United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of
Public Awareness (A-107) Nun-
Washington D C 20460 May 1981
&EPA JOURNAL
Our Stake in the Outdoors
Visibility in the National Pkrks
New EPA Budget Trends
-------
New
Leadership
for EPA
The nomination of Anne
McGill Gorsuch as EPA
Administrator has been ap-
proved unanimously by the
U.S. Senate . Also endorsed
without dissent by the Senate
was Dr. John W. Hernandez
for EPA Deputy Administrator.
Gorsuch, an attorney and a
former member of the Colorado
Legislature, told the Senate Envi-
ronment and Public Works
Committee at her confirmation
hearing that "the President is
committed to the preservation
and enhancement of environ-
mental values, and that is a
commitment I share."
(See Hernandez biography on
inside back cover)
Anne M. Gorsuch
Gorsuch, 39, has been a
lawyer with the Mountain
Bell Corporate Law Department
in Colorado since 1975. From
1974-75, she was hearing offi-
cer for the Colorado Real Estate
Commission and State Boards
of Cosmetology, Optometrics,
Nursing, and Veterinary Medi-
cine. From 1971-73 she was
Deputy District Attorney in
Denver and from 1968-71 she
was Assistant District Attorney,
Jefferson County, Colo.
Gorsuch's governmental ex-
perience includes membership
on President Reagan's Transi-
tion Team, serving on the
Advisory Committee on Inter-
governmental Relations. From
1976-80, she was a member of
the Colorado State House of
Representatives. Her activities
included Vice-Chairman of the
Judiciary Committee; member
of the Finance Committee and
Appropriations Committee;
Chairman of the House State
Affairs Committee; and Chair-
man of the House-Senate Legal
Services Committee. She was
voted outstanding Freshman
Legislator. She was also a
member of the Transportation
and Energy Committee; House
sponsor of air pollution control
inspection and maintenance
legislation, and Chairman of
the Interim Committee on
Hazardous Waste.
Her civic activities included
service as a member of the
Board of Directors, YMCA; the
Mercy Hospital Civic Advisory
Board; as Commissioner, Na-
tional Commission on Uniform
State Laws; and as a member
of the Colorado and American
and Denver Bar Associations.
Gorsuch graduated from the
University of Colorado Law
School with an LL.B. in 1964
and from the University of Col-
orado at Boulder, with a B.A. in
1961, She studied three summers
at the National University of
Mexico. Her academic achieve-
ments include undergraduate
honors program, the Mortar
Board scholastic sorority, the
University of Colorado Law
Review where she was Assist-
ant Business Manager and
member of the Board of Edi-
tors, Phi Alpha Delta legal
fraternity, and Fulbright Schol-
arship to Jaipur, India.
Born in Wyoming, Gorsuch
moved as a child with her par-
ents to Denver. She was grad-
uated from the Saint Francis
de Sales High School there.
Excerpts from
Gorsuch Testimony:
"The President is committed
to achieving a new federalism
in which the decisions and the
power to implement those de-
cisions will be shifted from the
banks of the Potomac back to
the l(:vnl of government v
is closest and most accountable
: people it serves. I share
that commitment. No greater
opportunity exists for imple-
mentation of that nc.w federal-
ism than that presented to the
Administrator of EPA, who is
chmcjnd with exercising powers
and duties, the clear Congres-
sional intent of which was to
involve the State governments
as full and active partners in
the achievement of national
environmental goals.
"The President is committed
to regulatory reform, and here I
believe it is important to em-
phasize that the reform is not
limited to withdrawal of un-
necessary or overly burden-
some singular regulations, but
envisions a much broader
scope involving the process by
which new regulations are for-
mulated and current regulations
evaluated. We should seek and
accept input from all points of
view, evaluate alternatives in
light of best possible informa-
tion, and then select the least
costly options—in terms of
both indirect and direct costs
to the consuming public—con-
sistent with the goals and
policies of the law.
"I share the President's
commitment to the goal of
regulatory reform. I am con-
fident that you will concur in
rny judgment that there is no -
greater opportunity to effectu-
ate that goal than the opportu-
nity to serve the people of this
country as the Administrator of
the Agency charged with devel-
oping the regulatory framework
for such vital industries as
farming, steel, autos and
mining, to name a few. How
such industries are regulated
impacts the daily lives of each
of us through our utility bills,
the market availability of new
chemical substances, and the
control of pollutants in our air,
water and land."
Gorsuch said "as Adminis-
trator-Designate, I recognize
three responsibilities of para-
mount importance: the protec-
tion of public health and
welfare through restoration,
preservation, and enhancement
of the quality of our environ-
ment; faithful implementation
of the intent of Congress as
expressed in our environmental
protection statutes; and the
development of policies that
accommodate the national ob-
jectives articulated by the
President. It is my expectation,
if confirmed, to play an active
personal role in the develop-
ment of these policies as they
affect EPA and the laws it
administers. I have been as-
sured personally by President
Reagan that this will be the
case. If confirmed, these will
be my primary objectives, and I
would expect the American
continued to inside back cover
-------
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of Volume 7
Public Awareness (A-107) Numbers
Washington, D.C. 20460 May 1981
xvEPA JOURNAL
Anne McGill Gorsuch, Administrator
Charles D. Pierce, Editor
Truman Temple, Associate Editor
John Heritage, Managing Editor
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.
-
«
.
Forum: Visibility in
the National Parks 2
The Edison Electric Institute
and the National Parks and
Conservation Association
present their views on this
subject.
The National Parks:
An American Tradition 7
The role and aims of the
National Park System, as
explained by Park Service
Director Russell E. Dickenson.
Land Donations by
Industry 10
Initiatives by industry to pro-
tect threatened eco-systems
by Nature Conservancy Writer
Anne M. Byers
Profit in Protecting
the Outdoors 12
A report by the Aluminum As-
sociation on recycling alumi-
num cans.
Departments
New Plan for
Armco Steel
•••
"Bubble" approach approved
to reduce pollution, save funds.
EPA'82 Budget
Intensifies
War on
Hazardous Waste 16
Trends and highlights in EPA's
new budget.
EPA Team Wins
Congressional
Award 17
Seven present and former
employees from Region 5
win award for their cost-saving
plan.
Recreation and Water
Cleanup 18
Achieving two goals at once,
explained in an article adapted
from an EPA report.
Tourism and the
Environment 21
The scope and economic im-
pact of tourism is explained by
the Travel Industry Association
of America.
Rivers Wild and Pure:
A Priceless Legacy 26
A report on wild and scenic
rivers, adapted from an article
in National Geographic.
Recreational Fishing 30
The pleasures and economic
benefits of a popular Ameri-
can sport, by Izaak Walton
League's Executive Director,
Jack Lorenz.
National Forest Trails-
New Frontiers 34
An exciting recreation re-
source by U.S. Forest Service
Chief R. Max Peterson.
Wilderness 37
The meaning of wilderness to
human society is explained by
Aldo Leopold.
Almanac
Around the Nation
24
Update
News Briefs
33
Front cover: Canoeist on a misty
evening paddling on Twitchell
Lake, New York, in the Adirondack
Forest Preserve.
Opposite: A view of mountainous
terrain and waterfall in Yosemite
National Park in California.
Photo credits: Utah Travel Coun-
cil; Ernie Day, The Living Wilder-
ness; U.S. Forest Service; Fred E.
Mang, Jr., and M. Woodbridge
Williams, National Park Service;
Anne LaBastille, Documerica;
Tom Baumgardner, Armco;
Union Camp Corp.; Connecticut
Department of Economic
Development.
Design Credits: Robert Flanagan,
Donna Kazaniwsky and Ron Farrah.
The EPA Journal is published
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
necessarily reflect EPA policy Con-
tributions and inquiries should be
addressed to the Editor (A-107),
Waterside Ma!!, 401 M St , S W.
Washington, D C 20460 No per-
mission necessary to reproduce
contents except copynyhted photos
arid other mairn,iis Subscription
SI 2 00 a year. SI 20 for singlr
copy domestic: S15.00 if mailed to
a foreign address No charge to
employees Send check or money
order to Superintendent of Docu-
ments. U S Government Pr
Office, Washington DC 20402
Text printed on recycled paper
-------
Forum
One of the healthy characteristics of .1
democracy is full dialogue about the many
options we possess as a society. As Con-
gress reviews the Clean Air Act this year.
it is useful to consider divergent
points of view. In this issue we repot t the
viewpoints of John J. Kearney, Senior Vice
President of Energy and Environment at the
Edison Electric Institute, and Paul Prit-
, Executive Director of the National
ervation Association.
Is the Air
Visibility of
Our National
Parks Being
Adequately |
Protected?
Yes and No
By John J. Kearney
The issue of visibility protection in our
national parks grew out of esthetic
concern for the West. Various groups com-
plained that air pollution was reducing the
long, clear views that visitors to such na-
tional treasures as the Grand Canyon had
enjoyed for many years. Numerous environ-
mental organizations singled out coal-fired
power plants as the problem's primary
cause.
When Congress reviewed and amended
the Clean Air Act in 1977, the question of
visibility protection was considered, and a
number of changes were made to prevent
significant deterioration of air quality in
general and visibility values in particular.
Remedying existing and preventing future
visibility impairment became a national
goal. Congress designated certain "Class I"
areas, such as national parks and wilder-
ness areas, for special protection, effec-
tively limiting industrial and energy devel-
opment in or near these areas to small,
clean operations. The Environmental Pro-
tection Agency Administrator and Federal
land managers were directed to protect
visibility under procedures for review of
new pollution sources. Furthermore, exist-
ing industrial facilities near the designated
areas faced the possibility of procedures
that could mandate the installation of
additional controls to restore visibility.
Now, the time has come to answer the
critical question: Is the air visibility in our
national parks receiving adequate
protection?
The answer is yes and no.
On the positive side, the law provides
an overabundance of legal mechanisms to
impose—at a potentially huge cost to con-
sumers—a variety of control technologies
on some existing power generation facili-
ties, and it also contains provisions forbid-
ing construction of new facilities that might
threaten visibility.
At the same time, the answer is no. For
all its idealism, the law, as now written,
may be doomed to producing little more
than a succession of public policy failures.
