from the State of Cali-
fornia, Ecology Action was
operating on a $20,000 emer-
gency grant from the City of
Modesto (the first of that sort)
as well as donations from a
community fund-raising
campaign.
There is an air of optimism
from Ecology Action's recycling
center, although the hard work
and dedication are still needed.
For Cliff and Mary Humphrey
and the Ecology Action staff,
the rewards of running the re-
cycling center—sticking with it
for ten years—have been tre-
mendous. It is still functioning,
and growing in terms of the
quantity being recycled. This
growth is attributable to Cliff
Humphrey's persistence, and
the public's acceptance. For
many citizens of Modesto, re-
cycling has become a part of
their lifestyle.
Cliff Humphrey is also work-
ing as a consultant for the city
of San Francisco on an imple-
mentation plan and pilot project
for recycling. His interests in
future recycling include the
return of the organic part of
solid waste to the land and the
reuse of construction and dem-
olition debris.
Volunteer
Lobbyist
When the Washington Environ-
mental Council last year ac-
claimed Tom Wimmer as the
State's "environmentalist of the
decade," the Council could just
as easily have cited him as be-
ing the "environmentalist of the
last quarter century." It was at
least 25 years ago that Wimmer,
a Seattle businessman and an
avid sports fisherman, began
working as a citizen activist to
improve the State of Washing-
ton's ability to clean up water
pollution and protect water
quality.
Today, in 1980, people in
Washington are still enjoying
the benefits of the work started
by Tom Wimmer in the 1950's.
Success was slow in coming.
One of his first campaigns—to
block Tacoma City Light's plans
to dam the Cowlitz River for
hydroelectric power—was un-
successful. But his work drew
recognition and, more impor-
tantly, converts to the cause of
conservation.
In 1 955, as chairman of the
pollution committee of the
Washington State Sportsmen's
Council, Wimmer helped draft
a bill that would amend existing
State pollution laws. The bill
was the work of Wimmer and
two or three other individuals
who wanted some answers.
"We just wanted to clarify
what pollution was, and asked
for a permit for anyone dis-
charging pollution into the
water," Wimmer recalls. "And
we wanted to define 'pollution.'
What was it? ... We wanted to
define the term."
The bill emerged from the
Legislature in the State Capitol
in Olympia as a statute that
APRIL 1980
-------
required, for the first time, per-
mits from anyone discharging
pollutants into the waters of the
State.
After that early triumph,
Wimmer devoted increasingly
more time to being a volunteer
lobbyist in Olympia. Through-
out the 1960's and into the
1970's Wimmer was respon-
sible—probably as much as
any single person—for passage
of bond issues, statutes, and
initiatives that have given
Washington its strong founda-
tion of environmental law to
deal with preservation of water
quality. One statewide initia-
tive allowed taking unreclaimed
gasoline taxes to purchase ma-
rine shorelands for public use.
Two bond issues were passed
for construction of water pollu-
tion control facilities. Statutes
were enacted that set unlimited
liability for oil spills, that cre-
ated a water resource manage-
ment program, and set up fund-
ing for the wildlife management
of non-game species. The
Legislature enacted the Water
Resources Management Act of
1971, the State's Forest Prac-
tices Act, the Marine Mammal
Protection Act, and the State
Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.
Intheearly 1970's, Wimmer
—who in 1968 had become a
founder and the first president
of the Washington Environmen-
tal Council—provided the push
that led to the enactment of the
Shoreline Management Act as
the result of a State-wide initia-
tive in 1972. Regarded by en-
vironmentalists as one of the
achievements of which they are
most proud, the Shoreline Man-
agement Act set up State guide-
lines for the development of
shoreline property throughout
the State.
Joan Thomas, the current
president of the Washington
Environmental Council, says
this about Tom Wimmer: "The
dedication of a man who got
involved initially because he
loves to fish for steelhead trout
is an example that has inspired
two generations of environ-
mentalists in the State of
Washington."
A City's Trees
Hattie Carthan describes herself
as "just an old lady born with
the century" but to the people
of Bedford-Stuyvesant in
Brooklyn she is a dream maker
and a dream fulfiller.
In 1964 Carthan noticed her
block of Vernon Avenue was
deteriorating and decided to
meet the challenge of revitaliz-
ing a neighborhood. She began
her work by talking to her neigh-
bors and forming a block asso-
ciation. Carthan's first plan to
plant trees met with little enthu-
siasm but through perseverance
her idea took hold. Then people
on other blocks, witnessing the
success of the Vernon Avenue
Association, decided to organ-
ize. The spirit implemented by
Hattie Carthan continued to
mushroom and the Bedford-
Stuyvesant Beautification Asso-
ciation was born. By 1 970,
there were close to one hundred
block associations and the orig-
inal planting of 1 2 trees grew to
more than 1,500.
Carthan's love of trees grew
out of a special affinity she
holds for a forty-foot, 80-year-
old Magnolia grandiflora which
she watched blossom in spring,
sprout cones in autumn, and
grow gracefully old with her.
Ten years ago a Model Cities
project threatened to bulldoze
Carthan's tree. Single-handedly
this seventy-year-old woman
decided progress did not mean
destroying nature and so she
fought to stop the large tractors
from pushing it down. Carthan
convinced the city that this
magnolia, a rarity in the north-
east, should be declared a land-
mark. The city concurred with
Hattie Carthan and her tree still
stands proud in Brooklyn.
"That magnolia stands high
and mighty and beautiful for
us, but I want children to love
alt trees," Carthan explains. In
1973 an environmental group
named the Magnolia Tree Earth
Center was incorporated as a
non-profit organization. It came
about through the determination
and dedication of Hattie
Carthan and her fellow Brooklyn
dreamers. This group, consist-
ing not of scientists or sociol-
ogists but of neighbors, has
grown into an environmental
force. The Center includes pro-
grams such as school talks on
gardening and nature, after
school activities for pre-teens
and teenagers exploring natural
resources through arts and
crafts, senior citizen projects in
container gardening, and a re-
source library with environmen-
tal exhibits. The Center pro-
vides job-training programs for
people interested in the envi-
ronmental field, summer job
placement, and a career plan-
ning service. The fulfillment of
Hattie Carthan's dream is also
helping others to dream.
This spring the Magnolia
Tree Earth Center will move
into a new home. Three adjoin-
ing brownstones, which pro-
tect the Magnolia from the
north wind, are being renovated
to form one building which will
house workshops, classrooms,
exhibit halls, offices, and a
library. The construction has
been made possible by a
$250,000 Community Develop-
ment Act III Grant. When work
on the new center began Hattie
Carthan said: "I'm in seventh
heaven. I'm so gloriously
happy."
Today interest in nature is
being nurtured in the Bedford-
Stuyvesant section because of
Hattie Carthan's dream.
Prairie Camera
Patricia Duncan lives in Kansas
City, Mo., near the Flint Hills,
the largest remnant of American
ta 11 grass prairie. She's within
an easy drive of the Hills—an
arrangement that gives comfort
to those who love tallgrass
country. Duncan can no more
stay out of the prairies than can
plovers and larks, and her
camera is always with her.
"The Hills have become my
studio. As an artist, I cannot
help feeling personally respon-
sible for their preservation and
thus I have become involved,
not only esthetically, but also
scientifically, historically and
politically," says Duncan.
Pat Duncan's photographs of
the tall prairie are perhaps the
finest ever made, wrote a recent
reviewer of her work. They are
the result of a lot of travel in the
prairie in all weathers. She has
defined and captured the racing
cloud shadow, the depths of the
grasses, the low orange light of
evening and bright gold of early
morning.
Her grandmother intro-
duced her to the prairie when
Duncan was a child visiting
from Arkansas. It was the
buffalo-grass-covered prairie
of theTexas panhandle. "I never
forgot grandmother's face, her
voice, her house, and, most of
all, her wide-open landscape,"
says Duncan in her recent book,
"Tallgrass Prairie: The Inland
Sea."
Now, "everything about the
prairie is an event for me, and I
seem compelled to soliloquize
about the wonder of it. I'm al-
ways feeling my way along,
detecting new bugs, new flow-
ers, lizards, grasses, as if no
one else had ever seen them. I
EPA JOURNAL
-------
am an excited child on an
Easter egg hunt."
In 1976 an assembly of
Duncan's photographs entitled,
"The Tallgrass Prairie: An
American Landscape" began
touring the United States as a
major exhibition of the
Smithsonian Institution, and
is still on tour. Additionaliy,
her works have appeared in
books and national publications
including Readers Digest
Books/Life Nature Annual, and
the New York Times.
In Duncan's recent book, she
paints word pictures with the
same skills and sensitivity she
shows with the lens. Duncan
spent five years living and trav-
eling the last vestiges of the
once mighty prairie empire to
gather material for the book.
One of Duncan's convictions
is that a tallgrass prairie na-
tional preserve should be cre-
ated to permanently protect the
Flint Hills. She appeared with
her photographs on the NBC-TV
Today show to make the case.
A small group called "Save the
Tallgrass Prairie, Inc." has for
years worked for such a
preserve.
The Flint Hills of eastern
Kansas are the major survivor
of tall prairie in America, an
anachronism of rolling grass-
land about 50 miles wide and
200 miles long from north to
south. It qualifies as genuine
tallgrass prairie whose domi-
nant grasses include big blue-
stem and Indian grass, and
owes its survival to beds of
flinty chert that lie too close to
the surface to permit plowing.
But for that, the Flint Hills
would today be corn and wheat-
fields instead of excellent
rangeland.
With her camera and pen,
Duncan is a personal ambassa-
dor, a lobbyist, a promoter, a
seer of beauty for the prairie.
Said Stewart Udall, former
Secretary of the Interior: "Long
ago America's mountains found
their champion in John Muir.
The sea found its interpreter
much later in Rachel Carson.
And now, give thanks, what
some have called the inland sea
has at last acquired its own
authentic voice in the person of
Patricia Duncan."
She studied photography for
4 years at the Kansas City Art
Institute and is a graduate of
the School of Fine Arts at
Washington University in St.
Louis. She and her 20-year-old
son Donald recently held a
parent-son photographic exhi-
bition. Pat Duncan's husband is
an architect.
Duncan is not a trained ecol-
ogist. However, in her long
association with prairie experts,
she has learned. She relates the
facts with simplicity and direct-
ness. She knows and loves the
tallgrass prairie, and in so
doing, communicates to hun-
dreds of people the values of
this natural treasure.
Pollution Patrol
For the past nine years, William
Thomas Green has been
patrolling several Baltimore
streams looking for pollution. If
he finds it, he makes a report to
the appropriate State or local
agency and then makes sure
that officials follow up on his
call. Hisadvice is usually fol-
lowed by the professionals.
"I get along well with the city
people, and have gotten good
cooperation from both them and
the State Water Resources Ad-
ministration," says Green, of
Baltimore, Maryland. How has
he managed to do this?
The answer appears to be
that he understands the prob-
lems facing the officials respon-
sible for pollution clean up.
"The city water department
(Baltimore's) is understaffed
and underbudgeted," says
Green. "They just don't have
the manpower to monitor all the
potential troublespots."
Green's understanding of
such problems is due, in part,
to personal contact; his father
worked for Baltimore's water
department for 40 years.
Green explains that many
years ago Baltimore built major
sewer interceptor lines along
several urban streams. Because
of their age and overuse, the
lines often overflow.
When city officials are unable
to respond, Green tries to help.
At least once a week in warm
weather, and every other week
in cold weather, he inspects
the trouble areas along a three
mile stretch of Herring Run,
a stream near his home in
northeast Baltimore. He covers
a shorter stretch of the stream
several times a day while
walking his dog.
Not content with just this,
Green also skips lunch and
looks for pollution along Stoney
Run, a stream which flows near
Johns Hopkins University
where he is an electronics
technician.
"Some of the areas are so
wild, that they are almost
inaccessible. Sometimes !'ve
actually had to lead inspectors
and repair crews to the proper
place," says Green.
Both the city water depart-
ment and the Baltimore County
(where the interceptor origi-
nates) water department have
tried to help. They have pro-
vided Green with detailed plans
of their sewer systems so that
he can p:npoint problem areas
more easily.
Green's efforts have also
been recognized in a more
official manner. He has been a
part of the mayor's Herring Run
Advisory Committee since its
start, and he has also been
asked to join a special com-
mittee which will study Balti-
more's water supply streams.
But more important to Green
than the recognition is the
actual cleanup that has been
accomplished. "I have seen
minnows and crayfish in
Herring Run that weren't there
before," he says. "Although
there are still some problems,
it's much better than some of
the streams in the city which
do not have people interested
in them. They are grossly
polluted."
What made Green start his
anti-pollution patrols?
"To tell the truth," he says,
"I just hate to see things
abused."
Winning
Cooperation
In 1977, Barry Kohl, Vice
President of Orleans Audubon
Society, discovered that a 110-
acre tract of cypress-tupelo
swamp had been surrounded
with levees and was being
drained by a pump belonging
to Jefferson Parish, a south
Louisiana county.
Parish officials ignored
inquiries on the drainage sys-
tem, which was rapidly
converting a valuable wetland
to dry land marginally suitable
for private development. Kohl
sought volunteers from the
Audubon Society and Fund for
Animals, another environmental
group, and formed a team with
biological, legal, and political
expertise.
This coalition, under Kohl's
direction, discovered that the
drainage system had been
constructed fay the Parish at
about the same time that the
owner of the tract had sold an
adjacent piece of property to
local elected officials. The
group discovered that the work
had also been done without
required Federal permits.
With these facts, Kohl con-
tacted EPA and the Army Corps
of Engineers urging entorce-
ment action. Atter the parish
government defied Federal
agency demands for restoration
of the swamp to its natural
state, Kohl successfully urged
the Federal Government to
initiate enforcement litigation
against the parish.
He also convinced the
Orleans Society and the Fund
for Animals, groups which had
historically opposed Corps of
Engineers projects, to intervene
in the suit to support the posi-
tion of the Federal agencies.
During the course of the
protracted litigation, Kohl
communicated daily with
Federal officials, advising them
of new and relevant facts un-
covered by his team.
This coordinated effort of
the Federal Government and
private public interest groups
resulted in the first court-
ordered restoration of a fresh
water wetland and payment of
APRIL 1980
23
-------
a $20,000 civil penalty by
Jefferson Parish.
This favorable legal result
enjoyed great popular support,
largely because Kohl had
supplied the press with accu-
rate factual information refuting
local officials' claims of Federal
harassment.
Environmental
Achievement
Jackie Swigart, an outspoken
environmentalist, became
Kentucky's top environmental
officer recently.
Gov. John Y. Brown Jr.
named her Secretary of the
State Department for Natural
Resources and Environmental
Protection, fulfilling a cam-
paign promise to include a
woman in his cabinet.
Mrs. Swigart moved into en-
vironmental projects as a profes-
sional only after years as a
citizen activist.
She became an environ-
mentalist as a housewife. She
was active in the League of
Women Voters, citizen repre-
sentative on the Kentucky Air
Pollution Control Commission,
and an occasional project
leader.
In 1 969 she fed a march
against air pollution. She wore
a sign around her neck and a
gas mask on her face to
symbolize the problem.
Now Swigart will run the
regulatory agencies she
addressed as a citizen in
dozens of public hearings over
the years.
"I've had a lot of people say
it's nice to be able to say the
system works—that someone
can come from a citizen back-
ground and be appointed to
what is considered a high
position." she said recently.
Swigart said that both she
and Governor Brown intend to
enforce environmental laws.
She noted that the legal
framework to solve environ-
mental problems—most of it
handed down from the Federal
level—is already in place.
The task, she said, is "for
all of us—citizens, industry
and elected officials—to work
together to decide where the
balance is between economic
developmentand environmental
protection."
Swigart became a profes-
sional environmentalist in 1974
with her work on a massive
water-quality study for a four-
county area.
Last year she completed the
second phase of the study and
began to coordinate plans for
the counties to carry out the
study's recommendations.
Those who have worked
with Swigart over the years
say she has the knowledge,
skins, and patience to carry
her end of the debate—not
only on strip mining, a major
enviionmental issue in Ken-
tucky, but on the variety of
other environmental issues
likely to face Governor Brown.
In the methodical tradition of
the League of Women Voters,
Swigart is known for her
willingness to study issues in
detail.
"She does her homework,"
said Oscar Geralds, a Lexington
attorney and vice chairman of
an advisory panel Swigart
has headed. "All of us get
stacks of reports and technical
papers. But she actually reads
them."
Her patience, exhibited in
hours of work on environmental
study panels, is almost legend-
ary among industry, govern-
ment, and citizen-group leaders.
Ken Hart, a coal-industry
lobbyist and editor of The
Kentucky Coal Journal, attests
to Swigart's willingness to
compromise. "I've sort of soft-
ened to her in the last three
or four years," he said. "She
seems to be pretty fair."
"I've got to overcome the
fears of a lot of coal people
who don't know me," Swigart
said. "I'm not out to shut down
the coal industry.
"I suspect that environmen-
talists will be the group most
disappointed with me. They
expect a lot of me. I'm hoping
that they've worked with me
long enough to know how I
think."
Swigart traces her concern
for the environment to her
childhood in Excelsior, Minn.,
where she was born Jacqueline
Irons on Jan. 26, 1931 .The
town is on the southern edge of
Lake Minnetonka, 1 5 miles
from Minneapolis in what was
then countryside.
"Growing up on a beautiful
lake," she said, gave her a
passion for clean air, clean
waterand unspoiled land.
In 1950 Swigart got a
bachelor's degree in medical
technology from the University
of Minnesota. She moved to
Louisville in 1951 when her
husband, Dr. Richard H.
Swigart, was offered a teaching
job at the University of Louis-
ville School of Medicine.
In 1952, Swigart
recalled, she joined the Louis-
ville League of Women Voters.
She has served on almost
a dozen environmental study
and planning groups.
Puerto Rico
Keeping Puerto Rico's reputa-
tion as the Isle of Enchantment
has been the goal of Dr. Alberto
Hernandez.
As president of the San Juan
Lions Club's environmental
committee, Hernandez
launched a three-pronged pro-
gram geared towards providing
a healthful environment. The
program includes a cleanliness
and beautification campaign,
a campaign to preserve the
scenic town of Dorado Del Mar,
and an anti-smoking campaign.
All three elements have re-
ceived wide support.