In fact, the Federal effort to address visibil-
ity protection is a striking example of how
poorly conceived environmental improve-
ment efforts can adversely affect national
economic and energy independence goals
without producing the desired improve-
ments in environmental quality. This failure
EPAJOURNAL
-------
The view in Bryce Canyon National Park
in Utah
The Threat
to the Parks
By Paul Pritchard
The national park idea is one of the truly
unique contributions which the United
States has made to the world community.
Since the establishment of the first national
park, Yellowstone, in 1 872, the concept
of preserving scenery for the enjoyment of
present and future generations has been
one which fills many Americans with pride
at the mere thought of such grand spec-
tacles as Yosemite Valley, the Grand
Canyon, Denali, the Olympic rain forest,
and many others. Annually, several hun-
dred million visits are paid to the units of
the National Park System by American
citizens and foreign visitors alike, each to
be thrilled by the spectacular scenery in
these natural wonders. Although the con-
cept of preserving natural areas in their
unimpaired state has been an essential
element of the national park idea since its
inception, the parks' great popularity and
universal appeal has come, until quite
recently, almost entirely a sa result of the
scenic grandeur for which they are known
worldwide.
In 1981, the continued opportunity for
these hundreds of millions of visitors to
view these spectacles is in serious doubt.
Current provisions of the Clean Air Act
Amendments of 1977 and the implement-
ing regulations of the Environmental
Protection Agency which purport to require
protection of visibility in the national parks,
are inadequate to accomplish the task.
In fact, amid growing indications that
air pollution may well be the chief threat to
the parks in the 1980's, conservationists
all across the country are seeking to
strengthen this provision of the Clean Air
Act as the U.S. Congress goes about the
business of reauthorizing this law in 1981.
In its May 1980, "State of the Parks"
report to Congress, the National Park
Service verified that pristine air quality is
endangered in almost half of the National
Park System's 327 units. As an aside, it
should be noted that although visibility
impairment may not in itself produce
adverse health effects, such impairment is
a harbinger of more serious threats to
human health as well as biotic resources
in the parks.
In 1913, when Congress was busily
engaged in enacting legislation to estab-
lish Glacier National Park, its report on
MAY 1981
-------
Con •
stems from the inability of the rulemaking
effort to focus on the real issue and, hence,
the real causes of visibility impairment.
The good intention of protecting visibil-
ity in our national parks became a regula-
tory nightmare with the Clean Air Act
amendments of 1 977. Congress, working
with inadequate data and misinformation
from environmental groups who over-
stated their case, passed visibility provi-
sions that had little basis in fact. Many of
the basic assumptions on which the provi-
sions were based have since been proven
false.
It was assumed, for example, that the
lion's share of the visibility problem was a
result of emissions from regional stationary
sources, particularly coal-burning power
plants. Later it was assumed that sulfates
produced by the sulfur dioxide from these
stationary sources were the prime con-
tributors to visibility impairment. As a
result, power plants were singled out for
Federal attention, while other industrial
sources were left to State jurisdictions.
A useful, scientific data base on visibility
was nonexistent when the 1 977 amend-
ments were considered. In reality, our basic
understanding of the components that pro-
duce visibility impairment is still in its
infancy. Serious scientific inquiries into the
dynamics of visibility were not undertaken
until after the amendments became law.
Sadly, this "shoot first, ask questions later"
approach to environmental goals, which is
notpeculiar to visibility requirements or
even to air quality legislation in general,
has not created a constructive regulatory
atmosphere in which to solve problems.
Doubly sad is the fact that those who ques-
tion the wisdom of the fast-action approach
tend to fall victim to charges of "foot
dragging." This, too, makes cooperation all
the more difficult, leading to higher costs
for problem solutions.
Since the visibility requirements were
passed in 1977, a fair amount of research
has been undertaken to gain a better under-
standing of the complex combination of
man-made and natural factors that interact
to produce visibility impairment. An analy-
sis of these data questions the original
assumptions on which we base much
current law.
Preliminary findings of an ongoing EPA-
industry study in Northern Arizona, for
example, indicate that long-range trans-
portation of urban pollution is a much more
significant factor in visibility impairment.
Regional coal-fired power plants which had
been considered the major factor were
determined to be relatively insignificant.
This study—called Visibility Impairment
due to Sulfur Transport and Transportation
in the Atmosphere, or VISTTA—was de-
signed to gather data on the relative con-
tribution of various airborne pollutants to
visibility impairment.
As the title indicates, sulfur was ex-
pected to figure prominently in the results.
Findings to date, however, indicate that in
addition to significant pollution from urban
areas and natural sources, causes of the
visibility problem are not limited to sulfur-
related compounds. Aerosols originating in
the Los Angeles area and from forest fires,
for example, were found to be significant in
terms of causing visibility impairment.
To protect visibility in our national parks
adequately, we must learn more about the
origin of these visibility impairing sub-
stances. In some cases, we may find we
cannot give adequate protection at a rea-
sonable cost; it may not be desirable, or
even possible, to prevent visibility impair-
ment caused by forest fires. Similarly, the
Los Angeles area labors under some of the
most stringent air pollution control regula-
tions in the Nation yet still has some
of the worst air quality. Pollutants from
Los Angeles also still affect areas like
the Grand Canyon. Short of shutting down
Los Angeles, there may not be much we can
do about this visibility impairment.
It seems that the real hope for protecting
and improving visibility lies in learning
more about the science of visibility impair-
ment. The VISTTA study and other research
pointoutthreefundamental scientific uncer-
tainties undermining the current Federal
effort to protect visibility. Perhaps the most
important of these is the relative contribu-
tions of natural and man-made factors
operating in tandem to produce visibility
impairment. Another major uncertainty
relates to the cause-and-effect relationship
between specific emissions and general air
quality problems, such as visibility, The
third fundamental uncertainty is the iden-
tification of siting and emission control
strategies to provide demonstrable visibil-
ity benefits at a reasonable cost.
The question of how much visibility pro-
tection should cost is an important one,
go ing far beyond simple dollar figures.
Current visibility requirements could affect
energy and other forms of resource devel-
opment on as much as 29 million acres of
land in 36 States. Compliance costs could
run to many billions of dollars. Before the
Nation embarks on such a multi-billion dol-
lar visibility protection effort, the public
deserves to know the costs and benefits and
it deserves some assurances that the huge
expenditures will produce the expected
results. Not only do we have no such assur-
ances, but a growing body of evidence
points to the opposite conclusion.
Industry and society do not pursue clean
air goals in a vacuum. Utilities, for example,
are obliged to meet new demands for eiec-
Vational Park.
tricity and, at the same time, attempt to
reduce dependence on oil-fired generation
facilities. Thus, the utility industry finds
itself charged with the pursuit of energy,
environmental and economic goals that, to
some extent, conflict with each other. Any
successful public policy addressing these
goals should strike an appropriate balance,
which of course, is neither a new nor for-
saken idea. During the visibility rule-mak-
ing process, several Federal land managers
advocated exempting controlled burning in
Class I areas from the rules, claiming the
environmental benefits in managing recrea-
tional areas outweighed the adverse impact
of such burning on visibility. Other social
and economic benefits also must be
weighed in this balance; even environmen-
tal considerations such as visibility should
notbetheonly factor in a policy decision.
With these considerations as back-
ground, what can be done during the long
term to protect visibility in our national
EPAJOURNAL
-------
parks? To begin, we should define more
clearly our visibility goals for all the
"Class I" areas where visibility is judged
to be a problem. Such judgments should be
made according to scientific criteria for a
specific region. Time and more research
are required for this approach, but unless
a science-based system replaces the cur-
rent outdated requirements, we risk wasting
billions of dollars on nonproductive,
ineffective controls.
Reconsideration of the Clean Air Act is
scheduled for this session of Congress.
The time has come to redirect U.S. visibility
requirements in light of what we have
learned since 1977. Additional controls on
existing sources and restrictions on new
sources should be considered only after the
completion of studies that address the
fundamental uncertainties now blocking a
workable, cost-effective control strategy. D
Continued from page 3
the area noted that "the air about Lake
McDonald is remarkably clear and pure . . .
from the summit of Red Eagle Mountain
one of the grandest views of mountain
scenery in America, is obtainable. . . ."
Similarly, when Acadia National Park was
first established by Congress in 1919, the
committee report described the sea coast
of the park as land "where its grand rock
scenery culminates in a deeply divided
range of granite mountains visible from 50
miles to sea. . . ." Again, in 1935 as
Congress went about the business of
establishing the Big Bend National Park in
Texas, the committee report noted that
from the Chisos Mountains, "the outstand-
ing views in three directions carry the eye
over into the mountains of Old Mexico.
From the south rim, over 5,000 feet above
the river, the eye obtains the most dramatic
panorama of the Chisos, a 200-mile sweep
of American and Mexican terrain." And
finally, when Congress authorized the
Shenandoah National Park in 1926, the
committee report noted that "the greatest
single feature, however, is a possible sky-
line drive along the mountain top following
a continuous ridge and looking down
westerly to the Shenandoah Valley from
2500-3000 ft. below, and also command-
ing a view of the piedmont plain stretching
easterly to the Washington Monument,
which landmark of our national capital may
be seen on a clear day."
Surely, the Congress has intended,
throughout the 109-year history of the
national park concept, that protection of
the public's opportunity to behold these
scenic vistas is an essential part of the
purposes for which they have established
these memorials to our national heritage.
Under the Clean Air Act amendments of
1977, 48 national parks and national
monuments of the national park system
were designated mandatory Class I areas
for air quality protection, the highest level
of protection afforded any area under this
law. The legislative history of these 1977
amendments also made clear the require-
ment that the mandatory Class I areas be
studied to ensure protection of those
"grand vistas" or "breathtaking pano-
ramas" which warrant additional special
protection of scenic values from visible
air pollution. The requirements of the Act
for visibility protection are contained in a
different section of the law, and require
compliance independent from the pro-
visions relating to "preventing of signifi-
cant deterioration" (PSD). EPA's regula-
tions implementing the PSD provision of
the law established increments of allow-
able pollution for Class I areas which were
designed to allow the lowest possible level
of deterioration of existing air quality in the
vicinity of these Class I national parks.
Although the PSD provisions are important
to the national parks, and are designed to
keep the air quality in the parks pristine,
they are not adequate to protect visibility
in Class I areas.
Increases in pollution equivalent to the
Class I particulate increments in a clean
atmosphere could cause up to 40 percent
reduction in visual range. In addition.
existing gross emitters such as the Four
Corners Power Plant, are not affected by
the PSD provisions. PSD requirements will
not protect visibility degradation caused
by elevated plumes, or discolored layers,
or regional haze caused by numerous
sources.
In 1977, recognizing the shortcomings
of the existing national ambient air quality
standards and PSD and new source
Continued to page 6
MAY 1981
-------
performance standards programs for the
protection of visibility. Congress amended
the Clean Air Act by adding Section 169a
which requires the protection of visibility
and the remedying of existing visibility
impairment in Federal Class ( national
parks.
Recently, the National Park Service has
identified 20 units of the National Park
System which are suffering visibility
impairment from existing energy develop-
ment sources, none of which are affected
by EPA's visibility protection regulations.
These include Arches, Bryce Canyon,
Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Carlsbad
Caverns, Chaco Canyon, Chiracahua, Dino-
saur, Everglades, Glen Canyon, Grand Can-
yon, Great Smoky Mountains, Mesa Verde,
Navajo, Natural Bridges, Petrified Forest,
Sequoia-K'ings Canyon, Sunset Crater,
Theodore Roosevelt, and Wapatki. In addi-
tion, the National Park Service has iden-
tified 63 units of the National Park System
which are potentially adversely affected by
proposed energy facility development in
the immediate vicinity.
The threat of these potential pollution
sources to the parks and the urgent need
to prevent visibility impairment from these
sources from occurring should not be
viewed as significant impediments to
development and utilization of these
energy production facilities. For example,
in 1980 the National Park Service re-
viewed PSD permit applications in 25
different proposals and in only one
instance, the Allen-Warner Valley Energy
System in southern Utah, did the Service
ultimately file an objection with EPA to the
proposal. What is essential, however, is
the opportunity for the Federal land mana-
ger to participate in the permit review
process.
The Senate Committee report accom-
panying the Clean Air Act amendments of
1977 makes clear the importance Congress
attached to the Federal managers' "affir-
mative responsibility" when it states:
"The Federal Land Manager should assume
an aggressive role in protecting air quality
values of land areas under his jurisdic-
tion. .. ." The House Committee report,
citing the NPS Organic Actand the Wilder-
ness Act of 1964, emphasized that air
quality is a resource in our national parks
which must be maintainedin an "unim-
paired" state. In assigning to the Federal
land manager the affirmative responsibility
to protect the air quality-related values of
Class I lands, Congress designated the
primary responsibility for protection of the
Class I areas not to the Environmental
Protection Agency but to the Federal land
manager. The land manager as steward of
these lands is mandated to take whatever
actions are necessary to protect these areas
from air pollution, damage to visibility;
wildlife; vegetation, and recreational, cul-
tural, and historic resources. The role of
the Federal land manager in the air quality
permit review process should be that of
protector of air quality and air quality-
related values of Class I lands.
In the 24 new source permit reviews
approved by the National Park Service in
1980, the proposed facilities either demon-
strated that there was no adverse effect on
the Class I park's resources, or made minor
location, design, or control technology
adjustments in order to comply with the
Class I increments and park protection.
These minor adjustments are both eco-
nomically and technologically feasible,
but the opportunity for the Park Service
to assert its responsibility for protection
of these air quality-related values is
essential.
As a part of EPA's regulations
for visibility protection, finalized in
December 1980, the concept of "integral
vistas" was introduced. These views or
vistas which are important or essential to
the purposes of the park are ones which
are viewed both from inside the park
boundaries looking outward and, in some
cases, from outside park boundaries
looking into the park at spectacular views.
Such integral vistas can be crucial to the
visitor's experience, comprising a scenic
backdrop or foreground. As was previously
noted, from a legal standpoint, a very
strong case can be made that the legisla-
tion establishing most of the na-cionai parks,
with their accompanying legislative his-
tory, specifically identified as a central
purpose of the park the protection of the
scenic views afforded within the park,
which often includes views of lands or
waters surrounding the park.
Some have inaccurately portrayed the
EPA visibility regulations and the Park
Service's proposed guidelines and listing
of integral vistas as Draconian measures
that would preclude all development in
large areas around Class I national parks.
However, that contention does not stand
up under the facts. Specifically, while the
determination of an integral vista is based
only on its merits as a scenic resource, any
decision as to whether to protect the scene
available from that integral vista rests with
the affected State and is a decision based
on fair balancing of energy, economic,
social, health, environmental, and park
resource factors. Thus for integral vista
protection, criteria often sought by indus-
try for balancing costs and benefits have
been guaranteed.
Furthermore, the Federal court in
Alabama Power ruled that Federal PSD
review could not apply to sources located
in non-attainment areas. These areas which
do not meet ambient air quality standards
frequently are the source of air pollution
transported into PSD regions and the
Class I parks. Thus the court's interpreta-
tion of the 1977 Clean Air Act amendments
denies the National Park Service the ability
to protect air quality-related values, includ-
ing visibility, from the damaging effect of
new sources located in non-attainment
areas. Clearly, identification and designa-
tion of integral vistas does not ban most
proposed developments within the vistas.
As a consequence, we believe that opposi-
tion to the designation of integral vistas
has been misguided since identification
alone affords no automatic protection.
Protection is applied only after the above-
mentioned balancing of energy and environ-
mental costs and benefits, and then only
if so approved by the affected State. As
proposed in the current list of integral vis-
tas, only 21 States and the Virgin Islands
would contain integral vistas relating to
the national parks affecting only 45 Na-
tional Park System units of the 327 units
in the sys-tem.
Unfortunately, both the concept of in-
tegral vistas and the specific listing of these
vistas may never be finally approved and
implemented. Asa requirement of the EPA
visibility regulations, the Park Service must
issue its final list of integral vistas and
guidelines within 90 days of implementa-
tion of EPA's regulations or the affected
States do not have to comply with require-
ments for protection of these vistas for at
least two years. At this writing, the Reagan
Administration had identified integral
vistas guidelines as "regulations" effeg-
tively freezing their finalization. In addi-
tion, opposition to the concept of integral
vistas has developed within other agencies
of the Department of the Interior. A memo-
randum from the Director of the Bureau of
Land Management to the Director of the
National Park Service notes, "We believe
the urgency to identify integral vistas is not
justified particularly in l-ight of the sig-
nificance of other resource concerns, nota-
bly energy developments, which may be
affected by integral vista protection require-
ments." Unless the supporters of the
national parks, and particularly those con-
cerned with the preservation of their scenic
views, are ableto rally significant sup-
port for visibility protection, these exist-
ing provisions of law and regulation may
either be eliminated or effectively nullified
either by the Administration or the Con-
gress. At present, visibility and other air
quality-related values found in the national
parks are not being adequately protected
because the law is not strong enough, reg-
ulations are not clear enough, and the
commitment on the part of the Administra-
tion to perpetuate the values in the national
parks for which they were established has
not been made. D
EPAJOURNAL
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The National
Parks:
An American
Tradition
By Russell E. Dickenson,
Director, National Park Service
Cliffs in Yosemite
National Park.
he people of the United States possess
the largest and most abundant public
estate of parks in the world.
The extent and diversity of this resource
is in keeping with the great size of the
country and the bounty of its natural en-
dowment. It also reflects the democratic
ideal, the view that the land and the wild-
life it nurtures should in considerable
degree be open for the use of alt, not
restricted to private estates as was the
European custom.
By the early 1 820's, the citizens of the
new American nation were beginning to
move across the Appalachian mountains.
The Louisiana Purchase of 1 803 opened a
vast new territory, and migration beyond
the Mississippi, which was underway in
the 1830's, in the next decade became a
land rush.
At this time, a few far-sighted Ameri-
cans, fearing the disappearance of the
wilderness, began to advocate formation
of extensive parks. From such concepts,
the ideals gradually developed that led to
the reservation of national forests, wildlife
refuges and parks.
Yet the world national park movement
is considered to have begun with the act
of a few men. During the late 18th century,
trappers had worked the Yellowstone
country, and emerged with stories of its
wonders. Others began to explore, and
in 1870 a party named for three of its
members—Washburn, Langford and
Doane—camped one night at the junction
of the Gibbon and Firehole rivers.
Around the campfire they talked about
what might be done to lay claim to the
surroundings. But finally they decided
instead to work for preservation of a
great national park.
Congress moved on the park proposal
with remarkable speed. On March 1, 1872,
President Grant signed the bill establish-
ing as Yellowstone National Park more
than 2 million acres of the territories of
Wyoming and Montana. The Department
of the Interior was assigned responsibility
for the park's administration.
In a few years, other areas were added
by Congressional act to Interior's hold-
ings. And under the Antiquities Act of
1906, presidents proclaimed as national
monuments areas of public land contain-
ing outstanding scenic and scientific
features.
By 191 6, when the National Park
Service was created, the Interior Depart-
ment had under its jurisdiction 1 6 national
parks and 21 national monuments, most
of them carved from the vast western
public lands. But their management was
most haphazard. The U.S. Army protected
four of the larger parks and some parks
had superintendents, but no central direc-
tion existed.
The persons most responsible for setting
the Park Service upon its future course
were the first Director, Stephen T. Mather,
a prominent businessman, and Horace M.
Albright, a young lawyer, who was Mather's
assistant, co-worker, and successor in
the Directorship.
The Congressional act establishing the
Service charged it to conserve scenery,
wildlife and natural and historic objects.
It envisioned use of the parks for pleasure,
but "by such means as will leave them
unimpaired for the enjoyment of future
generations."
To execute this mandate, the Service
leadership recruited a corps of profes-
sional, civilian park rangers. Mather also
strove to make the parks better known and
to get high quality accommodations built
in them. He began to contract with private
business people as concessionaires to
provide food, lodging and other services,
an arrangement that is in use today.