Hernandez's dogged efforts
are best exemplified by his
clean up endeavors for "La
Perla," a slum located on
the beach of San Juan just east
of El Morro. A poor community
of approximately 3,000 inhabi-
tants housed in 884 wooden
structures it is located on 1 5
acres of land. It is one of San
Juan's poorest communities.
Few children from this district
attend school and there is a
chronic shortage of water as
well as poor sewerage facilities.
The Lions Club, spearheaded
by Hernandez, organized
a clean-up campaign that in-
cluded the cooperative efforts
of private industry and govern-
ment agencies. In addition to
beautification programs local
residents were told how to care
for their community.
A "clean-up week" was
sponsored in La Perla and a
series of activities were under-
taken to obtain widespread
citizen involvement. The people,
particularly the children and
teenagers, responded. "We
succeeded because people
came together," Hernandez
explains. "The young people
worked hard and the Lions
rewarded them with sports
equipment, clothing, and games
donated by local business.
Private concerns also provided
scores of gallons of paint for the
homes." Radio, television, and
cars equipped with loud
speakers promoted the effort.
Lions Club members wrote and
distributed flyers and can-
vassed the community giving
talks about the program. The
Humane Society and Police
Department intensified their
efforts to pick up stray dogs
and cats. Large trash containers
were distributed throughout the
community as the streets and
beaches were swept clean.
24
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Follow-up talks and contests
are held periodically in the
schools and visits are made
throughout the neighborhoods
in a concerted effort to keep
La Perla clean.
Hernandez can't solve all of
La P.erla's problems but he has
made it a pleasanter place
to live.
The "Bird Lady"
One day in 1966, Midge
Erskine and her husband were
walking around Whalen Lake in
West Texas when they noticed
a rare Whooping Crane dan-
gerously near the oil-marred
body of water. This incident
made them instantly aware of a
serious pollution threat that
plagues this part of Texas.
Increasingly on later walks she
sighted oiled and salt crusted
birds. She acted to do some-
thing about it.
Affectionately known as the
"bird lady," Midge Erskine has
almost single-handedly brought
national attention to the prob-
lems associated with brine
disposal in West Texas lakes.
Large volumes of salty brine
are produced during oil and
gas operations in this leading
energy-producing State. These
hazardous wastes threaten not
only surface water but also
groundwater—the main source
of clean water for area citizens.
Erskine began her fight by
contacting the Department of
Interior about the problem.
When she learned that there
was onlyoneagentforthearea,
she voluntarily began to make
twice-weekly checks on Whalen
Lake to care for damaged birds
and to gather invaluable infor-
mation and data.
Some time later, with the
support of the Audubon Society,
she obtained a permit from the
Department of Interior for her
work and became officially
recognized. She continued her
one-woman crusade to protect
the birds that inhabit the
Whalen Lake Area, while calling
attention to the pollution threat.
Trying to enlist additional
help and support, Erskine con-
tacted various environmental
and civic groups and mostly
ran up against lack of interest.
She didn't give up. She con-
tinued on her own.
Slowly, the worth of M idge
Erskine's work became evident.
Her carefully kept records were
the basis of her testimony
before three grand juries and
the Texas Railroad Commission
investigating the situation.
Meanwhile, an investigative
reporter wrote a story about
the problem that hit the Asso-
ciated Press wire. Erskine
contacted another environ-
mental group—the Defenders
of Wildlife in Washington. The
group sent a reporter for its
magazine to Texas and featured
a story on the pollution problem
in its April, 1978, issue. Later,
articles were written by United
Press International, the Los
Angeles Times, and the Dallas
Morning News.
Erskine spends her own
money for the total operation
of the bird sanctuary without
funding of any kind. She cares
for up to 50 birds at a time—
everything from hummingbirds
to eagles. While she is set up
to care only for birds, from time
to time she also cares for fawns
for the Texas Parks and Wildlife
Department because there's no
one else to do it.
Erskine doesn't waste words.
She says, "Birds in West Texas
are being threatened and people
must realize that birds can be
rehabilitated and saved. The
work needs to be done." She
added that the toxic threats to
birds eventually affect human
beings as well.
Summing-up her fourteen
years of effort, she says,
"Having fought so long, I under-
stand how people get discour-
aged. People need to know that
they CAN make a difference if
they will just try, and not
give up."
The Pine Barrens
A vast ecological treasure.
The most exciting biological
area along the East Coast north
of the Carolinas. A 970,000-
acre oak forest covering 17.7
billion gallons of pure ground-
water.
These are some of the
phrases that have been used to
describe the New Jersey Pine
Barrens. The effort of Carol
Barrett to protect them is an
excellent example of what
citizen activism means: vigi-
lance, hard work, coping with
frustration, and finally earning
the satisfaction of a victory.
A life-long resident of
Camden County, N.J., Barrett's
involvement in civic and envi-
ronmental organizations started
in 1971, when she joined the
Newton Creek Conservancy,
a watershed association. The
Conservancy's priority was
acquiring an 86-acre natural
woods for the Green Acres
program.
Through that effort, which
proved successful, Barrett
met environmental leaders in
her community, attended con-
ferences and seminars, and
educated citizens on ecological
systems and how to become
constructive public participants
in the governmental process.
She realized that environmental
issues were of universal
concern.
"I was determined to bring
a stronger voice to southern
New Jersey; the small volun-
teer groups locally were having
a rough time surviving. Most of
the time we felt impotent and
as realization grew of how
exceedingly important public
involvement was, I sought a
way to bring more 'clout' at
home," Barrett said.
"Although I was a member
of the Sierra Club, there was no
group active south of Princeton.
In 1 y 75 I asked the New Jersey
Chapter/Sierra Club to start
a group in the southern part of
the State. They responded by
calling a meeting of the mem-
bers of the area, and, finding
a positive reaction, established
our group."
Her election as temporary
Chairperson was soon changed
to a full two year term.
The group's territory covers
the whole of southern New
Jersey. It includes most of the
Pine Barrens.
Consisting of 1,500 square
miles remaining of originally
2,000 square miles of pine-oak
forest, the Barrens is the largest
wildland tract in the mid-
Atlantic seaboard region. It
comprises one-fifth of New
Jersey and is within easy reach
of 50 million people, many of
whom live in suburban Phila-
delphia and New York. Its
recreational, educational, and
scientific assets are tremend-
ous. The scientific community
has given world-wide attention
to its biota, including its dwarf
forests.
Barrett explained that
preserving the Pines had been
considered a local matter. "I
made the decision that I would
enlist the support of all of the
public groups and organizations
I could discover, to raise the
APRIL 1980
-------
public consciousness of the
danger to this natural resource.
Considering this was a 970,000
acre area, it had to be more
than a local concern."
"Using the resources of the
Sierra Club-tocal, State, and
national—I sent as much
information out as possible and
called for gatherings and meet-
ings for action, I used recrea-
tion activities to conduct
serious business, camping
trips, for example. For two
years, I arranged meetings, both
public and private, talked to
government agencies and
political officials, worked with
Congressmen and their staff,
developed good contacts with
the news media.
"I did everything I could
think of in order to spread the
message of Pine Barrens
preservation instead of exploi-
tive development."
She founded the Pine
Barrens Coalition which helps
provide some of the "clout"
she mentioned, while always
keeping to her goal. "There was
never any doubt in my mind
that this ecosystem belongs to
us and the future generations
for its intrinsic values."
A recent recipient of the
EPA Region 2 Certificate of
Merit, Barrett was credited
by her nominators for mobiliz-
ing vast numbers of individuals
in support of the State Senate
Omnibus Park Bill of 1978
which contained her Pine
Barrens recommendations
translated into a moratorium on
development permits. Later
that year, Barrett shifted her
attention to Washington, where
protection for the Pine Barrens
was incorporated into the U.S.
Senate Omnibus Parks Bill.
The Barrens aren't Barrett's
only interest, of course, "I am
constantly involved in the
basics of environmental prob-
lems; water quality, solid waste
management, air pollution,
sludge disposal (not the ocean,
please), open space, as well as
ocean and coastal management
and the plight of the urban
areas," she says.
Congressman James Florio
summed it up: "Her enthu-
siasm, idealism and fire,
tempered by her understanding
of political realities, have
resulted in the success of many
of her activities in the face of
seemingly overwhelming
odds."
A Personal
Reward
During World War II, Elaine
Szymoniak was assigned to a
U.S. Army hospital. Trained
in vocational rehabilitation and
audiology, her experience
working with soldiers whose
hearing had been permanently
damaged by exposure to exces-
sive noise had a profound effect
on her. So profound, in fact, that
she has since dedicated much
of her time to protecting others
from suffering similar fates.
This sense of dedication was
clearly in evidence when, as
the Ward 4 representative to
the Des Moines City Council,
she assisted in the development
of a comprehensive noise
ordinance for the city. Her
efforts on beha If of the
ordinance must be seen as one
of the major factors that led to
its adoption in January, 1979.
Many of Szymoniak's noise
control activities, however,
have not come as an elected
official, but as a volunteer.
Much of the volunteer work
that she has done has been in
conjunction with the Iowa
Speech and Hearing Associa-
tion and has been aimed at
educating the general public on
the physical and mental effects
of noise on health. During the
1960's and 1970's, she spent
considerable time addressing
civic and fraternal organiza-
tions, and schools on the noise
problem. She also helped set
up and staff clinics to provide
free hearing tests for children
and adults.
Szymoniak gets a great deal
of personal satisfaction from
seeing something good come
out of her efforts. She cites, as
an example, her work in the
early 1960's to protect people
from noise caused by jet air-
craft at the Des Moines Airport.
At the time, few people knew
how dangerous the high-pitched
roar of jet engines could be to
hearing, and as a result, airport
officials allowed people waiting
for passengers to stand out
near the runways as the jets
taxied in. Working with others
concerned about this situation,
Szymoniak put pressure on offi-
cials to eliminate this practice,
and, once convinced of the
dangers, airport officials no
longer permitted people outside
the terminal while the aircraft
were arriving.
"When you become involved
in volunteer efforts, you do not
always know from where the
rewards will come." Szymoniak
related the story of the time
she and her husband were
having a house built in Kansas.
They anxiously awaited the
arrival of a set of cabinets but
were told that it would be
weeks before they could be
delivered. Shortly afterwards,
to their amazement, the cabi-
nets arrived. The contractor,
it seems, had a deaf daughter
and was aware of the voluntary
work Szymoniak had done to
help those with hearing afflic-
tions; to show his appreciation,
he rushed the order to her. "The
happiness I felt from this kind
gesture has never been for-
gotten and has many times
pushed me to work harder."
Asa councilwoman and
volunteer, Szymoniak will con-
tinue to work hard to protect the
citizens of Des Moines from
noise. Des Moines is presently
attempting to become a model
city in the area of noise pollu-
tion awareness.
Guarding Eagles
Greenleaf Chase, a wildlife
biologist with the New York
State Department of Environ-
mental Conservation, discov-
ered a golden eagle's nest in
the remote Adirondack lake
country in 1 957.
Now 66 and retired after 34
years in the Adirondacks with
the State, Chase became con-
cerned when the property
which hides the nest from
human eyes changed hands
recently. The nest stood only
about a quarter of a mile from
an International Paper Com-
pany logging operation which
was moving in its direction.
Chase, an advisor, consul-
tant and a member of the Board
of the Adirondack Conser-
vancy, a committee of the
national non-profit Nature
Conservancy, has had major
input into the Conservancy's 18
land acquisition projects in the
area which now total over
95,000 acres of the State's six-
million-acre Adirondacks Park.
He coordinated a park-wide
inventory of all the unique
biological, botanical and
geologic areas in the park and
served on the State Commis-
sioner of Conservation's
Advisory Committee on Pro-
tected Native Flora. With
Chase's special knowledge, the
Adirondacks Conservancy had
been able to convince the State
to purchase an area known as
Bear Pond, habitat for the only
arethusa, an orchid, known to
grow in the Park.
In his enthusiasm for the
protection of the birds, Chase
conducted the first negotiations
for exclusive Conservancy
access to the eagle nest for
study purposes. The impetus
for the- protection of the eagle
nest at Bog Lake, sparked by
Chase's observation and ad-
vice, led to Conservancy
negotiations with International
Paper Company for a 3-year
lease on 500 acres which now
protect the nest. The Conser-
vancy is now negotiating with
a neighboring timber company
for the $250,000 purchase of a
complete nesting area, one of
the most viable nesting sites in
EPA JOURNAL
-------
the northeast today.
With this land deal,
"Greenie's" magnificent eagles
will continue to soar over the
Adirondack wilderness.
Joining the
"Establishment"
Peg Garland: an ex-World War
II pilot, mother of two grown
sons, and Chairman of the
Vermont Environmental Board.
She is clearly a part of the
environmental establishment,
but has never forgotten her
own beginnings in the environ-
mental movement or the im-
portance of grassroots involve-
ment in environmental planning,
management, and regulation.
The Vermont Environmental
Board is charged with carrying
out Vermont's pioneering land
use law—Act 250. Garland was
named Chairman of the Board
in April, 1977. Joining the
regulators was a watershed
experience. However, Garland's
philosophy as well as her
administration of the Board
are geared to welcome citizens
in the environmental regulatory
process.
Garland's interest in the
environment grew first from her
outdoor experiences in her
native North Carolina, and later
birdwatching and watching the
seasonal changes on the fam-
ily's small farm in upstate
New York.
As her children grew and she
had more time to pursue her
interests. Garland joined the
League of Women Voters and
became involved in water is-
sues, notably an evaluation of a
sewage treatment plant in
Lenox, Mass., where she also
lived.
That was the beginning.
From there she went on to serve
as President of the Vermont
League of Women Voters and a
member of the national League's
Land Use Committee; Chairman
of the Vermont Natural Re-
sources Council; Vermont Co-
Chairman of the Lake Champlain
Committee; Clerk of the Ver-
mont Lung Association, and
Vermont member of the Na-
tional Board of the American
Lung Association; member of
the City of Burlington Planning
Commission and Chairman of
the Chittenden County Regional
Planning Commission; a mem-
ber of the New England Energy
Policy Council; and in many
other capacities.
From these roots. Garland
learned the dedication, commit-
ment, and energy of private citi-
zens who donate their time and
services for a cause in which
they believe, and she has used
this knowledge in bringing citi-
zens into the environmental
decision-making process.
Also, from her vantage point
in the ranks, Garland has seen
the environmental movement
grow and mature in the last 10-
1 5 years. She believes that
citizen environmentalists have
become much more knowledge-
able about the technical and
political situation in which they
must operate. In fact, one of
Garland's most important acts
at the Lung Association was the
establishment of a technical
committee to advise on air
pollution issues.
Garland believes that the en-
vironmental constituency has
become broader as more people
have come to appreciate the
importance of environmental
integrity. She attributes this to
improved public information
programs—particularly in-
creased use of media. In 1974
as a representative of the
League of Women Voters she
was instrumental in bringing
about a "town meeting of the
air"—a program on land use
issues aired on the statewide
educational television station.
In April of last year, through the
Lung Association, she helped to
arrange the broadcast on public
television of the public hearings
on Vermont's State Implemen-
tation Plan for air quality. Gar-
land thinks it is very important
to use these kinds of public
information techniques to reach
as many citizens as possible
and to stimulate as much public
involvement as possible in reg-
ulatory decisions.
Energy and economics have
obviously had strong impacts
on the environmental movement
in the last five or so years. How-
ever, Garland has not found
that her views on environmental
protection have been altered by
these considerations, largely
because her own perspective
has included what she calls the
"total environment." In addition
to the natural environment, this
encompasses the socio-eco-
nomic environment, provision
of food and shelter, etc.
She also believes that these
items are not mutually exclu-
sive, and that one who pur-
sues concern for one fragment
of the total environment to the
exclusion of all others does a
disservice to one's own cause.
Garland believes that the
State regufatory system of
which she is now a part and the
larger Federal regulatory struc-
ture are necessary to protect
the public health, safety, and
welfare, that these are proper
concerns of government, and
that the free enterprise system
cannot be relied on to protect
these concerns. However, she
feels that there is a need for
regulatory reform to eliminate
overlapping regulations and to
provide coordination among
regulatory bodies.
She also salutes the concept
of delegation of authorities to
State and local bodies, because
she feels that people need to
perceive that decisions affect-
ing them personally are being
made at a more responsive level
and not by some faceless ma-
chine at the Federal level.
Particularly, she is pleased
with EPA regulations requiring
public participation in Agency
activities and with the small
grants available to groups who
could not otherwise participate
in Agency decision making.
Garland feels that this is a
real sign of good faith that
agencies intend to provide real
balance, right down to the grass
roots levels, in their decision
making.
Vermont is still a highly rural
State. Many people still work
the land and have what Garland
calls a "stewardship philos-
ophy." She recognizes that this
sense of ownership of and re-
sponsibility for the land is the
most important aspect of any
program of environmental pro-
tection, and that without it, no
environmental program can
really hope to succeed. Garland
has had the perception to rec-
ognize this and the ability to tap
this very basic grassroots sense
and turn it into action.
Virgin Islands
What do you call a woman who
teaches, writes books and a
newspaper column, creates en-
vironmental studies programs,
and lobbies for legislative ac-
tion, to name just a few activ-
ities. "Busy" and "energetic"
would be likely descriptions for
her, but as Doris Jadan herself
points out, she is constantly
inspired by her surroundings—
"a remarkable husband and an
island that people dream
about."
Doris Jadan lives on St. John,
the smallest of the U.S. Virgin
Islands—19 square miles
(about the size of Manhattan)
with a resident population of
about 2.000 people. Although
the location brings to mind a
tropical paradise, problems do
exist there—periodic floods,
frequent droughts, and chronic
water shortages. "As far as
human beings are concerned,
only Arawaks and Africans have
ever managed to live in har-
mony with our Island ecosys-
tems," Jadan notes. "But
because our problems are often
simpler and more direct, there
is more urgency to deal with
them."
APRIL 1980
27
-------
And deal with them she does.
A resident of the Virgin Islands
for 25 years. Jadan and her
husband Ivan believe in the
broadest definition of environ-
ment: everything surrounding
us and everything that we sur-
round. This has led to their
involvement in most aspects of
Virgin Islands life.
Doris Jadan has just issued
an update of her Guide to the
Natural History of St. John, and
published a new cookbook
using local foods, emphasizing
proper nutrition, a problem on
the Island. She and her husband
are involved in a naturalist
study of local fauna, including
the Antillian crested humming-
bird, and a resident octopus in
an adjacent bay, to compare
data on theanimals' activities
with data collected in aquarium
studies.