Congress soon established more areas
of the Park System, many in the East.
That expansion, plus widespread use of
MAY 1981
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M
EPAJOURNAL
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the automobile, attracted a steadily
increasing number of visitors.
A presidential executive order in 1933
transferred 63 national monuments and
military sites from the Forest Service and
the War Department to the National Park
Service. This action was a major step in
the development of today's truly national
system of parks—one that includes areas
of historical as well as scenic and
scientific importance.
During the years of World War II and
the Korean War, growth of the system
almost came to a standstill, but visitation
continued to rise. Between 1940 and
1955, the system gained about 20 areas,
while visits rose from less than 17 million
to 56 million. After 1960, system expan-
sion was accelerated and visitation became
a flood. By 1970, the Park System counted
172 million visits.
The National Park Service System today
comprises more than 330 areas covering
79.8 million acres, located in every State
but two and including Puerto Rico, the
Virgin Islands, Guam and Saipan. In 1980,
220 million recreation visits were made
to the parks. ( Other use—that of com-
muters, for example—came to nearly 80
million, bringing total visits to 300 million.)
More than 1 6 million overnight stays were
recorded in 1980, eight million of them
in Service-operated campgrounds and 2.3
miflion others in park backcountry.
The figures on the increase in Park
System acreage are misleading unless
one keeps in mind that Alaska accounts
for most very recent growth. In 1971
Congress provided for a set-aside of some
80 million acres of Alaska Federal land
pending the lawmakers' action to designate
national parks, forests, wildlife refuges
and wild rivers. The designations in Alaska
were completed in 1980, and more than
doubled the acreage in the Park System.
Nothing like this will ever happen again.
So great is the variety of the National
Park System that a few paragraphs can
give only a hint of its size and character.
While the great scenic parks of the West
are probably the best known, more than
half the areas of the system lie east of the
Mississippi River, and more than half
were reserved primarily for historical,
rather than natural, attributes. In size the
differences range from large national parks
that encompass thousands of square miles
to historic sites that cover less than half
an acre.
The natural treasures of the system
include the giant trees of the California
north coast, great canyons of the Sierra
Nevada and the Colorado Plateau, cactus
stands of the Sonoran Desert, barrier
islands facing the storms of the Atlantic,
and hardwood forests of the Appalachians.
Active and extinct volcanoes, fossil beds,
coral reefs, limestone and marble caves.
and the habitat of the moose, the eagle, the
grizzly bear and the alligator are protected
in the parks.
Most of the Nation's major historic
sites are also the responsibility of the
Park Service—among them Independence
Hafl, battlegrounds such as Saratoga,
Yorktown. Gettysburg and Shiloh, birth-
places and homes of Presidents and other
celebrated Americans, forts along the
migration routes to the West, and
dwellings of pre-Columbian Indians.
The diversity of the Park System has
been enhanced by the additions of the
past two decades which have included
many seashores and lakeshores, wild
rivers, and national recreation areas in or
near large cities.
Activities and land uses permitted in
the parks vary greatly from park to park,
as they must, but are mostly limited to
leisure-time and learning pursuits. Hiking,
picnicking, boating, camping and fishing
are major activities, and winter visits are
growing in popularity. But consumptive
use of resources, such as timbering,
hunting, and extraction of minerals and
fuels, is not allowed in most Park System
units.
But one endeavor common to all parks
is the form of teaching the Service calls
interpretation.
This concept also was introduced into
the parks by Director Mather, who recog-
nized early how much the pleasure of a
park visit is enhanced by some under-
standing of its geology, history and plant
and animal life. Although places for physi-
cal relaxation, the parklands are in a
sense academies where minds and spirits
are nourished with comprehension and
appreciation of the wonders of the natural
world. The historic sites help one keep in
touch with the inspiring story of the
accomplishments of those who have gone
before. As a great interpretation writer
put it, the parks help answer the question,
"Who Am I?"
The interpretive concept has been
refined over the years. Today, through
talks by park personnel, exhibits,
publications and audio-visual media,
visitors learn the fascinating facts about
these remarkable areas.
Our Nation is proud of the national park
idea, which is uniquely American. But
other nations, also, were interested early
in such conservation. The world's second
national park was Royal, in New South
Wales, Australia. Gradually, most nations
around the globe established parks in
some form, although they differ enormously
in character, size and administration.
Examples range from the great wildlife
parks of Africa, where numerous species
stili exist, to Japan's parks that may
encompass houses and villages as well
as farms and forests, Australia's national
parks that are managed by the states, and
Sweden's reservations of grand mountains
and glaciers. Worldwide, "Yellowstone's
Children/' as they have been termed,
number some 2,000 national parks and
equivalent reserves.
As the U.S. national system has been
growing, the Park Service has shaped
policies and management practices to
accommodate heavier visitation and
changing social and economic conditions.
Despite crowding in some areas during
certain months, the Service has kept every
park open its full season. But rationing the
use of some backcountry areas began in
the early 1970's, and today free permits
are issued in more than 70 parks to spread
out the impact on certain campgrounds
and hiking trails.
Economic development—the building
of more highways, shopping centers,
dwellings, factories, and even vacation
homes—is eroding some of the natural
buffers like forests, deserts and wide open
spaces that formerly protected the natural
resources of many parks. Now the Service
must devote a great deal more effort to
protecting park environments.
Many fine sites have been added to the
public estate of national parks during the
recent years of rapid system expansion.
Yet sufficient funds and staff have not been
available to enable the new areas to offer
the quality of service the American people
expect. To shape future plans and opera-
tions to this reality, I believe three major
steps should be taken.
First, the National Park System needs a
period of consolidation. Few additions
should be made during the coming years
so that all resources can be devoted to
improvement of park facilities and the
service rendered to visitors.
Second, future additions must meet the
highest standard of national significance
and uniqueness of characteristics. This
standard should never be eroded, or we
can lose what is perhaps the essential in-
gredient that sets the national parks apart.
The third step we should take is to allo-
cate resources to conform to changing
patterns of visitation. Our efforts must be
directed where they will do most to protect
resources and serve those who come to
the parks.
But in making necessary adjustments,
the integrity of the parks—their soundness,
their unity—must be preserved. We must
continue to recognize them as places of
transcendent beauty and wonder, and as
links with the most influential personalities
and events of the Nation's advance.
Remembering this always, we will treat
the parks with the requisite care to pass
them unencumbered to those who come
after. For this generation is making history
too, and we want to be remembered as
faithful stewards of the treasures en-
trusted to us. D
MAY 1981
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Whitetail deer live on the islands of the Okefenokee.
Land
Donations
by Industry
By Anne M. Byers
Several rare Florida sandhill cranes
circle above the swamp. Far below
large turtles sunbathe on logs, and alliga-
tors—some as long as 1 2 feet—glide with
barely a ripple through dark waters. A bob-
cat crouches in the nearby undergrowth,
its twitching whiskers the only hint that it is
stalking a meal. Suddenly the quiet is
broken by a pair of river otters absorbed in
a game of tag, splashing in and out of the
stream, sliding down mud banks, darting
around tree trunks dotted with wild orchids.
Startled by the activity, a pileated wood-
pecker flies off through the moss-draped
cypress trees.
This is the "Land of the Trembling
Earth"—the Okefenokee Swamp, one of
the largest refuges in the country, fre-
quented by wildlife enthusiasts and en-
deared to millions by the late Walt Kelly as
the setting for his comic strip "Pago."
In March 1978 Union Camp Corporation,
a major forest products company with ex-
tensive land-holdings in the Southeast,
donated 1 6,600 acres of Georgia's Oke-
fenokee Swamp to a national private con-
servation organization. The Nature Conser-
vancy. The Conservancy, whose efforts are
devoted to preserving threatened eco-
systems and the life they support, trans-
ferred the property to the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service for inclusion in the Oke-
fenokee National Wildlife Refuge. The
Federal sanctuary now contains 395.000
acres.
Union Camp's gift of land in the Oke-
fenokee is only one of eight such donations
the corporation has made to the Nature
Conservancy since its first contribution of
49,000.acres of yet another swamp, the
Great Dismal, which straddles the North
Carolina-Virginia border. In presenting the
Dismal Swamp land to the Conservancy in
1973, Union Camp Chairman of the Board
Moss-draped cypress trees in the
Okefenokee Swamp.
10
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Alexander "Sox" Calder said, "There is no
doubt in my mind that this action represents
the highest and best use for the property."
Furthermore, the land was appraised at
$12.6 million, for which the company was
entitled to the normal charitable contribu-
tion tax deduction. This demonstrates,
Calder added, "that the interests of the
public and an investor-owned corporation
can indeed be compatible."
Gifts of land to nonprofit organizations
like The Nature Conservancy offer substan-
tial tax advantages, especially to large
corporate landowners. Our country's tax
laws enable private property owners to
donate tracts of land and, in exchange, to
receive deductions of the areas' fair market
values from the owners' taxable earnings.
Commenting on his firm's 26,000-acre
donation to the Conservancy, John J.
Stephens, vice president and Group Execu-
tive, Wood Products and Resources Group
of International Paper Company, said, "The
tax laws benefit everyone—from people
who will enjoy the preserved lands for
generations to come, to the shareowners
of International Paper."
To date 36 U.S. corporations have given
the Conservancy land that totals almost
1 26,000 acres and is worth over S68
million. Additional examples of donated
natural areas include 2,138 acres from
Temple-Eastex, Inc. (a subsidiary of Time,
Inc.) to create the Roy E. Larsen Sandyiand
Sanctuary in Texas; another 11,000 acres
of the Great Dismal Swamp donated by the
Weyerhaeuser Company; the J. M. Huber
Corporation's dual gift of eight and one-
half miles of the wild Seboesis River and
the 3,793-acre Crystal Bog, both in Maine;
and a 42-acre stretch of land along the
Little Miami River contributed by the Ohio
Gravel Division of the Dravo Corporation.
Bargain sales of land to the Conservancy
(selling property for less than its fair
market value) not only are another way to
preserve undeveloped areas, but will pro-
vide the seller with a tax deduction as well.
In late 1977, for example, the St. Regis
Paper Company sold 5,000 acres (and
donated an additional 1,000) in Jackson
County, Mississippi. The property, which
supports the only known colony of the
endangered, three-foot-tall Mississippi
sandhill crane, was sold to the Conservancy
for $3,775,000—about $700,000 less than
the area's appraised fair market value.
More than ever before, long-term protec-
tion of remaining natural areas such as the
Okefenokee Swamp and the Seboesis River
depends on the farsighted action of private
landowners. But outright donations and
bargain sales of undeveloped land are by
no means the only way in which the corpo-
rate world can involve itself in land con-
servation, nor is it the only way in which
corporations can qualify for tax deductions.
In September 1 977, a $75.000-cash
contribution from the Atlantic Richfield
Foundation enabled The Nature Conser-
vancy to obtain options on 90 percent of an
87-square-mile island, Santa Cruz. The
island, lying 23 miles off the coast from
Santa Barbara, is the largest and bio logical-
iy richest of California's Channel Islands.
Rough and mountainous, Santa Cruz sup
ports several rare or endangered birds—
such as the brown pelican—the endangered
Channel Island fox, and 31 endemic plants
not known to grow on the mainland. Sea
lions, harbor seals, and an occasional ele-
phant seal haul up on the island's pocket
beaches and rocky ledges; porpoises and
migrating California gray whales are sight-
ed seasonally from the shores. Another
grant of $1 million from Atlantic Richfield
in Spring 1978 helped the Conservancy
complete its purchase of Santa Cruz, now
the organization's second largest private
sanctuary.
U.S. corporations also donate funds to
the Conservancy for a variety of other pur-
poses, not just for purchasing land. Protect-
ing natural areas goes beyond acquiring
them; it includes caring for and managing
the properties after acquisition. One of the
Conservancy's best known sanctuaries, the
Virginia Coast Reserve (VCR), encompass-
es the only unbroken barrier-island chain in
the U.S. preserved in its natural state. In
1 980 Union Camp Corporation donated
$50,000, and the Philip Morris Company
$45,000, to finance continued manage-
mentand protection of the 13-island
preserve.
To attract further public support for the
VCR, The Continental Group, Inc., and one
of its member companies, Continental
Financial Services Company, produced a
30-minute color film about the islands
entitled "The Atlantic's Last Frontier." The
Atlantic Richfield Foundation did the same
for Santa Cruz, providing a color film called
"Sanctuary in the Sea."
Corporate financial donations have also
gone towards specific Conservancy projects
or programs. A 1 976 grant of $60,000 from
Exxon Company, U.S.A., enabled the Con-
servancy to begin establishing a data bank
or inventory of all natural areas across the
country. Exxon was also the first corporate
cash donor with a $300,000 matching
grant to The Nature Conservancy's Land
Preservation Fund.
Over the past several years, a number of
properties without ecological value have
been donated to the Conservancy by corpo-
rations and individuals and then sold to
acquire and protect natural areas. The
largest such "trade land" transaction to
date was made by the Kimberly-Clark Cor-
poration, which contributed 350 acres of
Wisconsin property, valued at $1.5 million.
The Conservancy sold most of the acreage
and donated a riverfront site to the towns
of Kimberly and Niagara for use as a com-
munity park. Again, the Kimberly-Clark
experience reflects that a corporate gift of
real estate has a positive after-tax impact
on corporate earnings. To increase its finan-
cial base, the Conservancy has established
the Trade Lands Program to encourage the
donation of asset lands.
Land does not have to be acquired and
owned by the Conservancy to insure its
protection. For example, what is called a
protection and lease agreement between
International Paper Company—America's
largest private owner of tirnberlands—and
the Conservancy has succeeded in safe-
guarding the site of a rare golden eagle
nest in the Adirondacks. Under the agree-
ment, the 500-acre tract containing the
nest is leased to the Conservancy, which
must care for the site. Human activity on
the property is prohibited without written
consent from the conservation organiza-
tion. Meanwhile, International Paper re-
tains ownership of the land and pays the
real estate taxes.
International Paper is best known to the
Conservancy as the donor of the Savannahs
at Genesis Point—26,000 acres of rich
marshes, wooded uplands, and live-oak
hammocks in the extreme eastern portion
of Bryan County, Georgia. The Conser-
vancy's subsequent transfer of the land to
the Georgia Department of Natural Re-
sources for management enabled the State
to obtain Federal matching funds to pur-
chase Ossabaw Island, which lies adjacent
to Genesis Point, separated only by the
Intracoastal Waterway.
Whether it is an outright donation of land
or cash, a bargain sale of property, a pro-
tection and lease agreement, or a sale of
asset land, The Nature Conservancy's ex-
perience over the last two decades has
shown that U.S. corporations can play a
significant, positive conservation role.
Given the challenges of the next 20 years,
even greater private sector involvement
will be needed if our Nation's unique
natural heritage is to be preserved. [~]
Byers is Senior Writer fit The Nature
Conservancy.
MAY 1981
1 1
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Profit in
Protecting the
Outdoors
By W. William Pritsky
Thealuminum industry has been re-
cycling metal since 1904, when alumi-
num recycling plants opened in Chicago
and Cleveland. But many Americans
learned about aluminum recycling begin-
ning with the aluminum beverage can
20 years ago. Even today, most people
associate aluminum recycling with bev-
erage cans.
That may be because, in a real way,
aluminum can recycling extends a business
opportunity and an ecology project to the
general public and groups across the
country who collect cans and bring them
to the aluminum recycling centers.
A look at the aluminum can recycling
story shows cash has been the best incen-
tive all along. As Paul Murphy, Reynolds
Metals Company Group vice president,
recently explained:
"When the 1 2-ounce aluminum bev-
erage cans first made their appearance in
the early 1960's, the enormous possibilities
for consumer recycling came into focus."
An early pilot project urged Miami
residents to donate used aluminum cans
to charity. The response was sporadic
and low-volume.
"We did learn that an appeal to charity
won't get you there!" Murphy said.
Following an example set by the paper
industry, a collection center in Los Angeles
was set up to receive cans and other
household aluminum, paying cash on the
barrelhead. The cash incentive proved an
effective catalystfor a successful, con-
tinuing volume program.
"The second key," Murphy explains,
"was the establishment of a network of
convenient, low cost, collection or re-
cycling centers like Los Angeles."
The aluminum industry has set about
opening up the option for consumers to
recycle their used aluminum, especially in
areas having an abundance of all-aluminum
cans. Many Americans have found they can
supplement their income or generate
significant sums for local civic or charitable
causes by recycling aluminum.
Because it is good business, it is also
becoming a big business. There are some
2,000 metal scrap dealers across the coun-
try who help supply about 100 plants that
process recycled aluminum.
Over one million Americans collect
aluminum cans on a regular basis, with
millions more collecting cans part-time.
"For aluminum companies, used alu-
minum cans are like an above ground
mine," William F. Hill, president, Alcoa
Recycling Company, said. "Today we're
tapping more than a third of this potentially
inexhaustible metal source. Our goal is to
double that volume over the next two or
three years."
The aluminum industry thinks recyclers
should know about the energy savings they
generate in addition to income and re-
source recovery. Recycling aluminum uses
only five percent of the energy it took to
produce the metal originally. That is com-
parable to improving the miles-per-gallon
of your car 19 times over. And aluminum
cans can be recycled over and over again.
Consumer Innovation
In the Atlanta area where the aluminum
beverage can concentration is high, student
projects demonstrate the imaginative way
recyclers are capitalizing on the value of
used aluminum.
Take as an example youngsters, parents
and directors of Henry County Junior High
School Band who collect aluminum cans
following races at the nearby Atlanta Inter-
national Raceway. Races are attended by
over 40,000 spectators, and many of the
aluminum cans racing enthusiasts leave
behind are picked up.
Following two recent races, the band
group has collected more than 81,000 used
aluminum cans, and received over $800
from the recycling center.
Band director George Henderson said
money from selling the cans is used to keep
the band in new uniforms. "It's easier than
selling items door-to-door to raise funds,"
he said. "Besides, the youngsters are
excited about helping to conserve a natural
resource as well as the energy-saving
benefits of recycling aluminum."
A different strategy is used by teachers
and youngsters at Beford-Pine Day Care
Center in downtown Atlanta. Ruth Nichols,
headoftheschool.saidtheadultsand
youngsters canvass nearby homes and
businesses for cans. The best contributors
are neighborhood pubs, hotels and motels.
"Owners of these establishments are
eager contributors," Ms. Nichols said.
"They see it as an ideal way to lend a
helping hand to a good cause, and it helps
relieve them of having to find some way to
dispose of them."
Perhaps the most imaginative aluminum
beverage can recycling effort in the Atlanta
area is conducted by a group of high school
students who collect the cans following
the annual Ramblin' Raft Race on the
Chattahoochee River.
Each year, more than 400,000 persons
flock to the river on a Saturday in May to
float the seven-mile course in anything
from air-filled inner tubes to extravagant
homemade sea-worthy vessels. On the way
down the river, the participants leave be-
hind thousands of aluminum beverage cans.
The enterprising high school group
collects a large number of these cans by
forming a phalanx of shoulder-to-shoulder
students to sweep the area clean. "The
result is something like a grain field after
the locusts have left," said one admiring
observer. "It's picked clean."
12
EPAJOURNAL
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Other students tie can collection efforts
to beautification programs. Walker High
School students, for example, pick up
aluminum cans on the roadside during
theannual "De-Trash DeKalb County"
program held each May. Each youngster
who brings a plastic garbage bag full of
cans for recycling is admitted to a sock-hop
free of charge. And big hits at the hop
follow the theme: recycled "oldies" from
the1960's.
Alcoa Recycling Company's Southeast
regional representative, Dan Nemeth, has
started a program to help schools tie
aluminum beverage can recycling to tradi-
tional newspaper collection drives. Nemeth
believes most schools can more than
double their recycling income by combin-
ing the two materials.
"In the same way students have edu-
cated neighbors to save newspapers, they
can help the public save aluminum bev-
erage cans," Nemeth said. "Students can
collect both items on a single stop."