Perhaps Doris Jadan's great-
est impact, though, is the envi-
ronmental studies program
which she began a decade ago.
Originally developed as a pilot
for classes of elementary stu-
dents on St. John and neighbor-
ing St. Thomas, it has grown to
the point where 13,000 school
children have participated in
the program.
"Children weren't having
any instruction compatible with
the way they actually lived,"
Jadan explained, "We had
to develop material aimed at
the Virgin Island child, relating
it to the environment he or she
actually knew," The classes in-
volve teachers, parents, and
students together, avoiding a
standard kindergarten-to-1 2th
grade approach which is often
designed for all and applicable
to none.
Jadan is currently in-
volved in the political and ad-
ministrative details of actions
which may seeas many as
9,000 of St. John's 12,000
acres eventually included with-
in the boundaries of the Virgin
Island National Park.
But whatever the specific
issues, Doris Jadan keeps in
mind the insight and outlook of
Job, whom she describes as
one of the early environmental
educators, who counseled on
where to place one's focus:
"Go and ask the cattle,
Ask the birds of the air to
inform you,
Or tell the creatures that crawl
to teach you
And the fishes of the sea to give
you instruction."
Contributing
Talent
Talent and professionalism
coupled with dedication to the
environment gave TV producer-
writer-director Linda Moulton
Howe an important role in her
field. The products of this en-
gaging, Idaho-born Denverite
have gained international ac-
claim and educated and stimu-
lated millions.
Howe's interest in the envi-
ronment was, in part, a result of
exposure to the health hazards
attributed to air pollution.
Although a successful career
was opening, she was facing a
real dilemma. Professionally,
everything was rosy, but the
effects of air pollution in Los
Angeles were taking their toll.
Linda Howe and her husband
were becoming increasingly
aware of the fact that unless
they moved from Los Angeles,
she might always suffer respira-
tory problems and skin irrita-
tions. But were they willing to
move to a better environment
and risk sacrificing what they
had worked so hard for?
Howe felt that if only she
were involved, they could stick
it out for a while longer. But
fortunately for those who have
benefited so much from her
work, Linda Howe and her
husband moved. The decision
was strengthened by the pend-
ing birth of their daughter.
Howe remembers agonizing
over the pollution she witnessed
daily. Factories belched out
plumes of smoke, autos spewed
out their emissions. Possibly
subconsciously, Howe remem-
bered her upbringing in a rela-
tively unpolluted Idaho. "We
can't bring our child up in this
cesspool of air pollution," she
declared.
From 1974 to 1976 Massa-
chusetts was home. While her
husband completed his gradu-
ate work, Howe was a producer
atWCVB-TV in Needham. Hard
work and dedication were re-
flected in her projects. Two
programs, "House Call," a
weekly call-in focusing on med-
ical problems, and "Sunday
Open House," a weekly two-
hour public affairs program,
were included in the 1976 Pea-
body Award citation for pro-
gramming excellence.
Since 1976 Howe's concern
and knowledge about pollution
has grown steadily, As pro-
ducer, writer, and director at
Denver's Channel 7, she has
been involved heavily with pro-
ducing 1 5 major projects, the
majority of which involve health
or environmental issues.
Two half-hour documen-
taries, "Poison in the Wind,"
about carbon monoxide air pol-
lution in Denver and "A Sun-
Kissed Poison," dealing with
ozone air pollution in Denver
and Los Angeles, were honored
in the finals of the 1979 Na-
tional Emmy Award for Com-
munity Service. They placed
very high in the 1979 Colorado
Broadcasters' Association
Awards and were finalists in the
Rocky Mountain Emmy Awards
for best documentary category.
EPA purchased prints for na-
tional distribution among Fed-
eral agencies and educational
institutions.
Cherishing the
Land
In 1905, William Henry Browne,
a lawyer who had left New York
City in 1877 and settled in
Jacksonville, Fla., turned to his
son, sixteen years old on that
day, and told him the land they
were standing on was from that
day forward to be his. "Now
you look after it. And don't let
the hunters in here." Sixty-five
years later, Willie Browne, in
his 80th year, could recall that
he had kept his pact with his
father. He had not ever let the
hunters in.
Willie Browne never married.
His parents died during the
'20's, and in 1953 his brother
Saxon, who had lived with him
on this land along the St. Johns
River died. In a sense, Willie
Browne had become a recluse.
In the small frame house he and
his brother had built, there was
no electricity and no telephone.
Fifty years had passed since he
had last bought a suit of
clothes. But if Willie Browne
lived almost a hermit's life, he
nevertheless remained abreast
of what was happening in the
world, especially as it related
to the woods and marshes he
owned and loved.
He has never been overly
possessive of his land. Only the
ravagers have been unwelcome.
Archaeologists from the Univer-
sity of Florida have for many
years done extensive explora-
tions of the Indian ceremonial
mounds and kitchen middens
found on the property. The In-
dians who dwelt here are be-
lieved to have been forerunners
of the Seminoles and the
Timucuans. Several years ago,
Mr. Willie, as he is known to
the many young friends he has
made over the years, donated
part of his tract to the Campfire
Girls so that they could experi-
ence real wilderness.
The time came when Willie
Browne began to consider the
disposition of his land, to seek
the means by which he could
maintain into the foreseeable
future the pact he had made
with his father. He knew that all
over the United States there
are housing developments and
EPA JOURNAL
-------
industrial complexes sprawled
atop what once had been glori-
ous natural areas prized for gen-
erations by families who finally
had been forced by one event or
another to relinquish their hold.
Browne was determined that no
such fate would overtake his
land.
The Federal government and
the Florida State government
were approached, but neither
would accept the condition he
insisted upon, that the land be
preserved in its natural state,
without alterations. Neither
would a famous private agency,
whose help he sought, commit
itself to abide by Browne's
conditions. Then, through a
friend in Jacksonville, Willie
Brown learned of The Nature
Conservancy. The response of
the Conservancy to his inquiry
was immediate and enthusias-
tic. This was precisely the sort
of thing the Conservancy was
set up for. And that was ten
years ago.
On November 15, 1969,
Willie Browne signed the deed
transferring his 361 acres on
the south bank of the St. Johns
River to The Nature Conserv-
ancy. The land is valued at
51,000,000. Willie had nothing
else. This land had been his
entire estate. At a small salary
contributed by a member of the
Conservancy, he would stay in
his little house, taking care as
he always had of this lovely
land.
The nationwide publicity that
resulted from his act, so incred-
ible to a world in which nearly
everyone seems bent on finding
the legendary million rather
than giving it away, left Willie
Browne a little startled, a little
like a deer caught in a search-
light's glare. His first reaction,
quite naturally, was annoyance,
the annoyance of a man whose
privacy had always been in-
violate and who suddenly finds
himself on front pages of news-
papers from the Pacific Coast to
New England.
Quickly though, he realized
that the publicity, offensive as it
might be to his privacy, could
turn out to be inspiration to
other people. For others to
know what he had done might
provide occasion for re-evalua-
tion of closely held beliefs, for
example, the assumption that if
one holds land worth a million
dollars one reaps the dollars
regardless of consequence to
the land. So he stood patient in
the glare of publicity and hoped
that somewhere someone else
might from his example find the
courage to sacrifice the dollars
instead of the land.
Then the letters began to
arrive. From all over the country
they came, addressed to Willie
Browne, Jacksonville, Fla. One
had his picture, taken from the
newspaper, pasted on the en-
velope just to make sure it
reached him.
"Thanks for caring," wrote a
young woman in Nashville,
Tenn. And from Mandeville,
La., a woman told him. "Every
time I go camping, I will think
of you and thank God there are
such people left in the world."
A Santa Barbara woman wrote,
"It was a thoughtful, generous,
unselfish, farsighted act of
which you should be very proud.
Not many of us I am afraid
would have the moral courage
to turn down a huge sum of
money to do the thing he felt
was right at such cost."
With the help of a friend, Mr.
Willie answered every one of
his letters, first of all those from
people who misunderstood the
story and thought that Willie
Browne is a man with so much
that to give away a million dol-
lars is nothing. But only one
letter, he says, was from a real
crackpot, a man who fussed
because he felt the land should
have been given to him.
"Yes," said Willie Browne.
"This is a nice place. I hope it
will be kept this way." Willie
Browne died December 14,
1970.
Saving a Swamp
Nancy Anderson's conservation
interest was triggered by a story
in the local paper in Reading,
Mass., that said the town was
considering turning part of the
500-acre Great Cedar Swamp
into a dump. The swamp is
inside of Reading.
Anderson contacted local
officials, known as selectmen,
who told her that the idea had
been aired merely as a sugges-
tion. But Anderson feared that
to let a trial balloon float might
be just short of giving approval.
Furthermore, waiting until the
last minute to raise questions
might only add to the hassles
and frustration of redrawing
plans later.
Anderson believes that it is
every citizen's duty to speak up
"It can bring results, once the
seeds have been planted," she
says. Following this policy,
Anderson was one of the first to
speak out against the construc-
tion of Interstate Highway 66 in
Northern Virginia when she
lived there during the 1950's.
Her concern about the fate of
the swamp in Reading was
based on her research as a
member of the local chapter of
the League of Women Voters on
such resources as swamps,
marshes, and bogs. She under-
stood the importance of these
areas in flood control and water
purification. Swamps, in partic-
ular, cleanse and recharge
water stored naturally on the
way to rivers and eventually the
sea. The Great Cedar Swamp
was the source of the Bare
Meadow Brook which flowed
into the Ipswich River, from
which 1 5 to 22 local towns got
their drinking water supply.
Anderson made an appoint-
ment with the selectmen to dis-
cuss her concern about using tho
swamp as a dump site. During
the week before she was to see
them, she and friends recruited
other people in the neighbor-
hood, making them aware of
the danger as she saw it. With
the aid of some of her neighbors
she held several community
meetings to discuss strategy in
making the selectmen aware of
citizens' discontent with the
idea of converting the swamp
and to plan what to do if it be-
came apparent that the town
government was going to sup-
port the dump proposal.
When the time for the meet-
ing came, Anderson took along
others who felt the same way
she did. Approximately 250
supporters went with her. The
meeting had to be moved from
the selectmen's office to a local
auditorium and in the end, the
idea of turning part of the
swamp into a dump was dis-
missed.
The selectmen later ap-
pointed Anderson to the local
conservation commission where
she served for three years as a
volunteer. With the assistance
of local townspeople, she was
able to get a zoning ordinance
passed to protect the swamp
and all of the other wetland
areas within the boundaries of
the town. The commission was
able to get the town to vote to
set aside an additional 780
acres of land for recreational
purpose only. Also, just before
leaving the commission, Ander-
son and several friends per-
suaded the town, which by now
had become very environmen-
tally conscious, to provide
money in the budget for a geol-
ogist to act as the administrator
of the commission and a part-
time secretary.
The campaign to save the
swamp had started in 1964. By
1970, with State aid, the town
bought the land in question.
The public ownership would
further protect the area as a
swamp.
Today Anderson is President
of the Massachusetts Associa-
tion of Conservation Commis-
sions, an organization of 2,500
local officials charged with pro-
tecting the natural resources of
the State. There are seven mem-
bers in each town across Mas-
sachusetts with quasi-judicial
powers including authority over
how wetlands can be filled. She
is also involved in the environ-
mental program at Tufts Univer-
sity where she is the coordina-
tor of Environmental Affairs for
The Lincoln Filene Center for
Citizenship and Public Affairs.
In that capacity, she is active in
putting together the New Eng-
land Environmental Network,
composed of citizens who
APRIL 1980
-------
share common environmental
concerns.
"Government officials are
anxious to respond," said
Anderson, reemphasizing her
belief in speaking out. "They
need citizen input if we are to
continue to be a government of
the people, by the people, and
for the people."
Reporting the
Facts
High Country News, a tiny envi-
ronmental newspaper with a
powerful following, has out-
lasted adversity to become a
respected and heeded voice in
the ongoing debate over devel-
opment of the vast energy re-
sources in the West.
A biweekly tabloid located in
unpretentious space above a
dress shop in the centra! Wyo-
ming town of Lander, the news-
paper is a fixture in the offices
of decision makers in State
capitols in the Rocky Mountain
region and in Washington
Surrounded by Wyoming's
mountain beauty and vast min-
eral riches, a staff of young
persons working for subsistence
wages has thrust the paper
prominently into the debate
over industrial and energy de-
velopment in the West.
Its central theme, for more
than a decade, has been the
threat of development that
could trample the area and
overcrowd the rugged but
fragile high plains.
"I think open space is at a
premium these days," said
Joan Nice, the paper's manag-
ing editor. "Some people come
out here in search of that and
they end up destroying it.
"This is beginning to touch
the general populace of the re-
gion and they are trying to figure
out what to do about it," she
said. "We are trying to provide
some answers."
Every State in the Union is
represented in the High Country
News' 3,500-card subscription
file, and more than a third of the
subscribers live outside the
Rocky Mountains.
"It doesn't reach many peo-
ple, but it seems to reach the
right ones," said publisher Tom
Bell, who is in the process of
selling the paper to its staffers.
Kathryn Fletcher formerly
with the Environmental Defense
Fund in Denver and now a
Washington resident and one of
President Carter's chief envi-
ronmental advisors, is one reg-
ular reader.
"It reminds me of home,"
she said. "I like the feel of it.
It's very accurate and it rings
true. I find that it often has more
complete reporting on Western
issues than the other things I
pick up to read."
A list of High Country News
firsts is long and impressive.
The newspaper warned eight
years ago that coal development
could turn Western prairies into
crater fields if stringent recla-
mation laws weren't adopted.
While it wasn't alone in that
warning, the fact is that State
and Federal laws were enacted
requiring energy companies to
restore strip-mined coal lands.
Ambitious plans to convert
oil shale into petroleum and
coal into natural gas were ex-
amined by High Country News
in 1974, five years before syn-
fuels reached the headlines of
daily newspapers.
Exploration of the hot, under-
ground lava surrounding Yei-
lowstone National Park was
reported by High Country News
in June. "Could Old Faithful
Falter?" the paper headlined.
Park officials responded with
angry opposition to any geo-
thermal development that could
endanger Yellowstone's glories.
Disaster hit the paper in
August, 1978. In a car accident
the news editor was killed and
three other staffers seriously
injured.
Contributions to pay health
bills came not only from the
newspaper's environmental loy-
alists but from energy com-
panies as well.
Don McSparren, manager of
Atlantic Richfield Co.'s environ-
mental operations in Denver,
said he suggested ARCO's
$200 contribution.
"They serve a purpose,"
McSparren explained. "We
don't always agree with every-
thing they print in their paper,
but I think they appear to try to
present both sides of the story.
It certainly lets us know what
the other side is thinking."
Protecting the
Tortoise
Dr. Kristin H. Berry of Ridge-
crest, Calif., is called the pro-
tector of the desert tortoise.
Since the earlyl 970's, when she
conducted a study for the State
Department of Transportation
on relocation of tortoises from
a proposed freeway corridor,
Dr. Berry has conducted a re-
lentless campaign to gain pro-
tection for the species. It led to
creation by the U.S. Bureau of
Land Management of a Desert
Tortoise Preserve, which Dr.
Berry has fought to have en-
larged and properly managed.
In 1 974, just before joining
the BLM, Dr. Berry formed the
Desert Tortoise Preserve Com-
mittee, a citizen group that has
actively raised funds for land
acquisition. She also helped
establish the Desert Tortoise
Council and serves as program
chairman. The group focuses on
threats to the tortoise in a four-
state area.
Dr. Berry is a biologist for
the Bureau of Land Manage-
ment. She has dedicated herself
to the goal of wise management
of desert resources. She has
gained recognition as an inno-
vator in the field of wildlife
management, whose work is set-
ting trends for other scientists.
Dr. Berry explained how she
became involved in protecting
the tortoise. "Although I grew
up in the western Mojave Desert
and had several desert tortoises
for backyard pets as a child, we
didn't really become acquainted
until I was almost finished with
graduate school. I was writing
my dissertation on the ecology
and social behavior of another
long-lived desert reptile, the
chuckwalla lizard, when the
Department of Transportation
asked me to take on their
Desert Tortoise Relocation
Project. The project involved
removing wild tortoises from a
freeway corridor and locating
new home sites for them.
"One thing led to an other,
and within a year, I was en-
meshed not only in research on
the behavior and ecology of
wild tortoises, but launched on
a campaign to preserve one of
the prime remaining desert tor-
toise populations in the United
States."
Dr. Berry was awarded a
1 979 American Motors
Conservation Award for her
work with the desert tortoise
and for her wildlife inventories
in the desert. D
30
EPA JOURNAL
-------
By Denis Hayes
The
Environmental
Decade
We are all ten years older now
than we were on April 22, 1970
—the first Earth Day. We have
more facts at our disposal than
we had a decade ago, more data. The im-
portant question is whether we have more
wisdom.
Many of our fears of ten years ago have
been borne out. America's declining oil
production has had an even more dire im-
pact than we had predicted. The carbon
dioxide produced by fossil fuel combustion
is producing a planetary greenhouse effect.
Nuclear power is now conceded to be more
inextricably linked to weapons prolifera-
tion than was admitted in 1970.
Some of our fears were overstated. The
impact of high-flying supersonic aircraft on
the ozone layer is now believed to be much
less harmful than early experiments had
led us to predict. On the other hand, we
were then unaware of the extensive damage
to the ozone layer that could be caused by
freon and other chlorofluorocarbons.
Some important changes have occurred
since 1970. We have made more progress
than I expected, but much less than I had
hoped for.
For example, belching smokestacks are
harder to find now than they were a decade
ago, but the industrial pollution problem
did not end when smoke disappeared from
sight. The principal pollution-control efforts
have gone into solving those problems that
appeared most solvable, and large, visible
particles in industrial smoke are now rou-
tinely removed. But small, submicron-sized
particulates—often heavy metals and car-
cinogenic hydrocarbons—are still emitted
in large quantities. The "tonnage" of pollu-
tion has thus decreased dramatically, but
much of the danger remains.
On the other hand, urban smog remains
a serious problem and in many cities con-
tinues to worsen. The advent of pollution
controls on new vehicles has had, to date.
no obvious effect on urban smog. And now
we must examine the tradeoff between the
benefits of direct combustion of wood as an
energy alternative and the impact of wood-
burning on atmospheric pollution.
Huge investments have been made in
attempts to control water pollution. But this
money has mostly flowed in the wrong
direction—toward large, energy-intensive
systems that mix industrial waste with
human sewage. The resulting mixtures are
not amenable to anaerobic digestion to
produce methane, and the residual sludge
often contains toxic materials that can pose
problems if recycled on farmland. In a
cruel irony, large pollution-control expendi-
tures were made before polychlorinated
biphenyls (PCB's) and other chlorinated
APRIL 1980
31
-------
organic compounds including kepone and
mirex were known to be hazardous. When
commercial fishing was banned in the
Hudson River in late 1975 because of PCB
fears, more than $3 billion had already
been spent on sewage treatment plants
that were not designed to remove these
materials.
The tragedy at Love Canal, N.Y., pro-
duced widespread visibility for the prob-
lem of toxic waste. Yet little has been
accomplished thus far toward the elimina-
tion of the hazard. The U.S. still has 32,000
potentially dangerous chemical dumps, of
which more than 600 may pose imminent
hazards to human health. Fifty years ago,
arsenic was the only metai known to be a
carcinogen. Today it has been established
that cancer can be caused also by beryl-
lium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, iron,
lead, nickel, selenium, titanium, and zinc.
The most attractive control strategy, of
course, would be to keep such metals in
circulation as useful products, rather than
discharging them into the environment. The
current effort to substitute ethanol for lead
in gasoline as an octane booster is an en-
couraging and important step toward elimi-
nating the widespread atmospheric dis-
persion of a highly toxic material.
One of the major disappointments of the
last ten years has been the lack of official
support for recycling. The central theme of
the first Earth Day was replacing the
planned obsolescence of our throwaway
culture with products that could be re-
paired, re-used, and recycled. This year,
the average American still uses more than
1 5 tons of minerals, virtually all of which
make a one-way trip from the mine to the
dump. More than two-thirds of these ma-
terials could be kept in useful circulation
without changes in American lifestyles. Yet
we have found it nearly impossible even to
pass legislation requiring that beverage
containers be returnable. After ten years of
effort, meaningful laws have been passed
in only a few States.
Today, energy conservation is a much
more popular theme than when we began
promoting it in, 1970. Nonetheless, mean-
ingful progress—except in the industrial
sector—remains a goal rather than an
accomplishment. Americans will waste
more fossi! fuel this year than two-thirds of
the world's people will use. Most of our
cars remain oversized and our homes
under-insulated. But at least this wasteful-
ness has now been officially recognized,
and remedying it has become a centerpiece
of national energy policy.
It is for all these reasons that Earth Day
'80 is being organized. We don't need an
event to inform people that some important
indices show that the quality of life is de-
teriorating. Indeed, poll after poll shows
that the American people are far ahead of
their elected leaders in their awareness of
this decline. My major concern about the
American mood today is its pervasive feel-
ing of helplessness. Earth Day '80 must
convince people that things can be better,
and that we have viable, attractive alterna-
tives to our current unsustainable course,
both as a society and as individuals. Earth
Day '80 must remind people of what we
can do as a society, and of what we must
do as individuals.
Much of the environmental progress of
the last ten years is now under attack by
misguided advocates of frontier econom-
ics. Earth Day '80 is a counter-attack. It is
being organized by people who recognize
that the frontier is gone, and that we must
learn to live—and share—within bound-
aries. Earth Day '80 is based on the as-
sumption that most Americans think we
have done too little—not too much—to
protect the ecological integrity of the bio-
sphere. I believe that most Americans place
a very high value on health, on environ-
mental resilience, on freedom, on full em-
ployment, and on an approach to our natural
environment that stresses harmony, bal-
ance, and sustainability.
Earth Day '80 will not be a doomsday
event, it will candidly acknowledge our
problems, but it will focus on their solu-
tions. Earth Day '80 will educate people
about the prospects for solar energy and
energy conservation. It will tell them about
a sustainable materials policy, about the
easy elimination of water wastage, and
about ecologically sound agriculture. Earth
Day '80 will show people how to improve
their own neighborhoods by avoiding many
of the environmental maladies and societal
pitfalls of modern urban life.
Ten years have passed since the first
Earth Day. Many of the original Earth Day
activists have children now. That means we
care even more about sustainability, which
will be a central theme of the event this
year. If, as a species, we begin to behave
more sensibly with respect to the bio-
sphere, human civilization has the means
to enter one of its periods of greatest
achievement. Earth Day '80 is being organ-
ized to help point the way. ~
Denis H.-iyes was coordinator of Earth Day,
1970, find is director of the Solar Energy
Research Institute near Golden, Colorado.
Scenes from Earth Day, 1970.
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Environmental Almanac: April 1980
A Glimpse of the Natural World
We Help Protect
Wild
Eagles
Nesting
"Her power dive
was so fast he was
unable to avoid it,
but at the last
instant she opened
her wings, primary
tips upward, spread
her tail, and shot past
just touching him.
Then she wheeled back,
coming in on his level. This
time he was ready for her.
They met in midair, locked
talons and somersaulted
downward. Sometimes he was
on top, sometimes she was.
They tumbled down until it
seemed sure they would hit
the ground, but barely before
the impact they both spread
their wings and hung almost
motionless. In slow motion
they separated, each did a
wing over while scarcely
seeming to move, and went
up again. They were not
flying but floating, carried by
an updraft and the vacuum
suck over their huge sails.
Steadily they rose until they
were thousands of feet above
the ground."
— I In* I ,ist Liif/lr liy Dan M,i:i,'tn
These dramatic aerial
acrobatics mark the
courtship of bald eagles
everywhere, including
those nesting now in the
Chesapeake Bay region, one of
the main breeding areas on the
East Coast for this magnificent
bird.
About 80 active eagle nests
are found each year in lofty
trees in isolated locations in
the bay area. These huge
nests made up of twigs and
branches are sometimes as
much as eight feet in circum-
ference, often six feet in height,
and strong enough to support
the weight of a human being. !n
some cases they can be seen
for miles around and serve as
local landmarks.
Eaglets are hatching now
from the one to three eggs laid
in the nests. These nestlings,
mostly beak and claws when
they first emerge from the eggs,
are covered with a silky grey
down. At first they peep pitifully
for food and later start a shrill
monotonous and demanding
cry for the meals provided by
both parents.
An eagle's diet generally is
mostly fish. Ducks, snakes,
squirrels, rabbits and meat from
deer and other animals killed
on the highways also are eaten
by eagles when available.
The mother eagle often rakes
a carcass with her large beak
to cut the food into bite-size
portions for her youngsters. By
early summer after a great deal
of hopping and beating of wings
in the nest the fledglings will
be ready to begin the first prac-
tice flights from the nest.
They will become part of a
slowly recovering eagle popula-
tion in the Chesapeake Bay
area. Jackson Abbott, a long-
time observer and counter of
eagles in this area, reports that
the eagle is making a comeback
in this region.
A retired Army Corps of En-
gineer official, Abbott notes that
the number of once abundant
eagles in the Chesapeake re-
gion began to decline in the mid
1950's and this bird became
very scarce until the popula-
tion began picking up a couple
of years ago. Now the hatch rate
for eggs has risen from about
10 percent in 1962 to 50 per-
cent."
"The current hatch rate," he
noted, "is what is needed to
maintain a healthy population.
Last year there were more im-
mature than adult birds in the
region, an encouraging trend."
Abbott, a bird watcher since
boyhood days who counts
eagles for the Audubon Nat-
uralist Society, has been using
aircraft every year since 1962
to check eagle nests from above
to see if they are currently in
use. For the first five years he
was able to persuade Army heli-
copter pilots to fly him on these
checks as part of their train-
ing flights.
"Once a mother eagle at-
tacked and chased the helicop-
ter as the pilot dove his craft
to avoid the angry bird," Abbott
recalled. "And once we crashed
when we were going too slow
around an eagle's nest, but no
one was hurt." In recent years
Abbott has been piloted in
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
planes.
Illustration by Shirley 8nggs
While the bald eagle is listed
as an "endangered species" in
the Chesapeake region and in
most of the lower 48 States,
it is abundant in Alaska and
Canada.
The National Wildlife
Federation's Raptor Information
Center reported that a census
of bald eagles in the lower 48
States last winter produced a
count of nearly 10,000 eagles.
Most of them were believed to
be winter visitors who fly down
from Alaska and Canada when
cold weather hampers the
hunting and feeding north of
the border. The results of a
similar survey in January of this
year are now being analyzed.
Eagle authorities are still
trying to decide whether the
bald eagle population is making
a comeback nationally as the
result of the banning of DDT.
They have reported
depressed eagle populations
along the York River and the
James River in Virginia, where
pollution problems have been
severe.
The decline of the bald eagle
has been blamed on human
disturbance of nesting areas,
illegal shooting, loss of nest
trees and habitat, and the
reproduction failures caused by
pesticides such as DDT, and its
breakdown product, DDE. Even
though the long-lasting DDT
was banned by EPA for most
uses in 1 972, traces of DDE
are still causing thinning of
eagle shells.
Although a biblical proverb
notes that the way of an eagle
intheairisoneofthethmgs
that surpasses human under-
standing, the splendor of their
flight is indisputable.
The growing interest in the
welfare of the eagle, our
national symbol, is based at
least in part on recognition of
the wisdom of Thoreau's
observation that "in wildness is
the preservation of the world."
—C.D.P.
APRIL 1980
33
-------
Fresh
Breeze
From
China
An Interview with
EPA Administrator
Douglas M. Costle
Q
In your recent trip to
China you signed a protocol
agreement for environmental
protection with the Peoples
Republicof China. Can you
describe what this means?
f\ This protocol for coopera-
tion in the field of the science
and technology of environmen-
tal protection provides an um-
brella which does several
things. It indicates that both
sides are willing to permit a
wide range of cooperative ac-
tivities in the field of environ-
mental protection. It will permit
government and private depart-
ments and agencies to cooper-
ate under the agreement, and
it permits cooperative activities
to be undertaken in a wide
range of fields, depending on
the interests of the two sides.
The initiation of friendly,
cooperative contact between
environmental authorities in the
United States and the Peoples
Republic of China is a recogni-
tion of the existence of shared
problems and a mutual desire
to find ways of addressing them
together.
Q
Q
Will this lead to agreater
exchange of U.S. and Chinese
environmental officials and
scientists in the future?
A
I expect that we will begin
with a modest number of ex-
changes of technical and scien-
tific personnel in the near future
and a good deal of exchange
of information. We will begin
small on carefully limited proj-
ects and grow gradually as
areas of mutual interest are
defined.
We have invited a senior
delegation to visit Washington
this spring. At that time we
expect to agree on specific
areas to be pursued. The most
likely areas are environmental
assessments, the environmen-
tal effects of coal use, and
epidemiological studies of the
health effects of pollution. In
the health area, we expect to
look at the respiratory effects of
air pollutants and the effects of
drinking water contaminants.
What seem to be the
most critical Chinese envi-
ronmental problems?
Q
A
China is the world's sec-
ond largest producer of coal.
There is particular concern
about health effects and espe-
cially respiratory illness as a
result of coal consumption. As
part of its modernization proc-
ess, China is interested in low
cost mitigation steps such as
facility siting and inexpensive
pollution control.
The Chinese were quick to
point out that at their current
stage of development, any re-
sources devoted to environmen-
tal protection will necessarily
reduce the resources available
for agricultural and industrial
development. At the same time
there is a high level of aware-
ness that these expenditures
will be necessary, and that fail-
ure to make reasonable re-
sources available today will re-
quire unreasonable resources
to correct problems in the fu-
ture. As a rapidly industrializing
country, China has many of the
same air and water pollution
problems as our own country
and Europe do, and suffers
from the resulting environ-
mental health problems.
Q
What are the key things
the U.S. can learn from
China?
A
One of the most promising
areas is comparative epidemic-
logical studies. Large popula-
tions are often exposed to one
or two major pollutants in rural
areas and provide good study
groups for such studies.
There are likely to be oppor-
tunities to obtain research data
regarding the effects of pol-
lutants on stable human popu-
lations which would be hard to
come by elsewhere. China may
be doing research and experi-
ments on efficient coal combus-
tion and pollution control that
would be of interest to us since
we plan to increase our use of
coal in the future.
Because of its relative re-
source endowment, the Peoples
Republic of China is likely to
pursue different approaches
than ours to some problems.
This research and experiments
may well provide insights which
we would not otherwise have.
Does it appear that the
policy of the "four moderniza-
tions"gives an opportunity
for more environmental con-
cern?
A
The "four moderniza-
tions" (agriculture, industry,
defense, and science and tech-
nology) is the slogan the Chi-
nese use to refer to their broad-
gauge program of moderniza-
tion. An ambitious start is being
tempered by the need to
carefully allocate scarce re-
sources to obtain maximum
results. And, in a way, that is
the heart of the problem for the
Peoples Republic. Faced with
a need for substantial economic
growth in order to provide a
decent life for its huge popula-
tion and determined to modern-
ize its economy, the leaders
are at the same time aware of
the need to pay careful atten-
tion to protecting the environ-
ment. They recognize that there
will be difficult decisions to
make, and they want to improve
their capability to do the appro-
priate research, to train the
problem-solvers and super-
visors needed to use modern
technology, and to reach in-
formed decisions about the
trade-offs between environmen-
tal protection and industrializa-
tion.
Q
How did you perceive
the Chinese reaction to the
U.S. delegation?
JT\ I was very much impressed
with the open, frank, sincere,
and friendly approach of our
counterparts on both the pro-
fessional and personal levels.
Our colleagues were obviously
eager to meet with us, not only
to hear the answers to their
questions, but also to share
their problems and experiences
with us. I believe that the recep-
tion we were accorded indi-
cates very good prospects for a
mutually satisfactory long-term
relationship.
34
EPA JOURNAL
-------
On a recent trip to China. Administrator Costle met with Li Chaobo (right). Director, Office of the
Environmental Protection Leading Group of the State Council of People's Republic of China and
Qu Gep/ng. Deputy Director //eft/.
Q
How does the signing of
the Chinese protocol fit into
EPA response to environ-
mental problems among the
less developed countries?
Although there are some
who would argue with this
position, I think it is fair to say
that the Peoples Republic of
China is one of the leaders of
the Third World, and increas-
ingly likely to be so. Through
dedicated effort on their part
and the marshalling of re-
sources unavailable in many
smaller countries, it is likely
that the Chinese can develop
both broad scale operational
plans and specific control
strategies which can serve as
useful models for other devel-
oping countries, it is particu-
larly likely that the Chinese may
find new ways of using scarce
resources or manpower-inten-
sive techniques that would not
be immediately obvious to us
in industrialized countries, or
cost effective in our systems.
\3l How should EPA work
with the United Nations En-
vironmental Program, partic-
ularly with regard to less
developed countries?
The U.N. Environmental
Program has a unique role in
this area, as the only multilat-
eral organization including na-
tions at all levels of industrial-
ization. I am very impressed
with the potential of this orga-
nization as a cost-effective
means for industrialized nations
to share environmental expe-
rience with the developing
countries. At the same time,
Dr. (M.K.) Tolba (executive
director of the U.N. Environ-
ment Program) and hisassoci-
ates have also quite honestly
pointed out to me that, as cur-
rently organized and funded,
the U.N. Environmental Pro-
gram does not have adequate
resources to get directly in-
volved in many countries. This
is not inherently bad, but sug-
gests that the U.N. and all
U.N. member countries need
to continue to work on identify-
ing the most pressing prob-
lems common to the greatest
number of developing coun-
tries, and to find most-effective
ways to disseminate informa-
tion on the economics of pollu-
tion control, the economics of
failure to act, the health conse-
quences of pollution, and tech-
niques and technologies which
can be factored into the eco-
nomic planning and develop-
ment of each developing coun-
try.
\3t Does EPA have a policy
with regard to the develop-
ing countries?
EPA is working closely
with the Department of State
and AID to develop a coordi-
nated US Government position
on this important question. An
increasing number of develop-
ing countries are realizing the
need to include anticipatory
environmental policy in eco-
nomic and industrial planning.
They are aware that prevention
of pollution through planning
of necessary controls, limits,
and sites is far more cost-
effective than cleaning up pol-
lution after it is present. Even
more important for most of
these countries with their very
limited resources, once a pol-
luting enterprise is in place and
operating, is that modifying or
closing it down may be eco-
nomically impossible for the
country.
EPA and the US govern-
ment are getting an increasing
number of requests for assist-
ance of various types. It is in
our interest, not only for global
environmental reasons, but for
political and cultural reasons,
for the US to accept some share
of the burden of assisting these
countries. Since EPA has no
mandate for direct involve-
ment in this, we are determin-
ing how EPA might provide
assistance through AID, the
United Nations Environment
Program, and other possible
channels. This is a complex
issue, since each developing
country has unique circum-
stances and environmental
problems. I firmly believe that
the U.S. has an obligation to
provide assistance and to do
it well. My dilemma is the prob-
lem of sorting through a num-
ber of possible approaches and
settling on the one which is
most likely to succeed.
Q
Does China appear to
have the infrastructure to han-
dle environmental issues?
A
At present the Chinese
are still developing this infra-
structure. While there is under-
standing and a great deal of
support at the local level to
handle immediate problems,
and a broad understanding at
the senior levels of the govern-
ment, the mechanism for join-
ing these through a pyramid of
responsible administrators and
scientists is not yet in place.
As I mentioned earlier, this is
oneoftheareaswhichthe
Chinese are addressing first,
and one in which they hope to
learn a great deal from the expe-
rience and mistakes which we
and other industrialized coun-
tries have made in the past.
I am confident that the Chinese
will work out an organization
which is consistent with their
social and political system and
which will, in the long run,
provide effective environmental
leadership. As they themselves
admit, this is going to be a
difficult task, given the fact
that they now have one billion
people and urgently need to
develop agriculture and indus-
try with relatively scarce re-
sources. Nevertheless I saw
clear evidence of strong envi-
ronmenta I consciousness and a
sincere desire to translate this
into effective action. Although
my time in Beijing (formerly
Peking) was very short, what
I saw and what I have heard
from others makes me believe
that the Chinese will succeed.D
APRIL 1980
35
-------
Update
A review of recent major
EPA activities and devel-
opments in the pollution
control program areas.
HAZARDOUS
WASTES
New Rules for Toxics
EPA Administrator
Douglas M. Costle re-
cently announced the first
steps in a system to trans-
form the way American
is responsible for prepar-
ing must also contain:
the name of the generator,
the name of all transport-
ers, the name and address
of the designated facil-
ity, and the description
and quantity of the waste.