Growth in Recycling
The recycling ethic was born of a strong
national interestin improving our environ-
ment and that attitude flourishes. Aluminum
recycling will by no means solve our litter
problem, but it is a start in the right
direction.
Aluminum containers are increasingly
flowing into recycling systems, thereby
staying out of the litter stream. There is,
however, another potential source of lost
aluminum in the country's solid waste
landfills and other disposal systems.
For years the aluminum industry has
been working with municipalities to find
economical and practical ways of saving
aluminum and other valuable materials
that go into the trash heap. This work is
continuing, and some aluminum is being
recovered from these sources.
Reynolds reports it has developed a
unique mechanical system to recover
aluminum from municipal refuse that now
is in operation in Houston, Texas and in
Salem, Va. The company says this new
system could be regarded as a prototype
for relatively low-cost, low-capital invest-
ment recovery systems that can be installed
by resource recovery plants as part of their
overall operation.
While efforts continue to efficiently
uncover this buried treasure, of sorts, the
aluminum industry is trying to make sure
as little of its metal as possible gets into
the solid waste stream.
Industry collections in 1970 were eight
million pounds. Reynolds Metals Company
estimates about 600 million pounds were
retrieved in 1980, representing substantial
growth inlOyearstime, especially the
last two.
Cans that are recycled go to make
aluminum sheet for the bodies of more
cans. Alcoa executives estimate one out of
every three aluminum cans made by the
aluminum industry comes from recycled
material and that this ratio will grow to two
out of three within five years.
The recycling network today consists of
primary and secondary producers, scrap
dealers, entrepreneurs, beverage com-
panies and independent recyclers and has
grown to more than 2,500 collection points
nationwide. While the public continues to
avail itself of cash payments and con-
venient collection, efforts are being made
to involve even more individual recyclers.
Automated self-service can collectors,
Alcoa's "Cangaroos," being test marketed
in several grocery stores in the country are
oneway. Organized collections by muni-
cipalities are another.
It is clear to the industry that as energy
costs go up, recycling can play an impor-
tant role as a wholly domestic supply
source of aluminum.
As Alcoa's William F. Hill put it,
"Aluminum can recycling is an investment
in America's future. Americans get a
cleaner environment, can collectors earn
cash for their efforts, consumers get the
package they want, energy is saved and the
industry gets a chance to put the used
metal back to work. Everyone benefits." ["}
Mr. Pritsky is Technical Director-Energy /
Engineering at The Aluminum Association.
Operating the "Cangaroo, "an automated self-service used can collector now being
test marketed.
MAY 1981
-------
P/tes of iron ore pa/lets at Armco Steel's Midd/etown Works are sprayed to reduce dust.
EPA JOURNAL
-------
New Plan
for
Armco
Steel
[~ he EPA recently approved a
prototype air pollution con-
trol plan for Armco Inc.'s Mid-
dletown, Ohio, steel plant that
permits the company to clean
up dust and airborne dirt from
the plant grounds instead of
installing expensive filters to
trap other pollution escaping
from plant buildings.
EPA Acting Administrator
Walter C. Barber said that
approval of the Armco plan
"has opened the door for other
steel firms to develop similar
cost-savings programs." The
Agency will try to speed ap-
proval of these plans as part
of the Reagan administration's
campaign to reduce unneces-
sarily burdensome regulations,
he added.
The Armco plan has been a
key test of the so-called
"bubble" approach to pollution
control, in which a plant is as-
sumed to be covered by an
imaginary bubble or dome with
only one emission pointfor air-
borne pollutants, instead of in-
sisting on special pollution con-
trols for every smokestack or
other pollution sources in a
plant, EPA permits the company
to choose its own contro! plan,
as long as the total emissions
from the plant underneath the
"bubble" comply with Federal
requirements.
The Armco plan is based on
a program to control dust
throughout the plant grounds by
paving roads and perimeter
parking lots and spraying water
and other dust controllers on
coal and ore piles, as well as
seeding open areas.
The company will also install
monitors to measure expected
air quality improvements. The
State of Ohio has the respon-
sibility for assuring that Armco
meets air quality standards.
The EPA approval permits
Armco to take these steps in-
stead of building filter systems
and other control devices to
catch "fugitive" emissions that
otherwise would escape from
plant windows, doors, and
vents. The plan is not a sub-
stitute for the controls EPA
requires on furnaces and other
manufacturing processes,
however.
Armco, which is investing
$5,6 million in dust control,
said it will save at least $14
million to 51 6 million at its
Middletown plant by following
its dust contro! plan. If the pro-
gram is duplicated at all of
Armco's other facilities, it could
save as much as $42 million
without sacrificing air quality,
the company estimates.
The company also said it will
eliminate six times more par-
ticles with its plan—4,000 tons
per year—than would be
trapped if EPA insisted on its
customary controls of "fugi-
tive" emissions.
An EPA official said the key
to approval of the Armco
"bubble" was the company's
claim that the new plan would
lead to an overall reduction in
paniculate pollution in the
Middletown area, bringing it in
compliance with EPA's stand-
ard for particulars by the end
of 1982.
EPA's bubble policy is an
important regulatory reform
initiative which allows pollution
sources the flexibility to meet
Clean Air Act requirements in a
more cost-effective way. The
new policy permits industry
management to calculate the
best way to clean up air pollu-
tion at individual plants pro-
vided overall clean air require-
ments are met.
A voluntary program, it
differs from the traditional
approach of having regulatory
agencies set specific emission
standards at each pollution
source within a factory. The
bubble allows plant managers
to propose their own emission
standards—tightening them in
places where it is least costly
and relaxing them where pollu-
tion control costs are high to
achieve the same desired
results. D
MAY 1981
15
-------
EP>
Q. .-I.
i/ar on Ha;
The Environmental Protec-
tion Agency will step up its
efforts in several areas to attack
the problem of hazardous
waste disposal.
The EPA budget for fiscal
1 982, although showing a re-
duction in overall spending,
will put more resources into
carrying out the recently en-
acted Superfund legislation as
well as future hazardous waste
control activities dealing with
permits in this area, and haz-
ardous waste enforcement.
The Superfund, technically
known as the Hazardous Sub-
stance Response Trust Fund,
resulted from national concern
over Love Canal and similar ex-
amples of abandoned chemical
disposal sites that threatened
the health of nearby residents.
The fund was established
through legislation passed last
December 11.
The Superfund is financed
over a period of five years
through a combination of taxes
levied against chemical manu-
facturers and Federal appropri-
ations. In addition to the 1982
budget request of 503 person-
nel and a total of $200 million
to support the program in its
first full year, EPA also is
requesting a 1981 supplemental
appropriation of $68 million for
initial implementation, such as
promulgating key regulations
and developing mechanisms for
funds and contract
management.
"Like most other Federal
agencies. EPA will have less
money and fewer people next
year," declared EPA Acting
Administrator Walter C. Barber,
Jr. "As a result, we have had to
make difficult trade-offs be-
tween programs to eliminate
duplication and to fund only
those programs which meet our
most critical national environ-
mental goals. However, we will
continue to press ahead in the
areas of enforcement of exist-
ing regulations, in the delega-
tion of authorities and programs
to the States where legally per-
missible, and in the area of
providing grants to the States
to carry out these programs."
The budget as proposed by
President Reagan is down
slightly from approximately
$1.43 billion and 10,621 work-
years in 1981 to $1.39 billion
and 10,387 workyears. (A
workyear is the equivalent of
one person working one year.)
In other areas, the new
budget would make major cuts
in EPA's grant program for
sewage treatment construction,
reflecting a desire for more
cost-effective orientation of the
program. About $1.7 billion of
1981 and earlier year construc-
tion funds already appropriated
would be cancelled. Although
the new construction grants
budget for fiscal 1982 calls for
$2.4 billion, this would only be
for projects designed to signifi-
cantly improve the quality of
receiving waters in the near
future.
Several other State grant
programs would be reduced
next year. The 1982 budget
contains a $34 million de-
crease for elimination of the
Section 208 area-wide water
planning grants and a $23
million decrease for elimina-
tion of Clean Lakes, Solid
Waste, and Resource Recovery
grants. The reductions in the
water program reflect the fact
that regulations and planning
called for in the 1977 Clean
Water Act amendments will be
largely completed next year.
Asa result, the program's prin-
cipal focus will be to carry out
existing requirements rather
than developing new initiatives.
However, some of EPA's
water clean-up efforts would be
increased under the proposed
budget. For example, the ocean
disposal program would be in-
creased by $3.1 million to
study the environmental effects
of additional ocean dumping
sites. EPA's enforcement of
controls on toxic industrial dis-
charges also would be in-
creased by $2.4 million and
seven workyears.
Other programs that would
have overall budget increases
for 1982 would include these
areas:
• Drinking water—An addi-
tional $4.8 million would be
used to control the under-
ground injection of wastes and
to protect groundwater as well
as to fund further research.
• Interdisciplinary programs
—These activities, which cut
across pollution control efforts
and integrate research and reg-
ulations, would receive an
additional $4.7 million and 14
workyears to accelerate the
review and issuance of permits
for new energy projects.
• Management and support
—An additional $19.5 million
would be used to develop an
integrated toxic substances
regulatory plan and to cover
higher costs for office space
and services.
Offsetting these increases, a
number of EPA programs and
activities would be reduced or
107
FY 1981
FY 1982
The Superfund will increase from $ 107 million in FY 1981
to $200 million in FY 1982. one! is scheduled to reach $1.6
hi/lion in five years.
phased out in fiscal 1982. The
highlights include these:
• The air pollution control
program would be reduced
overall by $7.4 million and 22
workyears as certain work is
completed in controlling ex-
haust emission from cars.
However, enforcement to in-
sure compliance by industry
with clean air standards would
be increased by $1.9 million
and 36 workyears. Grants to
States and local governments
to support their pollution con-
trol programs would stay at the
1981 level.
• Energy research would de-
cline overall by $34.8 million
but increase by 4.3 workyears,
as studies on possible toxic
pollution and drinking water
contamination caused by en-
ergy development would be
eliminated. Research would
continue on other environmen-
tal effects of coal, oil shale,
petroleum refining, and geo-
thermal energy, as well as on
acid rain and coal-fired boilers.
• A reduction of $5.8 mil-
lion in toxic substances control
would come through eliminat-
ing some public participation
grants and record-keeping and
reporting rules.
• About $1 2 million in
grants to States for solid waste
and resource recovery would be
ended after 1981, because
many State programs are be-
coming self-supporting and
emphasis has shifted to haz-
ardous waste.
* The pesticides program
would decrease by $7.6 million
and 67 workyears in the areas
of registration standards and
integrated pest management
research. Grants to States to
enforce pesticide safeguards
would increase by $782,000.
• The noise control program
would be phased out by the end
of fiscal 1982 and its mission
transferred to the States. To
accomplish this, the budget
allocates $2.3 million and 29
workyears.
• The radiation program
would be reduced by $4.3
million and 26 workyears,
marking the deferral of some
regulatory development and
stressing greater emphasis on
the development of standards
for disposal of low-level radio-
active wastes, n
u;
EPAJOURNAL
-------
EPA Team Wins
Congressional
Award
even present and former EPA employ-
ees from Region 5 in the Midwest
recently received the Excaiibur Award in
Washington, D.C. for their innovative cost-
saving plan to develop sewage treatment
facilities for rural lake areas in the
Midwest.
The group received the Excaiibur Award
from Rep. Michael D. Barnes (D-Md.) for
the Seven Lakes Project. Barnes initiated
the award in 1979 to recognize outstand-
ing contributions made by Federal civilian
and military personnel. Region 5 Acting
Administrator Valdas V. Adamkus said that
this is the fourth citation plaque to be
issued, and the first to be awarded for a
team effort and to EPA personnel, although
Agency projects have been nominated nu-
merous times since the award was created.
The Seven Lakes Project team used
aerial infrared photography to determine
whether septic tanks and filter fields were
failing. The team also used ultraviolet
fluorescent scanning to determine the lo-
cation and extent of septic tank effluent
leakage into lakes and streams. Included
in the project were lakes in Michigan,
Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin.
These detection methods enabled the
group to recommend to local sanitary offi-
cials alternative waste treatment methods
that were much less expensive than the
originally proposed measures.
"The recommendations to use the alter-
native methods of on-site waste treatment
in the rural lake areas instead of the costiy
sewer system installations would save resi-
dents in the seven locations $51 million,"
said Adamkus. Estimates indicate that the
improvments recommended by the Seven
Lakes team would cost S27.5 million rather
than $78.5 million, the cost of the initial
proposal for sewers and plants.
"The team tackled this problem to pro-
vide residents in the rural lake areas
throughout the Region and country with
solutions for preserving water quality in the
lakes that are affordable rather than in-
creasing assessments $4,000 or $5,000
per home," said Adamkus.
The 1977 project focused on seven
M idwest rural lake areas that were selected
from hundreds seeking construction grants
from EPA to install sewer lines along lakes
or to build wastewater treatment plants. In
the project environmental impact state-
ments were prepared to determine water
quality problems caused by failing septic
tanks.
The recommendations included alterna-
tives to sewer construction such as up-
grading and maintaining septic tank sys-
tems, installing new systems where needed
and providing clusters of filter fields that
could handle wastes from small popula-
tions and protect water quality.
The Excaiibur Award selection commit-
tee is composed of seven distinguished
citizens, drawn from a wide variety of
professions and experiences.
The recipients of the award from EPA in
Chicago are: Alfred Krause, technical
specialist, Water Division; Ted Rockwell,
environmental protection specialist, Water
Division; Greg Vanderlaan, physical scien-
tist, Superfund Division; Catherine Garra,
community planner. Water Division;
Cynthia Wakat, facilities planning special-
ist, Water Division; and Gene Wojcik,
chief, Environmental Impact Statement
Section, Water Division.
Kathleen Schaub, a former Region 5
environmental protection specialist who is
now a doctoral student at the University of
Maryland, also was honored for her work
with the team. D
i ward
Sch;n
-------
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Recreation and Water Cleanup
Child floats boat in pond.
Lwell, Mass., once a proud textile cen-
ter of the 19th century, had been a
victim of declining industry and a deteri-
orating core, until it developed the concept
of an "urban cultural park." The plan was
designed to build on the city's strengths—
its location at the confluence of the Con-
cord and Merrimack Rivers, its legacy of
long brick mill buildings, and the network
of canals that thread through the city. It
was to be a combination of creative reuse
of historic architecture, exhibits of the
industrial revolution, and extensive land-
scaping and recreational development.
A vigorous cleanup program got under-
way. There are plans to protect the unde-
veloped banks of the two rivers, and
extensive landscaping and recreational
development along the five miles of canals.
Hiking and biking trails are being designed
to follow the same easements as waste-
water collection systems.
The efforts of Lowell are typical of many
communities across the country, large and
small, which are rediscovering their water-
fronts. In some cases, this means revital-
izing rundown developed areas. In other
cases, it means protecting shoreland areas
still unspoiled, such as along the Little
Miami River in Ohio, wherea regional open
space and trail system is being developed in
conjunction with water cleanup programs.
The city of Lowell and the Little Miami
shorefront are examples listed in "Recrea-
tion and Land Use: the Public Benefits of
Clean Waters," a report put out by the
Environmental Protection Agency and the
U.S. Department of the Interior.
The report explains how to synchronize
open space protection programs with water
cleanup schedules so that waterfront land
is given a high priority, and purchases
timed so that property is bought in advance
of dramatic pollution abatement.
This can save money initially in one of
two ways: first, property values tend to rise
following pollution control progress, and
second, communities can save by coordi-
nating funds from various Federal, State
and local programs that may already be in
effect in their areas, according to the report.
Another incentive for this coordinated
acquisition is that by making this prime
land available to the public, the benefits of
tax expenditures on pollution control return
to the public, and not to private real estate
developers, the report notes.
This coordinated acquisition means that
a large share of new public recreation areas
could be water-oriented, satisfying the pop-
ular demand for such activities as swim-
ming, fishing, boating and other water
sports." It will also help to prevent pollu-
tion of clean rivers and lakes through ero-
sion, runoff, and other •forms of non-point
source pollution," the report declares,
"that would accompany indiscriminate
development of shorelines, or intensive
residential development at the water's
edge."
The report advocates multiple use to
gain extra value from a wastewater treat-
ment plant or collection system by using
it for recreational purposes in addition to
its primary role of cleaning up pollution.
According to the report, the concept of
multiple use can be a dollar stretcher espe-
cially when it comes to construction. For
example, when heavy equipment is already
on site, it is much cheaper to also build rec
reationai facilities then. In the case where
the land has to be restored in some way
after construction, a little planning can
ensure that it is done in a manner to accom-
modate some kind of recreation. Also, the
environs of a treatment plant constitute a
waterfront access point that is already in
public ownership, and thus a possible loca-
tion for boat launching ramps, for example.
This can be particularly attractive in areas
where opportunities for waterfront access
are limited.
EPA is presently engaged in a training
program to alert consulting engineers,
those hired by a town or city to help design
and construct a treatment facility, to the
concept of multiple use.
MAY 198'
-------
The Agency also assists, according to
the report, by providing funds for the con-
sulting engineers working on construction
grants projects to:
• coordinate with public officials and citi-
zens interested in or charged with responsi-
bilities for recreational and water cleanup;
• develop multiple use proposals and
study their feasibility;
• design and construct the wastewater
treatment system to accommodate recrea-
tional uses, even if, in some cases, this
leads to extra costs, and
• design and carry out landscaping and re-
grading so as to promote recreational use.
"While eligibility for receiving funds is
determined on a project by project basis,
the Agency only funds those geared to
pollution control as opposed to strictly
recreational activities," the report states.
The Agency provides these funds in three
stages; facility planning, in which the needs
of the community are examined; prelimi-
nary design following Agency and State
approval; and construction. However, in-
corporating recreational opportunities into
a project is best done in the early stages
before engineering designs are approved
or construction is begun.
EPA is not, however, the primary source
of funds for multiple use efforts. Other
Federal programs, State environmental
agencies as well as local agencies and
private industries are among other possible
sources.
The report describes the problems which
crop up in multiple use efforts as those
which can quite readily be expected in
programs which involve fitting a new idea
into established practices. There is resist-
ance on the part of some wastewater treat-
ment engineers and public officials to the
idea. Often they cite fear of vandalism;
other times they are just apathetic to the
idea itself. However, to combat these
attempts to frustrate their efforts, commu-
nities and civic groups are advised to note
the protection afforded in Sections 201 (g)
(6) and 208 (b) (2A) of the Clean Water
Act which specifically support the use of
recreational opportunities.
The study cites a number of instances
when the two, water cleanup and recrea-
tion, have been successfully meshed. For
example:
• In Evergreen, Colo., the roof of a treat-
ment facility was used, at the suggestion
of the chief sanitation officer, for two addi-
tional tennis courts for the community,
thus alleviating the congestion on the other
public courts. The city also saved money
by getting a group of citizens to fund the
cost of building the courts.
• The construction of a support system
for a treated water outfall from a waste-
water treatment plant gave residents of
Pacifica, Calif., a long desired ocean fish-
ing pier. Over 55,000 people use the pier
annually.
• In Barrington, R.I., due to strong public
interest in the idea and a creative con-
sultant, a pumping station was located next
to an outdoor ice hockey rink and designed
to form bleachers for spectators.
• In Bellevue, Wash., a suburb of Seattle,
construction of an interceptor line through
an undeveloped marshland is being co-
ordinated with recreation officials to pro-
vide a bicycle path through the property.
The report notes that the most often
implemented type of multiple use involves
wastewater collection systems and related
facilities such as pumping stations. The
report suggests that this is because these
facilities are scattered around the commu-
nity, and thus are most accessible. Then
too, there is the apparent ease with which
such controls as easements, which have to
be negotiated anyway, can be written to
allow for development of a walking and
trail system. These systems, in addition to
linking points throughout the community,
can turn disjointed and fragmented park-
lands into a cohesive recreation system.