Finally, the generator
must give copies of that
manifest to the trans-
porter.
The transporter also
has specified responsibil-
ities, said Costle. He
AIR
ENFORCEMENT
EPA Administrator Douglas M. Cost/e, (right), and
Assistant Administrator Chris Beck at press confer-
ence on ha/nrdouK wastes.
industry handles its toxic
chemical wastes.
"Today we are issuing
three regulations which
will give us a national
roadmap of where waste
isand where itis going,"
he said. "These regula-
tions will create an inven-
tory of all businesses in
the Nation which produce,
transport or dispose of
hazardous waste. They
establish a manifest sys-
tem so that we will know
at all times who is respon-
sible for hazardous waste,
where it is going, and
whether it gets there
safely."
Costle explained that
the manifest system re-
quires the generator to de-
termine if his wastes are
hazardous, and if so, to
package them according
to Department of Trans-
portation standards and
then, on the manifest,
designate the approved
facility to which they
must go. The manifest he
must sign a copy of the
manifest, acknowledging
acceptance of the waste,
and give it to the genera-
tor. He must deliver the
waste to the designated
facility, and receive from
that facility a signed copy
of the manifest. He must,
in the case of a spill,
take action to clean up
that spill and contact
the National Response
Center and the Transpor-
tation Department.
The facility, whether
it be an incinerator, a
treatment plant, or a
disposal site, must sign
a copy of the manifest and
return it to the generator,
thus closing the loop.
The generator, when
he receives the signed
manifest, knows that his
waste arrived safely. But
if he does not receive
a signed copy he must,
within 35 days, contact
the transporter and the
designated facility to find
out the status of the waste
and within 45 days sub-
mit a report to EPA.
Diesel standards
EPA recently set new auto
emission standards to
reduce particulate exhaust
released into the air
from diesel cars and light-
duty trucks. The stand-
ards take effect with the
1982 models.
These are the first auto
standards for diesel
particulates, which may
cause lung and respira-
tory diseases. Particu-
lates, commonly referred
to as soot, are composed
of hundreds of organic
compounds which can
become lodged or trapped
deeply in sensitive lung
tissue causing increased
frequency of bronchitis,
asthma attacks, and
respiratory infection.
EPA Administrator
Douglas M. Costle said,
"The number of diesels
on the road is rapidly
growing. The amount of
particulates from each of
these vehicles is 30 to 70
times greater than partic-
ulates released from gas-
oline powered engines.
Auto manufacturers have
told us that by the mid-to-
late 1980's, 20 percent
of the auto market will
be diesels."
EPA said the diesels
would have emitted
between 152,000 and
253,000 metric tons of
particulate matter each
year by 1990 without the
controls. The new
standard will reduce
particulates 74 percent or
down to 40,000 to 66,000
metric tons per year.
Costle said he wanted
to make it clear that the
standards do not result
from any conclusions
made from EPA's cancer
studies currently under-
way. EPA is continuing
research on the particu-
lates to determine if
diesel exhaust may be
carcinogenic.
Settlement announced
EPA has announced the
partial settlement of a
suit against the owners
and operators of the Kin-
Buc Landfill in Edison,
N.J. Kin-Buc is a
chemical dumpsite that
has been leaking toxics
and hazardous substances
into the Raritan River and
was one of the initial
problem sites that
focused public attention
on the danger of
inadequate disposal
practices.
The lawsuit began last
February with the filing
of a 60-count complaint
by the Justice Department
charging the operators
with multiple violation of
Federal environmental
laws and seeking injunc-
tive relief requiring them
to clean up the site. The
agreement reached
requires Kin-Buc, Inc., the
corporate owner and
operator, to construct a
cover over a mound of
buried refuse to prevent
rainfall from infiltrating
the mound and carrying
contaminants into under-
lying groundwater. The
rainwater instead will
flow along the sides, be
collected in ditches, and
ultimately be discharged
into the Raritan River.
In order to insure that
the discharge is not
polluted, Kin-Buc must
file an application for a
discharge permit from
EPA which will require
that the discharge be
carefully monitored.
Kin-Buc must also sample
and analyze groundwater
under the site for at least
20 years in order to test
whether the cover is
controlling contamination.
GM Recall
The EPA has ordered
General Motors Corpora-
tion to recall approxi-
mately 170,000 of its
1977 Buick vehicles
equipped with the 350-
cubic inch displacement
engine and 2-barrel
carburetor which fail to
meet Federal exhaust
emission standards. The
vehicles involved in the
recall include the Buick
Century, Regal, and Le
Sabre. Vehicles sold in
California are not in-
cluded in the recall.
The Agency has identi-
fied the problems to be
defects in the exhaust
gas recirculation sys-
tem which cause the ve-
hicles to emit pollutants
in excess of the 1977
Federal standard for
oxides of nitrogen.
The vehicles also do not
meet the standards for
emissions of hydrocarbon
and carbon monoxide.
Although the exact rea-
son for the latter emis-
sions is still under
investigation by GM, the
Agency believes there is a
defect in the carburetor
idle system.
Under the recall pro-
vision of the Clean Air
Act, General Motors has
45 days to submit a plan
to remedy the pollution
problem on these vehicles
or to request a hearing.
Once EPA has approved
the plan, General Motors
will notify owners whose
cars are involved. The
cars would be repaired by ,
GM dealers at no cost to
the owners.
Fuel complaint
EPA has cited a Sears,
Roebuck and Company,
Inc. service facility in Lou-
isiana for violating
Agency fuel regulations,
and an administrative
civil complaint asking for
$189,000 in penalties has
been brought against the
company. The Agency
said it knows of 27 occa-
sions when service vans
and a compact station
wagon belonging to a
Sears facility which
required unleaded fuel
were fueled with leaded
gasoline instead, causing
violations of Federal
unleaded fuel regulations.
.M.
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Fuel switching has
been a source of concern
at the Agency for some
time. Results of earlier
surveys show as many as
10 percent of the
vehicles that needed
unleaded gas were im-
properly fueled with
leaded. Under the law,
retail gasoline station
operators and fleet
operators with gasoline
dispensing facilities can
receive a maximum of
$10,000 civil penalty
each time a violation
takes place.
RESEARCH AND
DEVELOPMENT
Wood burning
EPA is conducting re-
search on overcoming air
pollution problems from
residential and industrial
wood burning. Numerous
studies are being con-
ducted at the Agency's
Industrial Environmental
Research Laboratory in
Research Triangle Park,
N.C., aimed at a better
understanding of the
types and amounts of
industrial and residential
wood combustion
emissions, determining
the impact of wood burn-
ing on atmospheric air
quality as compared to
other energy sources, and
learning how this pollu-
tion can be minimized by
changing conventional
wood burning methods.
EPA hopes that the
scientific and engineering
research generated by
this research can be used
to: (1) design and con-
struct less-polluting
equipment; (2) control
emissions through im-
proved operation; and (3)
select those types of
wood that have the least
pollution potential.
Research Proposals
A new system for research
proposal solicitation and
review, designed to
strengthen EPA's
research capability, was
announced recently by
Stephen J. Gage,
Assistant Administrator
for Research and
Development.
"The Agency's regula-
tory responsibilities
require the best possible
scientific information,"
Gage said. "I believe this
new process will open up
our system, providing a
broader base for research
proposals and higher
quality scientific results."
The new system,
intended to broaden the
approach for reviewing
proposals, focuses on the
wider use of peer panel
reviews to assess scien-
tific merit. The review
process will be used in
conjunction with pro-
posal solicitations
similar to those used by
the National Institutes of
Health and the National
Science Foundation.
The Agency's Office of
Research and Develop-
ment (ORD) currently
awards approximately
$70 million annually in
research grants and
cooperative agreements.
Resin Removal
The EPA has asked for
the removal of filtering
resins from drinking
water softeners sold by
21 companies in nine
states because the resin
may contain low-level
radioactive material
which might contaminate
drinking water.
Water softeners are
used to remove calcium
and magnesium—the
"hardness"—from water.
They must be commer-
cially installed and are
not "screw-on" type
water filters sold to
homeowners.
The water softeners
involved are believed to
be in use in Arizona,
Florida, Illinois, Michi-
gan, Minnesota, New
Mexico, New York, North
Dakota, and Wisconsin.
The Agency is investi-
gating whether further
action should betaken
under the Federal Toxic
Substances Control Act
and whether dealers will
be ordered to replace the
filtering devices and pro-
hibit future sales of them.
PESTICIDES
Sales Stopped
The Union Carbide Cor-
poration has volunteered
to stop selling a pesticide
called "aldicarb" in
Suffolk County, New
York, to prevent further
contamination of drink-
ing water weils there,
according to EPA. The
Agency will permit
labelling of aldicarb
(brand-name Temik) so
that sale and use of the
highly toxic pesticide
will be prohibited in
Suffolk County, on the
eastern end of Long Island.
However, its use on po-
tatoes, soybeans,
oranges, peanuts, and
other crops in other parts
of the country will be
allowed to continue under
current safeguards.
Potato growers in Suf-
folk County have used
aldicarb, a granular
material plowed into the
soil, for the past several
years to curb pests called
golden nematodes and
Colorado potato beetles.
But studies oegun last
August showed that
aldicarb was contaminat-
ing drinking water wells
in the area.
The Suffolk County
Health Dept. has closed
51 wells with levels of
the pesticide above 7
parts per billion (ppb).
In all, 216 public and
private water wells in
the county have been
found to contain aldicarb
traces ranging from
1 to 515 ppb.
AGENCY WIDE
Costle Named
President Carter recently
established the Federal
Radiation Policy Council
and appointed EPA Ad-
ministrator Douglas M.
Costle as its first
chairman.
Costle said the Council
will involve all govern-
ment agencies with
major activities or
responsibilities in the
area of radiation protec-
tion and "will offer for
the first time a mechanism
to coordinate the
formulation and imple-
mentation of Federal
policy relating to radia-
tion protection. It will also
serve as a forum for
public input on radiation
protection issues and
ensure effective liaison
with the Congress and
the States."
Energy Study
The EPA has released
a new study of environ-
mental impacts related to
Western energy develop-
ment. Titled, "Energy
From The West," the
10-votume assessment
forecasts the cost and
benefits of large scale
energy development to
reduce the Nation's
dependency on foreign
oil. The study was pre-
pared for EPA by the
Science and Public
Policy Program of the
University of Oklahoma.
The study focuses on
development in eight
energy-rich states: Ari-
zona, Colorado, Montana,
New Mexico, North
Dakota, South Dakota,
Utah, and Wyoming.
Energy and industrial
development other than
energy-related activities
that will be attracted to
the region could add
thousands of job oppor-
tunities by the year 2000.
State, county and, over
the long term, municipal
governments can expect
surplus tax revenues.
The report cites envi-
ronmental impacts such
as underground water
contamination, water
shortages, waste disposal
problems, and increased
air pollution.
Environmental Council
The Environmental Indus-
try Council, in a program
jointly sponsored by the
President's Council on
Environmental Quality,
has awarded citations to
four companies for their
outstanding contributions
in the fields of pollution
control and energy
conservation.
GusSpeth, CEQ
Chairman, presented
the awards at the 1980
Environmental Industry
Conference in Wash-
ington, D.C.
Perfection of a tech-
nique by which a sanitary
landfill provided gas for
homes and industry won
an award in solid waste
management for Getty
Synthetic Fuels, Inc.
Basin Electric Power
Cooperative of Bismarck,
N.D., won an award in air
pollution control 1or a
successful dry method of
removing sulfur dioxide
from stack gases of coal-
burning power plants.
Martin Marietta
Alumina, Inc. of St. Croix,
Virgin islands, received
an award for energy con-
servation for production
improvements that have
saved two million barrels
of oil since 1972.
A General Electric
Company plant in Gaines-
ville, Fla. won an award
for a new process for
handling wastewater in
manufacture of nickel-
cadmium batteries. Be-
fore the system was
developed, Speth said,
the plant had been dis-
charging some 250,000
gallons of treated water
daily into a nearby stream
that found its way to an
underground water
supply. When the State
mandated tougher stand-
ards, GE installed a proc-
ess to recycle the waste-
water and keep it on the
premises, at the same
time salvaging several
million gallons annually
of sodium hydroxide,
which is sold as raw
material. Q
APRIL 1980
37
-------
Scenes front Earth Day, 1970.
Earth Day '70
Contiri,'
In some ways NEPA may turn out to be the
most influential of our environmental laws
for it not only sets forth our basic national
goals for environmental protection, but it
also tells us that essential to achieving
them is foresight.
There have been other accomplishments.
Today, almost every State has one or more
agencies charged with protecting its envi-
ronment and natural resources. Nearly 1 50
universities and colleges have programs
for environmental education. As of Dec.
30, 1979, the U.S. Environmental Protec-
tion Agency had made grants of S24.9
billion for municipal wastewater
treatment projects. Firms making
equipment used to clean up air and water
pollution had sales of $1.8 billion
in 1977 and are growing about twice
as fast as the rest of U.S. industry.
It ought to be remembered that there are
huge costs involved in the maintenance of
the status quo, even though they do not
show up on corporate balance sheets. A
recent study conducted for the Environ-
mental Protection Agency estimates that air
pollution alone results in deaths costing
the Nation $5 billion to $16 billion a year
and disease costing about $36 billion n
year. Efforts to clean up our air, land, and
water have yielded all of us inestimable
benefits and will continue to do so. The
National Wildlife Federation sums up the
importance of the first environmental
decade:
The Environmental Revolution has altered
our physical surroundings. Beyond that, it
has worked remarkable changes in govern-
ment, law, politics and economics. It has
reshaped many people's philosophy of life
and scale of values. In very practical terms,
the Environmental Revolution is lengthen-
ing lives and lessening human misery by
reducing the poisons in our air, water, and
soil. Perhaps most importantly of all in a
way not too many people have noted, the
Environmental Revolution has revitalized
the democratic process.
What has happened to the Great Lakes is
an excellent illustration of what has been
accomplished in the first decade of national
concern for the environment.
In 1970, scientists told us that Lake Erie
was dying and that the other Great Lakes
were threatened by pollution from the steel
plants, oil refineries, paper mills, and city
sewage plants which for the previous one
hundred years had befouled the world's
largest fresh water system.
By 1980, the lakes had won a stay of ex-
ecution, thanks to an international effort.
In two Great Lakes Water Quality Agree-
ments, the first in 1972 and the second in
1978, the U.S. and Canada solemnly
agreed to begin the arduous process of
cleansing the lakes. And that process has
begun. Federal legislation, notably the
Clean Water Act, has provided us with the
means to assess and abate new threats to
the Great Lakes ecosystem.
The result is that substantial progress
has been made in controlling pollution en-
tering the lakes from industrial and munici-
pal point sources. Phosphorus levels, which
once threatened the lakes with death by
eutrophication, are beginning to decline.
DDT is leaving the Great Lakes food chain
faster than expected. However, as we ap-
proach a resolution of these old problems,
new ones are identified to take their places.
Within the realm of toxic contaminants, we
have had to shift our focus from DDT to
PCB's. Our main pollution control and
abatement concern has become urban run-
off and atmospheric fallout, as the existing
environmental laws have progressively re-
duced emissions from point sources.
The lesson of the Great Lakes in the
1970's is this—in less than 200 years, in
less time than America has been a Nation, a
brief moment in terms of man's life on this
planet, significant adverse changes in the
Lakes' water quality have occurred. The
responsibility for these changes rests solely
with man. In the 1970's, a sufficiently large
and dispersed group of people recognized
the fragility and finite nature of the Earth's
ecosystem, understood that "everything is
connected to everything else," and ac-
cepted the responsibility not only to set
straight the mistakes of the past, but to
avoid repeating them in the future.
So long as the human species inhabits
the Earth, proper management of its re-
sources will be the most fundamental issue
we face. Our very survival will depend
upon whether or not we are able to pre-
serve, protect and defend our environment.
We are not free to decide about whether or
not our environment "matters." It does
matter, apart from any political exigencies.
We disregard the needs of our ecosystem
at our mortal peril.
That was the great lesson of Earth Day.
It must never be forgotten. G
Senator Nelson (D-Wis.) proposed Earth
Day '70.
Earth Day, 1970.
EPA JOURNAL
-------
People
Norbart A. Jaworski
He has been named Director
of the Environmental Research
Laboratory in Duiuth, Minn. He
was most recently the Deputy
Director of the Industrial En-
vironmental Research Labora-
tory, Office of Research and
Development at Research Tri-
angle Park, N.C.
He has been director of
EPA's Pacific Northwest En-
vironmental Research Labora-
tory in Corvailis, Ore.; director
of EPA's Grosse He Laboratory
in Grosse lie, Mich.; and chief
of the engineering section of
the Chesapeake Technical Sup-
port Laboratory in the former
Federal Water Pollution Control
Administration. He was a
member of the North Carolina
Scientific Advisory Board for
Water Quality.
Jaworski has a B.S. and
M.S. in Civil Engineering from
the University of Wisconsin
and a Ph.D. in Water Re-
sources Engineering from the
University of Michigan.
Glenn Schweitzer
He has been named Director
of the Environmental Monitor-
ing Systems Laboratory in Las
Vegas, Nev. He joined EPA
in 1973 as Director of the new
Office of Toxic Substances
after serving in senior scientific
positions within the Depart-
ment of State, the Agency for
International Development, and
the Executive Office of the Pres-
ident. In 1977 he joined the
Program on Science, Technol-
ogy, and Society of Cornell
University as a Senior Research
Fellow, returning to the EPA
Office of Research and Devel-
opment in late 1979 as Director
of the Ecological Effects Divi-
sion in the Office of Environ-
mental Processes and Effects
Research.
He is a member of the New
York Academy of Sciences, the
American Chemical Society,
and Sigma Xi.
He received a B.S. from the
U.S. Military Academy and a
M.S. degree from the Califor-
nia Institute of Technology.
Dr. W. Montague Cobb
He was among the guest
speakers during Black History
Week Observances at EPA
Headquarters, February 25-28.
Dr. Cobb spoke on the subject
of " Blacks in Medicine—
Past, Present and Future." He
is a Distinguished Professor
Emeritus of Anatomy in the
Howard University College of
Medicine and editor of the
Journal of the National Med-
ical Association.
Since January, 1976, he has
been President of the National
Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People. And
more recently, he served as
Distinguished Professor at
Arkansas University.
Others on this year's pro-
gram, were Larry
Young, a member of the
Maryland legislature and
President of the Center for
Urban Environmental Studies,
and the Reverend Bernard Lee,
a former consultant to EPA
and now Project Director with
the Southern Christian Leader-
ship Conference.
Richard M. Campbell
He has been named Assistant
Inspector General Tor Investiga-
tions, where he will direct EPA
inquiries into fraud, malfea-
sance, contract violations by
contractors, misuse of funds,
and maladministration. Camp-
bell comes to EPA from the
Department of Health, Educa-
tion and Welfare, where he was
Director, Division of Investiga-
tions from 1973-79 and Act-
ing Assistant inspector General
for Investigations during 1979.
He served in the Department
of Agriculture as Assistant Re-
gional Inspector General from
1971-73 and special agent
from 1964-71. Previously he
was a special agent for the
U.S. Army counter-intelligence
from 1949-69. Campbell
earned a bachelor's degree
from the University of Mary-
land in 1962. In 1979 he re-
ceived the HEW Inspector
General Leadership Award.
EPA Journal Subscriptions
Name-First, Last
j
Ptease Print
L_U_l i
Compa
i '.
ny
^Jar
nei
irfi
dditio
lai
Ad<
ire
ssL
ine
I
1
Street
f«<
res
s
t _
City
I !
[
State
|
i
Zip Code
LJJJLL.
Payment enclosed
Charge to my Deposit Account No.
Do you know someone in industry or in a civic
group who wants to keep up with national
environmental developments involving EPA?
Let them know about EPA Journal. If they want
to subscribe, give them this form. The sub-
scription price is $12 peryearand $15.00 if
mailed to a foreign address. A single copy
sells for $1.20. (Agency employees receive
this publication without charge.) Anyone
wishing to subscribe should fill in the form
below and enclose a check or money order
payable to the Superintendent of Documents.
Mail order form to:
(Superintendent of Documents)
Government Printing Office
Washington. D.C. 20402
-------
Ecology and the Future
Continued from p;tcjo ' •"
and services." Air pollution is
widely seen as one problem,
for instance, that can be com-
pletely solved by making laws.
EPA is still too much on the
regulatory side and does not
give enough emphasis on pre-
vention, such as developing
waste management systems,
better siting, and planning so as
to avoid anticipated pollution
stresses. If heavy industry and
power plants were located in
large parks with greenbelts of
natural or semi-natural buffers,
then spills or accidents would
be contained. A common sense
thing. We don't do it, though.
We stick industry right down in
the middle of urban sprawl or
we let the sprawl grow up
around it, as in the Los Angeles
airport case where the city
eventually had to tear down the
houses and buy everybody out
in order to keep the airport func-
tional. The Three-Mile Island
nuclear plant is another case
where people are living too
close to a potentially dangerous
plant. The point is that the eco-
nomic cost of poor planning is
now evident and must be con-
sidered in all impact assess-
ments. And this, of course,
brings up another common
sense wisdom: "An ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of
cure!"
\oc What do you think is
going to be the impact of
this tremendous loss of farm
land that seems to be going on
in this country almost daily?
A
l\ Very soon now we won't
have surplus grain to trade
with or to use for gasohol; we'll
need all of it for food {for us
and our domestic animals). It's
foily to allow our best farm
land to be used for other pur-
poses, such as housing, when
there is marginal land that can
be used for such purposes.
Again, we can blame the market
system that allows urbanized
real estate values to far exceed
farm values. We can also blame
various vested interests who
constantly block any reforms in
our tax and zoning procedures
that might alleviate the situa-
tion. Preservation of farm land
is something we must do some-
thing about in the 1980's. If
there is real public awareness
and public pressure on this,
politicians will find a way to do
ill
>OC With the energy problem
we have today, we won't
continue to have new suburbs
will we?
A
suspect urban sprawl will
be slowed. So some over-
shoot trends are self-corrective.
But, of course, that brings us to
the fact that we've never solved
in America the problem of how
to build a city as a place to live;
we have built cities whose
major purpose is to promote
business; you don't plan to live
in those glass towers unless
you are extremefy wealthy!
Again, European cities are more
livable than ours. So we have
lessons to learn from them. We
go to some of our cities at night,
you know, and there is nobody
on the streets except criminals.
Whereas in the European city,
people live above the stores,
have nice homes, parks, Mom-
and-Pop shops, and they enjoy
living there.
\OC Do you think it's going
to be possible to make
progress on an ecological
ethic when we are also con-
fronted by an energy crisis?
A
Yes. I think the energy
crisis will actually speed the
application of ecological prin-
ciples and the strengthening
of ethics. My brother, Howard,
and I both emphasize in our
books that good ecology is
based on the laws of energy.
Man and nature are both ruled
by and operate under the same
natural laws. It's the quality as
well as the quantity of energy
that is important. Sunlight and
oil are not the same in quality in
terms of potential ability to do
work; thus we cannot shift from
oil to solar power without mak-
ing adjustments for the quality
differences. The problem is
conversion. There are plenty of
energy sources. Hydrogen
and sunlight are everywhere;
atomic energy is everywhere.
There's lots of oil, coal, but how
do we convert these with large
net benefits and without nega-
tive effects on the environment,
on our vital life support systems
and on social equities? This is
the challenge. So environmental
concern and concern for energy
is the same thing! It's now a
matter of getting people to see
that these concerns are not con-
tradictory, because the one
promotes the other.
>ot Of course, you have a
negative effect from almost
any type of energy, don't you?
A
Oh yes, but some con-
versions are more costly to
the environment than others.
This raises the question of the
ultimate carrying capacity and
the population problem. In-
creasing population density
and resource demand is a world
problem. Fortunately, we are
seeing a reduction in the world
birth rate. There seems to be a
substantial decrease coming by
the end of this century.
Q
What is going to be the
answer to getting the right
things to happen? How are
you going to get the word out?
A
l\ It takes a lot of effort
and repetition—like advertis-
ing; I spend a lot of time with
public lectures and writing arti-
cles like "Common Sense Ecol-
ogy" or "There's Good News
About Energy." What I'd rather
be doing maybe is more re-
search, but I feel ail of us, jour-
nalists and scientists alike,
should invest time in public
communications.
Q
Do you believe we will
be able to live in space on a
large scale, as some scien-
tists predict?
A
In his book, "The High
Frontier," Gerald O'Neill
confidently expects that in the
middle of the next century there
will be millions of people living
in great harmony and with great
success in space colonies.
They will be mining the moon
and mining the asteroids in or-
der to continue exponential
growth in population and afflu-
ence after it's no longer pos-
sible on the Earth (so says
O'Neill!). Actually, we have not
yet taken the first step, that is,
built a prototype of a fully re-
generative, very large space-
craft capable of functioning in
space without an umbilical cord
to Earth. The latest NASA re-
port says straight out that we
cannot, with existing technol-
ogy, build a space colony be-
cause we don't know how to
miniaturize the buffer capacity
of biosphere that we mentioned
earlier in this interview. Thus,
I'd say that most scientists are
skeptical that space coloniza-
tion will be possible or desira-
ble in the next century. But we
can say, let's work towards such
a goal, but don't give it high
priority until we get Earth in
better shape. If we don't pre-
serve and repair the Earth and
its life-support system, and
conserve its precious store of
energy, we'll never get to space
because revolutionary disorder
(as in Iran) and constant wars
over declining resources will
require all of our energy and
human ingenuity simply to sur-
vive on Earth!
VX, We hear a lot about ecol-
ogy and nature. What about
ecology and cities? Is that an
area where we need more
emphasis?
A
Yes. It certainly does need
more attention. There has
been much talk and writ-
ing about the "ecology of
cities" but most has been too
narrow in focus. We have al-
ready commented on the need
to manage cities as places to
live, not just places to earn
money. Another important point
to emphasize is that the city is
a heterotrophic or incomplete
ecosystem which depends on z
huge "life support" area to pro-
vide food, energy, outdoor rec-
reation, water, and air. Thus,
the city does not have a sepa-
rate ecology but is a part of the
larger ecosystem that includes
the rural environment, the at-
mosphere, oceans, tropical for-
ests, and so on. The city survives
only if its life support systems
are working. The best cities in
the world to live in are those
that have lots of open space
around them, and are not
jammed up back to back with
other congested areas. An ex-
ample is San Francisco, which
is surrounded by natural water
bodies and mountain buffers
that provide "breathing room"
so to speak and there are food-
producing areas close by. The
40
APRIL 1980
-------
News Briefs
SUIT IN
LOUISIANA
EPA Deputy Administrator Barbara Blum has announced
that the Department of Justice, on behalf of EPA,
has filed a civil suit charging two corporations,
the Southeastern Chemical Company, Inc., and 2001
Inc., of Louisiana, with improper disposal or storage
of highly explosive, flammable, and toxic chemicals
at a site north of New Orleans. "The suit asks that
the court stop the defendants from discharging chemi-
cal wastes into the air, soil, or water," said Blum.
"The suit also asks that a study be done to determine
the nature and extent of soil contamination and that a
plan for a general clean-up be devised."
UNLEADED
FUEL VIOLATORS
The EPA has issued administrative civil complaints
against four companies in Northern Virginia seeking
more than one million dollars in fines for using
leaded gas in fleet cars that require unleaded gas.
The complaints specifically allege that Transportation
Inc., Arlington Yellow Cab, Inc., All State Messenger
and Delivery Services, Inc., and Murphy Brothers, Inc.,
are owners or operators of a facility at 1200 N. Hud-
son Street in Arlington that illegally introduced lead-
ed gasoline into vehicles designed for unleaded, and
offered for sale or dispensed leaded gasoline which
was represented as unleaded fuel. Each company was
assessed individual fines of $271,000.
urban dweller must realize how
valuable these buffers are and
be very militant in their
preservation.
VX, How would you describe
our goal as a society?
A
Our goal should be to-
wards achieving an efficient
society which is designed to
work with rather than against
natural laws such as the laws
of energy, growth, and develop-
ment. Along with this goes a
goal to close the very dangerous
rich-poor human gap, as dis-
cussed in the latest "Club of
Rome" report. Both of these
goals require a political and
economic reordering of prior-
ities—and this will be a difficult
transition that will take time,
common sense, patience, and
better public understanding
than we have at present. It
would appear that the gaps can-
not be closed by laissez-faire
capitalism alone or extreme
socialism either. Some kind o'
different mix must evolve. So
Federal agencies must zero in
on energy thrift, reduction of
waste, urban-industrial siting,
rural-urban integration, preser-
vation of agricultural lands and
other life-support environment,
and perhaps most of all, public
education on holistic principles!
Q
What environmental
measure would you use
to decide whether to allow a
new industry to locate in a
community?
A
We suggest that commu-
nities look at potential in-
dustries very carefully and
determine which will provide
the most jobs for people need-
ing work and at the same time
produce the least deleterious
environmental impact. One way
to do that is to consider water
consumption per employee. A
paper mill, or a chemical plant,
may consume thousands of gal-
lons per day to support one em-
ployee. A plant assembling
watches might use maybe 10
gallons per employee per day
and have correspondingly much
less demand on resources and
less deleterious impact on the
environment in general. So, the
former (i.e., the chemical plant)
would be desirable only in
communities and States that
have the resources, the sites,
and the political will and public
opinion to take care of the se-
vere impacts; the latter type of
industry would be more appro-
priate in small communities in
less developed regions.
Q
What do you see as the
big environmental need in the
1980's?
A
Integrating man-made
and natural ecosystems for
mutual benefit and starting the
the transition from sole depend
ence on declining and non-re-
newable resources to renewable
ones. This means a merging of
economics and ecology with
increasing emphasis on human
values and life support values
and less emphasis on produc-
tion of hard goods. In other
words, my prediction for the
1980's is that we're going to
begin to merge things that have
been controversial and to over-
ride special interests with com-
mon interests according to the
age-old wisdom of common
sense. Furthermore, we are
going to have to do these things
to survive; the handwriting is
on the wall! D
Dr. Odum, nationally-known
ecologist and teacher, is direc-
tor of the Institute of Ecology at
the University of Georgia and
author of five books and numer-
ous articles on ecology.
EPA JOURNAL
41
-------
Around the Nation
Environmental
Conference
The Lincoln Filene Center
for Citizenship and Pub-
lic Affairs at Tufts Uni-
versity recently held a
New England Environ-
mental Conference in
Boston. The conference
offered thirty workshops
on key environmental
issues including air pol-
lution and acid rain, haz-
ardous wastes and wet-
lands protection, and
water supply. There were
also workshops to assist
citizens in sharpening the
skills necessary for active
participation in govern-
mental decision-making
in the 1980's.
Add Rain
In conjunction with Earth
Day '80, EPA Region I
is scheduled to present an
Acid Rain Conference on
April 12. The confer-
ence will be held in Bos-
ton and will provide inter-
ested citizens with up-to-
date information on acid
rain and its effects.
New England is particu-
larly susceptible to acid
rain because the underly-
ing bedrock of the region
contains little of the nat-
ural components neces-
sary to neutralize the acid.
Agency has earmarked
$260,000 to pay for fenc-
ing off the area around
Black Creek and scraping
the tar-like materials
which contain several haz-
ardous substances from
the sewers.
Charles Warren, the
new EPA Regional Admin-
istrator, is also pushing
the work involved in the
$8 million cooperative
grant with New York State
to finance the construc-
tion of a remedial contain-
ment and collection sys-
tem ($2.5 million), a per-
manent treatment facility
{$2 million), analytical
services ($1.4 million),
as well as monitoring,
risk assessment, and
epidemiological studies.
Warren explained that
the $8 million EPA/New
York State grant will also
be used to establish a
technical advisory com-
mittee to make scientific
reviews and recommenda-
tions separate from poli-
tical or policy implica-
tions. Demonstration proj-
ects will be employed to
find out what remedial
techniques work best at
the site. A safety plan to
minimize unhealthful
worker or resident expo-
sure is also to be included.
Cleanup Action
EPA is using the Clean
Water Act to control pol-
lution from the storm sew-
ers leading from the Love
Canal site into adjacent
Black Creek. The Act pro-
vides funds for pollution
cleanup if navigable
waters are threatened
with contamination. The
Air Permits
Region 3 has issued an
air pollution permit to the
Hampton Roads Energy
Company for a proposed
oil refinery to be built in
Portsmouth, Va. In a re-
lated action, EPA ap-
proved a change in Vir-
ginia's air pollution con-
trol regulations designed
to protect air quality
in the refinery area.
The permit, known as
a "PSD" {Prevention of
Significant Air Quality
Deterioration), requires
that the levels of air pol-
lutants will not be signifi-
cantly increased by oper-
ation of the refinery.
Region 3 issued the
permit after a careful re-
view of the application
and consultant studies,
plus extensive public par-
ticipation, which indi-
cated that the refinery
could meet the conditions
required by the regula-
tions.
EPA's review deter-
mined that the pollution
control equipment being
proposed, plus the use of
low sulfur fuel in refinery
operations, meets the best
available technology re-
quirement. As a further
protection, tankers that
tie up to the refinery's
marine terminal will be
required to burn low sul-
fur oil. These measures
will insure that air
quality will be protected.
EPA has also approved
a change in Virginia's air
pollution control regula-
tions designed to insure
that concentrations of
ozone, which already
exceed national stand-
ards in the Portsmouth
area, will continue to
decline despite operation
of the refinery.
The necessary offset
was found when the
Virginia Department of
Highways and Transporta-
tion agreed to use emul-
sion or water-based
asphalt rather than cut-
back or solvent-based
asphalt fortheir road
construction and repair
activities.
Hazardous Waste
The State of Mississippi
is making an all-out effort
to involve the public in
its hazardous waste pro-
gram. This spring, citi-
zens in all parts of the
State are being encour-
aged to participate by
attending public educa-
tion forums in Columbus,
Jackson, and Hattiesburg.
The Jackson forum will
be videotaped and tele-
vised statewide over
Mississippi's educational
television network. The
Mississippi State Board
of Health is leading the
campaign with an assist
from Region 4's Office of
Public Awareness. An
Ad Hoc Advisory Com-
mittee on Hazardous
Waste Public Education
is playing a key role in
"promoting public aware-
ness of challenges Mis-
sissippi faces in the criti-
cal area of hazardous
waste management." The
broadly-based committee
includes representatives
from government agen-
cies, environmental orga-
nizations, and industry.
The group has produced
a slide show, a brochure,
and other materials to
aid in the public educa-
tion process.
The State is re-writing
regulations first drafted
in 1979. Public hearings
on the new regulations
will be held following the
series of forums. It is
anticipated that the regu-
lations will be adopted
by the State this summer
and implemented concur-
rently with EPA's.
and Find" line if they sus-
pect illegal dumping, but
are cautioned not to at-
tempt to investigate a
hazardous site them-
selves. Many such wastes
are in the form of liquids
or sludges that can be
explosive and should be
handled only by experts.
The hotline telephone
numbers were incor-
rectly given in the last
issue of the EPA Journal.
The correct numbers are
asfollows: For Illinois
residents only, the phone
number is 800-972-3170.
For residents of Wiscon-
sin, Minnesota, Ohio,
Indiana, and Michigan,
the phone number is 800-
621-3191.
Seek and Find
Region 5 has launched
a new citizen participation
program to locate dan-
gerous, illegal hazardous
wastes, and in conjunc-
tion with State agencies,
eliminate any threat they
present to human health
and the environment.
Called "Seek and Find,"
the new program uses a
toll-free hotline to help
concerned citizens reach
EPA specialists trained
in hazardous wastes in-
vestigation. People are
urged to call the "Seek
Grants Awarded
EPA, in cooperation with
the Urban Mass Trans-
portation Administration,
hasawarded $1,514,900
in transportation/air qual-
ity planning grants to lo-
cal government agencies
in Region 6.
Regional Administrator
Adlene Harrison said the
grants will be used to
evaluate reasonably avail-
able transportation con-
trol measures including
vehicle inspection/main-
tenance programs, in-
creased transit service,
carpool/vanpool pro-
grams, bicycle facilities,
and parking management
programs.
Ultimately, EPA will
be able to determine the
extent of air quality im-
provements from these
transportation measures.
Evaluation of the trans-
portation alternatives in-
cludes air quality analyses
and assessments of the
economic, mobility and
social impacts of the
measures.
42
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Earth Day '80
The Office of Public
Awareness has mounted
a special public informa-
tion campaign to increase
participation in environ-
mental protection as a
part of Earth Day '80.
Regional Administrator
Adlene Harrison will hold
a telephone press confer-
ence with key media
throughout the region to
announce environmental
accomplishments in the
last ten years. There are
also plans to provide
special information to
Senators and Congress-
men for release to their
constituents, send public
service announcements
to radio stations, sponsor
a grade school poster
contest on cleaning up
the environment, and
encourage student clean-
up activities and special
Earth Day displays.
Earth Day '80
Region 7 will join local
conservation groups in
celebrating Earth Day '80.
Plans are underway to
mark the tenth anniver-
sary of Earth Day by
staging ceremonies with
tree plantings and may-
oral proclamations in
major cities in the region.
A regional Earth Day
brochure was sent to
12,000 environmentalists,
civic leaders, educators,
and others to encourage
participation in the cele-
bration. Also, EPA em-
ployees will be allowed
to commemorate the day
by planting their own
trees provided by the
Missouri Department of
Conservation. Elsewhere
in the region, commu-
nities are scheduled to
hold seminars, festivals,
and other benefits under
an environmental theme.
PCB Fine Levied
Kansas City Power and
Light Company has been
fined $55,000 for viola-
tions of PCB regulations
at three facilities in Kan-
sas City and at the La-
Cygne power plant in
Kansas. Region 7 charged
that the utility mishan-
dled, mislabeled, and
improperly disposed of
PCB's during a period
from September 4 to
October 30,1979.
This is the second ma-
jor Agency action in four
months involving enforce-
ment of PCB regulations.
In October, Region 7
fined Radium Petroleum
Company of Kansas City
$131,000 for allegedly
spraying PCB-contam-
inated waste oil on roads
at a suburban Kansas City
landfill. Negotiations for
a settlement between
EPA and Radium are in
progress.
Combined celebrations
Thousands of metropoli-
tan Denver residents and
visitors are expected to
take part in a dual cele-
bration of Earth Day and
Year of the River on Sun-
day, April 29th. Through
the combined efforts of
approximately 50 envi-
ronmental, civic, business
and government organiza-
tions, numerous events
are scheduled.
Denver's Confluence
Park, located on the Platte
River, will serve as the
focal point. Visitors will
be entertained by live
music while strolling by
the many information
booths and exhibits.
Among the demonstra-
tions planned are stream
stocking, tree planting,
pollution monitoring proc-
esses, precision parachut-
ing, and kayaking.
Clean Lakes Grant
Region 9 has awarded
$70,000 to the State of
California to restore Lake
Merritt in downtown
Oakland. The grant was
one of ten awarded across
the country to clean up
urban lakes. Authorization
for the money comes
through the Clean Lakes
Program under the Clean
Water Act. The program
was designed in conjunc-
tion with the President's
Urban Policy Initiatives.
An additional $30,000
will be contributed by the
State Water Resources
Control Board and/or
a local agency such as
Alameda County Flood
Control and Water Con-
servation District, making
the total $100,000.
This money will then
be used by various local
agencies to diagnose the
dying lake and to come up
with a feasible means of
remedying its problems.
These include periodic
nuisance algae growth
and fish kills, polluted
sediment.;, bacterial con-
tamination, and floating
debris. There have also
been years when biomass
accumulation has pre-
vented boating, and dur-
ing the rainy season occa-
sionally sewage makes
its way from overflowing
storm drains to the lake.
The need for a solution
to the Lake Merritt prob-
lem was first brought to
light in 1977 in the EPA-
funded Environmental
Management Plan, devel-
oped by the Association
of Bay Area Governments
EPA Employee "Hired"
A senior staff level engi-
neer from EPA's North-
west Region 10 office
has been hired by An-
chorage, Alaska, to help
the city develop coordi-
nated approaches to
improve the local envi-
ronment.
Kenton L. Lauzen, for
the past four years the
State-wide coordinator
of EPA's approximately
$80 million-a-year sew-
age treatment construc-
tion program in the State
of Washington, will re-
port to Anchorage on
April 1 to begin work
on the staff of John Spen-
cer, Anchorage's chief
administrative officer.
Spencer said Lauzen
will provide technical and
administrative assistance
to the city as Anchorage
tackles problems related
to sewage needs, drinking
water protection, air pol-
lution control, and the
environmental impacts
from land use, energy,
and transportation pro-
grams.
Lauzen will be em-
ployed by Anchorage un-
der terms of an agree-
ment with EPA that identi-
fies high priority envi-
ronmental questions of
mutual concern to Anchor-
age and EPA's North-
west regional office.
Lead Studies
Region 10 has begun a
series of studies on the
control of airborne lead
in Kellogg, Idaho, where
current ambient levels
are frequently 10 times
more than allowed by the
national air quality stand-
ard. The studies—being
undertaken with the joint
participation of the Divi-
sion of Environment
within the State of
Idaho's Departmeni of
Health and Welfare—will
identify the sources of
stack and fugitive emis-
sions of lead from the
Bunker Hill Company's
lead and zinc smelter
complex in Kellogg. The
studies will also deter-
mine the level of control
technology needed to
reduce the airborne emis-
sions of lead and will in-
form the Bunker Hill
company about the costs
of such technology. Re-
sults of the study, ex-
pected to be available late
this year, will be used to
help develop a State Im-
plementation Plan for
controlling airborne lead
in the Kellogg area, n
States Served
by EPA Regions
Region 1 (Boston)
Island.
6172:'
Region 2 (New York
City)
212-264
Region 3
(Philadelphia)
Pcnns .
Colui».
Region 4 (Atlanta)
•
,
404 881 4727
Region 5 (Chicago)
Region 6 (Dall.is)
214-71
Region 7 (Kansas
City)
Region 8 (Denver)
Wyom.1
!;iko!,i. South
Dakota
303837 3895
Region 9 (San
Francisco)
An/oi
M H.-iwan
ii-2320
Region 10 (Seattle)
Alnsk.l. !(t;ih;i Oi CIJI'HI
Washington
APRIL 1980
-------
The Colorado-
America's Hardest Working River
By Truman Temple
The Spanish named it
the Colorado because of
its reddish, silt-laden
waters. John Wesley
Powell, a 19th century ex-
plorer, called it "a mad, turbid
stream." In the 20th century.
it has been nicknamed "Lifeline
of the Southwest."
But in recent times, the
Colorado River also has been
termed an "ailing giant." Its
lower reaches are burdened
with so much saiinity that the
problem has become an inter-
. I
=: t
44
EPA JOURNAL
-------
national issue with Mexico. The
increasingly severe demands
for multiple use of its waters by
the seven States in its drainage
area keep lawyers busy. Near
the river's upper reaches, cities
containing the bulk of the
State of Colorado's popula-
tion are busy piping its water
east to the so-called Front
Range, while Western Slope
farmers argue that their liveli-
hood is being threatened. And
many residents—not all of
them dedicated environmen-
d-.-r
talists—are deeply concerned
about what the exploitation of
oil shale, coal, and other energy
resources in the West will do
to the river.
As Colorado Governor
Richard D. Lamm observed a
few months ago, "Our finite,
limited water resource is being
seriously taxed and depleted
in most geographic areas. For
the first time in our history, we
are consuming almost all of
the water to which we are
entitled in three of our four
river basins. . . . Even in the
most water-abundant area of
Colorado, the Colorado River
Basin, the competition is stiff as
to how, when, and where we
allocate the remaining 1,000,-
000 acre-feet of our uncon-
sumed water. Further, the
availability of this water will
depend, in part, on interpreta-
tions of treaties, compacts,
water quality requirements,
and environmental statutes."
To understand the unusual
character of the Colorado, it
is necessary to consider how it
differs from other great rivers
of America.
First, when compared to
many such waterways, the
Colorado has a modest annuai
flow, an estimated 13 to 1 5
million acre-feet. That is about
the same as the Delaware
River's, which is one-third the
length of the Colorado and
drains a far smaller basin. By
contrast, the annual flow of the
Columbia River isabout 130
million. (An acre-foot is the
amount of water that would
cover an acre one foot deep.)
Furthermore, the Colorado
is unnavigable to any ocean
shipping. There is no major
city at its mouth where it flows
into the Gulf of California, no
deepwater port along its length,
no complex of docks, or any
of the other transshipment
facilities that characterize
rivers like the Mississippi and
the Hudson.
Despite all this, the Colorado
has been described as the aorta
of the Nation's fastest-growing
region. Vast desert areas
depend on its nourishing water.
Fed by winter snows in the high
passes of the Rockies, it begins
Rail trip on tht> Colorado River
at 14,000 feet in Rocky Moun-
tain National Park and snakes
its way more than 1,400 miles
to the Gulf of California, help-
ing to sustain a total of 29
million people in seven States.
South of the border, it also is a
water supply for half a million
people and irrigates about
500,000 acres in Mexico.
In fact, the Colorado per-
meates the economy and life-
styie of the Southwest so
thoroughly that three of EPA's
Regional Offices are involved
in the quality of its water in
one way or another. Region 8
deals with many of the Upper
Basin matters from its Denver
headquarters. Region 9 with
headquarters in San Francisco
is concerned with the river
since it flows through one State
in its jurisdiction, Arizona, and
borders two others, California
and Nevada. Region 6 from its
central office in DalJas also par-
ticipates in Colorado affairs
since one of the Upper Basin
States, New Mexico, is in its
territory.
"We are involved with the
Colorado in several ways," says
Frank Covington, Director of
Region 9's Water Division.
"We're on the receiving end of
problems. The Lower Basin
States of course contribute
salinity, as do the Upper Basin
ones, and as the latter gets into
energy development, we'll feel
any impact. We also interface
with Mexico, and Paul De
Falco, our Regional Adminis-
trator, represents the Region at
meetings of the International
Boundary and Water Commis-
sion."
The references to the Colo-
rado as the cardiovascular sys-
tem of the Southwest are not
idle fancies of travel writers.
The populations along its route
depend on its life-nourishing
flow for their household needs,
electric power, food and fiber,
as well as many jobs in a muiti-
million-dohar recreation in-
dustry. In fact, more than 90
percent of the Colorado and its
tributaries is used to irrigate
agricultural fields, most of
which get little rainfall. The
river's drainage basin covers
some 244,000 square miles and
waters 3.4 million acres pro-
ducing crops worth more than
$1 billion a year. Unfortunately,
it also flows through the most
arid sector of the North Ameri-
can continent. In this desert
climate, water evaporation is
extremely high. And although
the irrigated farms in the Lower
Basin permit a year-round
growing season with double
and even triple cropping, pro-
ducing a big share of the
Nation's fruits and fresh vege-
tables, a huge amount of the
river evaporates into the air
from the chain of man-made
reservoirs along its course. This
evaporation further increases
the river's salinity.
What sort of climate is it?
The region that the Colorado
drains has an annual average
rainfall of only 10 inches, com-
pared with about 57 for Louisi-
ana, the Nation's wettest
State. But even worse, only one-
eighth of that ten inches ever
survives to contribute to the
volume of the river, since the
rest is lost through evaporation
on the ground or by transpira-
tion through the leaves of the
basin's plants.
Great quantities of the river's
flow are diverted to reclamation
projects and to other locations
hundreds of miles distant. The
lush grazing meadows in the
valleys of the Rockies and the
lawns of Los Angeles are both
nourished by the Colorado. It
slakes the thirst of people from
Denver to San Diego. From Lake
Havasu on the Arizona border,
one billion gallons of Colorado
River water are taken daily 250
miles west across California to
supply the Los Angeles and San
Diego megalopolis. Other vast
quantities are channeled to
California's Imperial Valley to
irrigate crops. And numerous
other projects divert the river's
waters along its course. In fact,
in all but two of the last 20
years, the Colorado petered out
into a dry riverbed at its mouth
because so much of it had been
siphoned off.
The specific use of the waters
was first decreed in the 1922
Colorado River compact, an
agreement among the seven
basin States that apportioned an
assumed flow of 1 8 to 20 mil-
lion acre-feet with 15 million
APRIL 1980
45
-------
national issue with Mexico. The
increasingly severe demands
for multiple use of its waters by
the seve'n States in its drainage
area keep lawyers busy. Near
the river's upper reaches, cities
containing the bulk of the
State of Colorado's popula-
tion are busy piping its water
east to the so-called Front
Range, while Western Slope
farmers argue that their liveli-
hood is being threatened. And
many residents—not all of
them dedicated environmen-
talists—are deeply concerned
about what the exploitation of
oil shale, coal, and other energy
resources in the West will do
to the river.
As Colorado Governor
Richard D. Lamm observed a
few months ago, "Our finite,
limited water resource is being
seriously taxed and depleted
in most geographic areas. For
the first time in our history, we
are consuming almost all of
the water to which we are
entitled in three of our four
river basins. . . . Even in the
most water-abundant area of
Colorado, the Colorado River
Basin, the competition is stiff as
to how, when, and where we
allocate the remaining 1,000,-
000 acre-feet of our uncon-
sumed water. Further, the
availability of this water will
depend, in part, on interpreta-
tions of treaties, compacts,
water quality requirements,
and environmental statutes."
To understand the unusual
character of the Colorado, it
is necessary to consider how it
differs from other great rivers
of America.
First, when compared to
many such waterways, the
Colorado has a modest annual
flow, an estimated 13 to 1 5
million acre-feet. That is about
the sameas the Delaware
River's, which is one-third the
length of the Colorado and
drains a far smaller basin. By
contrast, the annual flow of the
Columbia River isabout 130
million. (An acre-foot is the
amount of water that would
cover an acre one foot deep.)
Furthermore, the Colorado
is unnavigable to any ocean
shipping. There is no major
city at its mouth where it flows
into the Gulf of California, no
deepwater port along its length,
no complex of docks, or any
of the other transshipment
facilities that characterize
rivers like the Mississippi and
the Hudson.
Despite all this, the Colorado
has been described as the aorta
of the Nation's fastest-growing
region. Vast desert areas
depend on its nourishing water.
Fed by winter snows in the high
passes of the Rockies, it begins
Raft trip on the Colorado River
at 14,000 feet in Rocky Moun-
tain National Park and snakes
its way more than 1,400 miles
to the Gulf of California, help-
ing to sustain a total of 29
million people in seven States.
South of the border, it also is a
water supply for half a million
people and irrigates about
500,000 acres in Mexico.
In fact, the Colorado per-
meates the economy and life-
style of the Southwest so
thoroughly that three of EPA's
Regional Offices are involved
in the quality of its water in
one way or another. Region 8
deals with many of the Upper
Basin matters from its Denver
headquarters. Region 9 with
headquarters in San Francisco
is concerned with the river
since it flows through one State
in its jurisdiction, Arizona, and
borders two others, California
and Nevada. Region 6 from its
central office in Dallas also par-
ticipates in Colorado affairs
since one of the Upper Basin
States, New Mexico, is in its
territory.
"We are involved with the
Colorado in several ways," says
Frank Covington, Director of
Region 9's Water Division.
"We're on the receiving end of
problems. The Lower Basin
States of course contribute
salinity, as do the Upper Basin
ones, and as the latter gets into
energy development, we'll feel
any impact. We also interface
with Mexico, and Paul De
Falco, our Regional Adminis-
trator, represents the Region at
meetings of the International
Boundary and Water Commis-
sion."
The references to the Colo-
rado as the cardiovascular sys-
tem of the Southwest are not
idle fancies of travel writers.
The populations along its route
depend on its life-nourishing
flow for their household needs,
electric power, food and fiber,
as well as many jobs in a rnuiti-
million-dohar recreation in-
dustry. In fact, more than 90
percent of the Colorado and its
tributaries is used to irrigate
agricultural fields, most of
which get little rainfall. The
river's drainage basin covers
some 244,000 square miles and
waters 3.4 million acres pro-
ducing crops worth more than
$1 billion a year. Unfortunately,
it also flows through the most
arid sector of the North Ameri-
can continent. In this desert
climate, water evaporation is
extremely high. And although
the irrigated farms in the Lower
Basin permit a year-round
growing season with double
and even triple cropping, pro-
ducing a big share of the
Nation's fruits and fresh vege-
tables, a huge amount of the
river evaporates into the air
from the chain of man-made
reservoirs along its course. This
evaporation further increases
the river's salinity.
What sort of climate is it?
The region that the Colorado
drains has an annual average
rainfall of only 10 inches, com-
pared with about 57 for Louisi-
ana, the Nation's wettest
State. But even worse, only one-
eighth of that ten inches ever
survives to contribute to the
volume of the river, since the
rest is lost through evaporation
on the ground or by transpira-
tion through the leaves of the
basin's plants.
Great quantities of the river's
flow are diverted to reclamation
projects and to other locations
hundreds of miles distant. The
lush grazing meadows in the
valleys of the Rockies and the
lawns of Los Angeles are both
nourished by the Colorado. It
slakes the thirst of people from
Denver to San Diego. From Lake
Havasu on the Arizona border,
one billion gallons of Colorado
River water are taken daily 250
miles west across California to
supply the Los Angeles and San
Diego megalopolis. Other vast
quantities are channeled to
California's Imperial Valley to
irrigate crops. And numerous
other projects divert the river's
waters along its course. In fact,
in all but two of the last 20
years, the Colorado petered out
into a dry riverbed at its mouth
because so much of it had been
siphoned off.
The specific use of the waters
was first decreed in the 1922
Colorado River compact, an
agreement among the seven
basin States that apportioned an
assumed flow of 1 8 to 20 mil-
lion acre-feet with 1 5 million
APRIL 1980
45
-------
being divided equally into two
huge segments: The lower com-
pact States of Arizona, Nevada,
and California, and the upper
ones of Wyoming, Utah, Colo-
rado, and New Mexico. (The di-
viding line was near Lees Ferry,
Ariz., where an exiled murderer
named John D. Lee began trans-
porting passengers in 1871
across the river. The annual
river flow has been measured
there since 1922 with the long-
time average annual flow now
believed to total only 1 5 million
acre-feet.) The compact
also recognized that Mexico
could be given rights to use
Colorado River water at some
future date. A treaty was signed
with Mexico in 1944—but more
about that later.
The 1 922 compact paved the
way for enormous engineering
projects. It made possible for
the first time a drainage basin
with multiple use of water in-
cluding power development,
irrigation, recreation, and flood
control. Among the projects
that followed were Hoover Dam
in 1 936, creating Lake Mead and
considered a major engineering
feat of its time; the Imperial
Dam in 1938 where the All-
American Canal carries water
80 mhes west to the Imperial
Valley and its 2,000 miles of
lateral canals; Parker Dam 1 50
miles south of Hoover Dam,
completed in 1938 and creating
storage water for 22 California
cities; the Colorado-Big
Thompson Project, completed
in 1 945, diverting water by
tunnel beneath the Continental
Divide to irrigate cropland in
northern Colorado, and the
Davis Dam in 1949, alleviating
power shortages in Arizona.
The creation of these vast
reservoirs and irrigation proj-
ects brought wealth and pop-
ulation to the Southwest—but
not without a price. Evaporation
from the huge new bodies of
water along with other uses
concentrated the salinity
of the river water remaining
behind, and the run-off and
percolation from irrigated fields
increased it even more. To be
sure, much of the salt load also
comes from natural sources,
since mineral weathering and
dissolution of soluble salts in
the land would occur even if the
river basin were totally unin-
habited. According to a 1971
EPA report on the Colorado, for
example, about 60 percent of
the salt load in the waters at
Hoover Dam comes from nat-
ural sources.
But since the region began
its dramatic growth in the past
few decades, there is no doubt
that man's activities have
greatly affected the salinity of
the river. Estimates vary on just
how much. Myron B. Holburt,
chief engineer of California's
figure will hit $237 million an-
nually by the year 2000 if no
salinity control measures are
carried out.
The 1944 treaty made no
mention of the quality of the
1.5 million annual acre-feet of
water from the Colorado that
Mexico was guaranteed. But in
the 1 960's it became apparent
that the increased saltiness of
Mexico's share was greatly
reducing the usefulness of the
water for irrigation in that
country. Each year the
Colorado River Board, says the
salinity of the river flowing into
Mexico increased from 800
parts per million in 1960 to
1,500 parts in 1 962 (although
others note it has decreased
since then). A study by Profes-
sor Stanley A. Schumm of
Colorado State University re-
ports that the average annual
salinity concentration has al-
most doubled this century.
Salinity hurts crops. The
Water and Power Resources
Service (WPRS—formerly the
Bureau of Reclamation of the
U.S. Department of the Interior),
estimates that total losses in-
cluding agricuftural and munici-
pal damagedue to salinity in the
Lower Basin are now $96 mil-
lion per year. It estimates the
Mexican authorities pointed
this out to Washington with in-
creasing vehemence, and in
1972 William D. Ruckelshaus,
then EPA Administrator, con-
vened an enforcement confer-
ence of the seven basin States
and Federal officials to curb the
salinity. Conferees recom-
mended among other things a
high priority on removing salt
from Paradox Valley and Grand
Valley, which were leaching
into the Colorado, urged EPA to
accelerate its data collection
and research, and named the
Bureau of Reclamation as the
lead agency for basinwide sa-
linity control. President Nixon,
sensing a major international
problem, asked Herbert
Brownell, former U.S. Attorney
General, to head a task force
seeking a solution. The conclu-
sion: Build a giant desalting
plant at Yuma near the Mexican
border where water could be
diverted, cleaned up, and
poured back into the river to
dilute the salts.
Congress in 1 973 authorized
construction of the plant, which
would be ten times bigger than
any such facility in the world,
and able to process 96 million
gallons of water a day. How-
ever, a number of large projects
that would increase irrigation
and other water uses are in
various stages of completion.
The drainage from some of the
new irrigated lands will soon be
carrying still more salt into the
Colorado and south of the
border.
In the meantime, the esti-
mated cost of the desalting
plant has soared. The House
recently approved more than
$356 million for the project in-
cluding some related work to
alleviate impacts on fish and
wildlife habitat at the site, more
than double the estimate six
years ago. The price tag at-
tracted fire from several quar-
ters. The General Account.ng
Office, in a critical report to
Congress, said earlier that the
project "needs to be re-
assessed" and suggested that
cheaper alternatives be studied.
Some Congressmen also ob-
jected. The most vociferous of
them, Representative George
Brown of California, estimated
the ultimate construction cost
will hit ha If a billion dollars
plus ope rating costs that will
run many more millions of
dollars in ensuing decades.
"How can we get out of this
mess?" he asks. "While I'm no
expert, the experts I've con-
sulted believe the key is how we
develop our arid lands, and
how we irrigate our crops. In
some cases, this may mean not
using certain lands due to the
soil conditions. In other cases,
it means reducing the water
return flows, which carry the
salts."
In a letter to Representative
Brown last September, EPA
Administrator Douglas Costle
noted that the Agency earlier
had expressed environmental
reservations about the facility,
adding:
• it;
EPA JOURNAL
-------
"Our major concern was, and
continues to be, that a desalting
plant should not be viewed as
a panacea for salinity problems
in the Colorado River. EPA
supports a basin-wide approach
to solving these complex and
controversial problems, and we
will continue to work with the
Interior Department in pursuit
of this goal."
In response to concerns
raised by EPA, the seven basin
States created the Salinity Con-
trol Forum to develop Colorado
River salinity standards, which
now include numeric criteria
and a plan of implementation.
All the basin States have
adopted the Forum's recom-
mendations as part of their
water quality standards. The
basic objective of the standards
is to treat salinity as a basin-
wide problem and to maintain
the 1972 salinity levels in the
lower part of the river while the
States .develop the waters ap-
propriated to them under the
compact. Key elements of the
standards include establishing
numeric criteria at three sta-
tions in the lower mainstem
{beiow Hoover and Parker
Dams and at Imperial Dam);
developing monitoring stations
and baseline values at key loca-
tions in the Upper Basin, and
carrying out a variety of salinity
control projects by Federal and
State authorities.
EPA has helped to fund a
number of irrigation studies
dealing with salinity at Grand
Valley, Colo, and elsewhere.
(EPA Journal, February, 1978.)
Scientists say there is no one
technology to cure all the prob-
lems, but a number of remedies
are well known. These include
lining canals and lateral ditches
to prevent seepage, and the use
of sprinkler, drip, or trickle
irrigation which applies the
water more effectively. Another
method calls for more careful
timing of irrigation to apply
water when the soil requires it.
The Soil Conservation Service
is now pursuing corrective
measures at Grand Valley. It is
estimated that 410,000 tons of
salt can be eliminated annually
from the current discharge into
the Colorado from that area.
In addition, water experts are
focusing on certain areas of
natural salt deposits that are
leaching into the Colorado.
The Federal water and power
service, for example, is drill-
ing nearly two dozen wells
along Paradox Valley in south-
western Colorado to pump brine
out of a geologic formation that
now contributes 200,000 tons
of salt annually to the Colorado
via a tributary, the Dolores
River. The project, which is tar-
geted for completion in 1986,
will pump the brine to an evap-
oration reservoir or dispose of
the brine through deep well in-
jection. EPA's Region 8 staff
has worked with the Depart-
ment of the Interior agency on
the problem area.
"We're also investigating 12
other sources of salinity," says
Michael Clinton, Chief of yie
Interior agency's Colorado
River Water Quality Office.
"Five of them involve saline
seepage from irrigated areas
like Grand Valley, five involve
point sources of salinity like the
Paradox Valley situation, and
the others involve salt loading
from normally dry drainage
areas where weathering and
natural runoff carry it into the
river." These studies will be
completed between 1983 and
1989.
The U.S. Department of Agri-
culture also has become more
involved in salinity control in
the basin. In Grand Valley, for
example, the Soil Conservation
Service has provided technical
assistance and the Agriculture
Stabilization and Conservation
Service has helped to fund
measures for reducing salinity
from irrigated agriculture.
These include ditch lining, land
leveling, water measuring and
control structures, and installa-
tion of sprinklers in selected
areas. A similar program is be-
ginning in the Unitah Basin. In
addition, the Soil Conservation
Service has salinity control
studies under way in the other
major irrigation areas.
Another project to help ease
the salinity problem is a
weather modification program
by means of cloud-seeding thai
the Interior water and power
agency is now putting together
for the Upper Basin of the
Colorado.
"The Bureau of Reclamation
did a successful pilot study in
the San Juan Mountains in
southwestern Colorado five
years ago," explains Clinton.
"Further studies indicate a po-
tential of producing about 1 to
1.5 million acre-feet of water
annually." Such a heavy addi-
tion of inflow to the river would,
of course, provide much-
needed dilution of the salinity.
(The dilution would occur
only if the added water from
rain and snow moves downhill
and reaches the Colorado. If
large amounts of this water are
consumed before reaching the
river, the cloud-seeding obvi-
ously isn't going to do much to
solve the salinity problem.)
Cloud-seeding programs have
focused on increasing the win-
ter snow-pack. The idea, how-
ever, has been a source of some
controversy. Ranchers, highway
departments, and some com-
munity leaders have voiced
concern that additional snow
would compound existing win-
ter problems, and fish and wild-
life interests fear that the extra
snow would have an adverse
impact on critical winter range
for many game species. In any
event, the program would re-
quire Congressional authoriza-
tion and probably would not get
underway until the mid-1980's
at the earliest.
Still another way to reduce
salinity in the lower Colorado
would be to mitigate the impact
of transmountain diversion of
water that now goes by tunnels
and pipelines to the East Slope
from the Upper Basin. This is
water that would dilute the sa-
linity if it didn't end up in Den-
ver, Colorado Springs, and
other cities on the eastern side
of the Rockies. One of the most
articulate forces protesting the
way transmountain diversion is
taking place now is the North-
west Colorado Council of Gov-
ernments, representing six
counties in high mountain ter-
rain located mostly west of the
Continental Divide and extend-
ing from the Wyoming border
south for 140 miles.
The six counties contain
some of the most spectacular
land in America, and some
world-famous ski centers—in-
cluding Aspen, Vail, Steamboat
Springs, and Breckenridge.
"About 541,000 acre-feet
are now being diverted to the
Eastern Slope, or around 20
percent of the total virgin water
here," says Tom Elmore, water
quality management coordina-
tor for the Council. "This is
very pure water, much of it from
melting snow. But we're very
concerned about new water
resource development projects.
We project that an additional
1,142,900 acre-feet will be
taken by the Eastern Slope by
1995. We estimated these new
diversions will mean $29.9
million per year in salinity dam-
ages downstream between now
and 1995." The Council is
seeking to regulate all new di-
version projects and wants the
Eastern Slope diverters to com-
pensate for the adverse impacts
of their projects by installing
salinity controls—not yet spe-
cified but perhaps lined irriga-
tion ditches—in the Colorado
basin.
"We have an outstanding area
here. It's vacationland for the
rest of the country—high
quality trout streams, pristine
water, world-famous ski re-
sorts. The economy is built on
energy development, agricul-
ture, and tourism. Much of what
we do depends on water. We're
seeking to protect our present
economic base and to prevent
the foreclosure of our future
economic options," Elmore
declares.
The six counties, to be sure,
are up against formidable po-
litical forces. The Eastern Slope
has about 90 percent of Colo-
rado's burgeoning population,
which grew about 25 percent in
the last decade. So the votes
and political clout are there,
and it will take a skillful balanc-
ing act for the State to keep its
high mountain trout streams
flowing if Denver and other
nearby cities continue to mush-
room.
EPA itself has not escaped
the continuing controversy sur-
rounding the Colorado River.
The Environmental Defense
Fund, a public interest group,
sued EPA for its 1976 approval
of the water quality standards
for salinity by the seven Colo-
rado Basin States, alleging the
implementation plans did not
provide adequate salinity con-
trols. However, last October the
U.S. District Court for the
District of Columbia decided
APRIL 1980
47
-------
the case in favor of EPA and
Interior, which was also a de-
fendant. The Environmental
Defense Fund filed an appeal
last December.
What of the Colorado's fu-
ture? One of the biggest ques-
tion marks hanging over the
river is the impact of energy
developments in the area. The
Rocky Mountain West has 50
percent of the Nation's coal re-
serves, 100 percent of the now
commercially recoverable oil
shale deposits, and 9 percent of
the oil reserves. The region's
strippable coal totals 195 bil-
lion tons. Its shale oil potential
totals 600 billion barrels.
But the industry required to
extract these fossil fuels will
need water from the Upper
Colorado River Basin. Accord-
ing to a report for the Water
Resources Council, oil shale
and coal gasification develop-
ments would consume about
200,000 to 250,000 acre-feet
a year to produce 1.5 million
barrels of oil or its equivalent
daily. Surface water supplies
can be made available tor these
industries only it existing uses
are bought out or water not now
under contract is brought trom
the Federal water and power
service reservoirs, or it new
reservoirs plus pipeline and
pumping facilities are con-
structed. The report estimates
the cost of developing the sur-
face water supply would total
$1 billion. The changes this
would entail, the report warns,
could also reduce recreational
opportunities and the habitat
for a number of species of fish.
William McDonald, Director
of the Colorado Water Conser-
vation Board, points out that the
study assumes that neither oil
shale nor coal gasification
plants will be discharging efflu-
ents into the surface waters of
the Upper Basin. The study de-
clares that the technology exists
to reduce and dispose of the
waste streams in other ways
that would not affect the river,
and actually it will be cheaper
to use these methods than to
treat the effluent enough to meet
discharge standards.
"There is a national need for
more energy—but people must
pay the full costs to protect the
environment and factor those
costs into the product," he
emphasizes.
Pro-development organiza-
tions such as the Club 20, a
Western Slope group headed by
former Colorado Governor John
Vanderhoof, stress the need for
balanced economic growth and
new jobs in the State. McDon-
ald says the State's approach is
to evaluate costs and benefits in
any decision about water
problems.
Aside from the quality of the
Colorado's waters, the tug-of-
war over who gets to tap how
much of the water promises to
intensify. In recent years, the
Navajo Indian Tribe has been
stating that it has rights to a
major portion of the river's
flow, as much as 5 million acre-
feet a year. If a suit is filed, it
promises to drag on for years,
possibly decades. Holburt, of
the Colorado River Board of
California, has pointed out that
an earlier lawsuit between his
State and Arizona took 13 years
to wend its way up to a Su-
preme Court decision. And a
Navajo suit could be more com-
plex since it would involve the
Federal Government, all seven
States, and many other parties.
Under the existing Compacts
and court decrees, some States
have been taking more than their
quota of the Colorado's water
because other States have until
now not used all their allot-
ments. But that situation prom-
ises to change. California has
been using nearly 4.9 million
acre-feet per year but when the
big Central Arizona Project be-
gins deliveries in the mid-
1980's, California will reduce
its use to a 4.4 million basic
entitlement. Holburt has testi-
fied in the past that he thinks
there will be enough water from
reservoir storage to take up
shortages in the decades ahead.
Conflicts over uses of the
Colorado's waters come into
sharp focus in EPA's Region 8,
for instance, when that office
reviews environmental impact
statements related to water
project development. Key ex-
amples include the Foothills
water treatment project south-
west of Denver and the Central
Utah Project aimed at supplying
water to irrigators, cities, and
industries across central Utah.
After months of protracted,
sometimes heated, controversy,
EPA's Region 8 office agreed to
the issuance of a dredge and fill
permit for the dam portion of
the Foothills project when spon
sors agreed to measures pro-
tecting minimum stream flows
below the dam and a water con-
servation program aimed at
reducing per capita water con-
sumption in the Denver Water
Board's service area over com-
ing years.
Protection of minimum
stream flows and water con-
servation issues generally fuel
heated debate among individ-
uals and agencies involved in
the Central Utah Project.
To improve its own handling
of water project reviews and to
inform project supporters and
opponents alike of what they
could expect from EPA, the
Regional Office recently began
drafting a proposed water
policy.
"Much of the delay and liti-
gation involved in water proj-
ects, we believe, can be traced
to misunderstanding and mis-
information," according to
Region 8 Regional Administra-
tor Roger L. Williams. "We
hope, through our water policy,
to clarify EPA's role and re-
sponsibilities in addressing
water resource issues.
"We will emphasize early
involvement with project pro-
ponents to identify and defuse,
where possible, areas of conflict
and to avoid 11th hour litigation
tied to hardened positions
where change or compromise is
nearly impossible.
"We are committed to involv-
ing the widest range of public
possible in the development of
this policy even recognizing the
hazard of doing so where water
is so vital and emotional an
issue," Williams adds.
Apart from all the other
troubles, the Colorado also is
suffering in one scenic stretch
from an excess of outboard
motors, according to the Na-
tional Park Service. Recently
the Park Service ordered a
phase-out of all motorized rafts,
both commercial and private,
over the next five years along
the 277 miles of the Grand Can-
yon. River trip parties also will
be banned from burning drift-
wood for campfires during sum-
mer months, and must haul
their wastes out of the canyon.
The move has the support of
environmental groups. Says
Gaynor Franklin of the San
Francisco Sierra Club. "Let's
leave the Grand Canyon to those
who want a true wilderness
experience."
With all its problems, can the
Colorado retain its integrity as
a unique water resource in
America's Southwest? As the
protective measures by Federal,
State, and other organizations
have come into play, it is ob-
vious that many forces are
working to keep the river
healthy. Because of the absence
of heavy industry along its
banks, it has thus far escaped
the PCB's that afflict the Hud-
son. It has experienced no
Kepone disaster and none of
the massive fish kills that peri-
odically visit coastal areas. So
in a way, the Colorado is lucky.
Back in 1903,Theodore
Roosevelt stood at the rim of
Grand Canyon and looked down
at the river, experiencing the
awe that visitors often feel
when viewing this magnificent
vista.
"Leave it as it is," he de-
cleared. "The ages have been at
work upon it, and man can only
mar it."
In the ensuing decades,
America has turned the water-
way into what one conservation
official calls "the hardest work-
ing river in the United States."
But many of its stretches retain
the splendor, solitude, and pre-
historic aura that inspired the
early Spanish and American
explorers. Given enough fore-
thought and care, the Colorado
can still be preserved, a river of
myths and moonscapes and
mystery. L~!
Truman Temple is Associate
Editor of EPA Journal
cove/ Irt'i* on the
nhin Hunch, />,irt tif the f-lint
Hills pi Hint' n:\if K,ins,is City.
Ma The pict(/n> >.-.'\is /.Mt.v; />y
.• iihotoi/uphf! Pi.it ricui
Duncan, whose story /s included
in the Environmental Citizens
i eport in this issue (Article on
P.16I
Opposite Toroweop Overlook,
the Colorado River. Grand Can
yon Nutionul Park
EPA JOURNAL
-------
-------
United Slates
Environmental Protection
Agency
Washington 0 C 20460
Postage and
fees Paid
Environmental
Protection
Agency
EPA 335
Official Business
Penalty for Private Use $300
Thud Class
Bulk
Return this page if you do not wish to receive this publication ( ) or if a change of address is needed ( ). list change, including zip code.
------- |