As the Nation makes its concerted push
for fishable and swimmable waters, tech-
nical innovations and new standards and
requirements are making many older treat-
ment plants outdated. Yet this is posing a
problem in many communities, where
abandoned plants can tie up desirable
property, or worse yet, become nuisances
subject to vandalism, accidents and other
problems, according to the report.
"In a number of cities and towns, how-
ever, these problems are being avoided
creatively by adapting outmoded treat-
ment plants to recreational purposes," the
study states. "Old plants tend to be located
in dense neighborhoods, or on prime
waterfront land, which make them excellent
candidates for rehabilitation into parks."
Recycling an abandoned treatment plant
makes sense because it eliminates an eye-
sore and potential trouble spot, in addition
to meeting the public demand for recrea-
tional facilities, and converting otherwise
wasted land and structures into new assets.
The study lists Miamisburg, Ohio, a
suburb of Dayton, as an example of this
creative reuse. There residents, working
with city officials and park planners, turned
a long-unused plant into an attractive new
park. Tennis, basketball, and volleyball
courts were built from old sludge beds; a
splash pool and roller skating area were
fashioned from the treatment plant's aero-
clarifier, and an "adventure playground"
was developed over the former sludge
digester. The former administration build-
ing was used for restrooms and a storage
area. And open land surrounding the facil-
ity is being used for a ball field and free
play area. Plans of a similar nature are
currently underway for outdated treatment
plants in San Antonio, Texas, and Naper-
ville. III., according to the study. D
Single copies of the study "Recreation and
Land Use: the Public Benefits of Clean
Waters" are available at the Public Inquiry
Center at EPA Headquarters in Washington.
D.C., and EPA regional offices.
20
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Tourism
and the
Environment
By J. William Hudson
It is sometimes difficult to realize the scope
of what is called tourism. Resorts and
restaurants, travel agents and tourist attrac-
tions are some of tourism's obvious com-
ponents, but the travel industry encom-
passes a much broader spectrum. Since
tourists are people, they not only need
places to eat, sleep and entertain them-
selves, but also sources of information,
transportation and regulation. In short,
Tourists at Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
-------
J
National Park Service ranger directs tourists near White House.
tourism is defined by such a wide range of
activities that it can be—and often is—the
basis of the economy of a region or nation.
Because tourism encompasses such a
broad spectrum of activity, it has a variety
of needs. An example is the travel indus-
try's unique dependence on two particular
natural resources. First, a steady supply of
fossil fuels is required to keep the trans-
portation lifeline of the industry moving.
Second, maintenance of the quality of
scenic and recreational areas is vital to
the well-being of the industry. These seem-
ingly conflicting, but equally critical, needs
can only be met with recognition, by both
the public and private sector, that national
resources must be managed in ways that
consider the needs of the travel industry
equally with those of other interests.
Most people think of tourism as a vaca-
tion or leisure activity without realizing the
significant economic clout the travel indus-
try wields. In fact, tourism is the third-
largest retail industry in the United States
in terms of consumer sales, in 1979, it
accounted for more than $130 billion in
domestic spending—some six percent of
the Gross National Product—exceeded
only by the food and automotive industries.
Expenditures on travel worldwide have
grown at the compound rate of more than
10 percent a year, and in 20 years it is
anticipated that travel will be the number
one industry worldwide.
Highly diversified, the U.S. travel indus-
try's 1.4 million component companies—
99 percent of which are classified by the
Federal Government as small businesses—
range from small travel agencies to large
airlines and hotel chains. Travel provides a
high percentage of entry-level positions and
is preeminent in the employment of women,
youths and minority groups. At a time when
the service sector accounts for most em-
ployment growth, travel is one of the Na-
tion's leading labor-intensive service indus-
tries. The travel industry directly employs
nearly five million Americans at every level
of skill and indirectly produces another two
million supporting jobs. It is the largest
single employer in 14 of the 50 states.
Tourism now ranks as the sixth-largest
U.S. export industry, far outdistancing such
widely heralded export performers as soy-
beans, construction materials, machinery,
and business machines. Last year, foreign
visitors spent $1 2 billion dollars while
traveling in the U.S., an increase of nearly
11 percent over 1979. It has been predicted
that the total number of international
visitors coming to the U.S. during 1981 —
an estimated 23.7 million—will surpass
the number of U.S. citizens traveling
abroad.
Aside from the economic gains associ-
ated with tourism there are social benefits
which increase the well-being of the popu-
lation. For example, improved physical
health due to participation in outdoor activi-
ties often results in less work time lost to
illness, while relaxation and release from
stress increase productivity. Various
studies have shown some of the feelings
experienced by persons who take part in
outdoor recreation to be increased inde-
pendence, self-sufficiency and self-fulfill-
ment through discovery, risk-taking and
meeting challenges encountered in the out-
door environment. It has also been sug-
gested that participation in outdoor recrea-
tion increases social stability and family
solidarity through group experiences.
Demand for outdoor recreation is on a
steady climb. The rise in the number of
two-paycheck families has increased dis-
posable income. These factors, in addition
to more leisure time and longer life spans,
have created a boom in the tourism market,
but have also contributed to crowded con-
ditions in existing tourism facilities.
The U.S. Forest Service publication, An
Assessment of the Forest and Range Land
Situation in the United States, notes a 37
percent increase in outdoor recreation par-
ticipants over the last 10 years, with the
largest gains in snow and ice sports. In that
time span, travel expenditures have risen
110 percent according to the study. It also
predicts that by the year 2030 demand for
winter sports will be up by 1 40 percent,
106 percent for water sports, and 61 per-
cent in recreational land use.
The growing public appreciation of out-
door recreation has been a mixed blessing
for the environment. Public demand for
quality outdoor experiences has been a
major factor in the reduction of water and
air pollution. A study by Walsh, Gillman
and Loomis of the public benefits derived
from wilderness resources in Colorado
shows that 87.2 and 76.9 percent respec-
tively of the survey respondents believe
protecting water and air quality are very
or extremely important wi iderness area
values. At the same time, environmental
concerns have intensified with continuing
increases in recreational use of water and
land resources.
What is needed is a coordinated effort
by the public and private sectors to balance
development and maintenance of natural
resources for the growing travel market
with the needs of other industries. One
method of achieving this goal is by man-
date of a national tourism policy that de-
fines the travel industry's needs and
ensures that they are addressed.
Currently, tourism issues are handled by
scores of agencies with no single authority
overseeing the final result of their actions.
This state of affairs often leads to over-
lapping, and even conflicting, activities.
If we fail to resolve the problems that
exist in tourism policy, we will suffer eco-
nomically and environmentally. By re-
sponding to the needs of tourism with a
law establishing a coordinated approach to
solving the problems that exist, and plan-
ning for future contingencies, the Nation
will enjoy a growing supply of jobs, tax
revenues, money and avenues of enjoyment
into the next century, n
Hudson is Senior Vice President of
Membership and Industry Affairs, Travel
industry Association of America.
22
EPAJOURNAL
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Environmental Almanac: May 1981
A Glimpse of the Natural World We Help Protect
Wood Ducks
Hatching
About two hours after sunrise
the wood duck hen appeared at
the entrance to her nest in a tree
cavity, looked around for preda-
tors below, and once convinced
it was safe, glided to the ground
below.
After landing and checking
warily for possible enemies,
she called to her new born
ducklings. The approximately
10 youngsters inthenest
responded with peeping calls.
Then they scrambled one by
one up to the inside of the nest
hole, and paused briefly before
leaping out and fluttering to the
ground, which may be as much
as sixty feet below the nest.
Because the youngsters are
little balls of dark yellow, grey,
brown, and black fluff weighing
less than an ounce they land
unhurt.
Once the last chick was out
of the nest, the mother led them
to a nearby pond. With head
down and neck outstretched,
the cautious and furtive mother
scooted across clearings and
paused in the next wooded area
waiting for her young to catch
up with her.
In this manner, by starts and
fits, thousands of mother wood
ducks in the Chesapeake Bay
region are now leading their
broods to water.
The mother's innate skills, an
increasingly favorable habitat,
and some help from humans
and other animals are con-
tributing to make the wood
duck, once thought to be in
danger of extinction, one of the
most common in the Atlantic
Flyway, the East Coast migrating
path used by birds between
their winter and breeding
grounds.
One of the most beautiful
birds in the world, the wood
duck was nearly exterminated in
the early 1900's by unrestricted
hunting and massive lumbering
and land clearing which de-
stroyed much of the bird's nat-
ural habitat of woods and
swamps.
However, in recent years the
wood duck, whose scientific
name, Aix sponsa, means "wa-
terfowl in wedding raiment,"
has been flourishing because
favorable environmental con-
ditions have outweighed the
negative ones.
Although this secretive bird
is extremely difficult to count
because of its habit of hiding
in wooded and marshy areas,
U.S. Fish and Wild Life officials
estimate the total national pop-
ulation at about five million
birds. In some areas of the
Atlantic Flyway it is the most
common duck, despite the fact
that every fall hundreds of
thousands are shot by hunters.
Passage of the M igratory
Bird Treaty Act between the
U.S. and Canada in 1918 saved
this bird from extinction and
prevents unrestricted killing
now.
Helping the success of the
wood duck population is the
fact that many former farms in
the East have been allowed to
revert to woodland. An increase
in the beaver population also
aided because these creatures
build dams which create im-
poundments to compensate for
loss of marsh and swamp land
being drained elsewhere for
growing of agricultural crops
such as soybeans.
A question of some concern
to wood duck admirers is how
much harm will be done to their
habitat by the increasing cutting
of trees for fuel for wood
stoves. While no one is sure,
it is certain that the future of the
wood duck, like that of all living
things, will, to a greater or
lesser degree, be shaped by its
environment.
The wood duck normally
nests in tree cavities, such as
those drilled by the crow-sized
pileated woodpecker. Many
people have built houses for
wood ducks that they erect on
poles in ponds to provide addi-
tional safety. Large inverted
metal cones are placed beneath
the houses to keep snakes, rac-
coons, and other predators
away from the wood duck nest.
Wood ducks pair off while at
their winter grounds and the
female then leads the male to a
nesting site, often where she
nested the year before.
Thefemale gives a wild cry of
alarm when disturbed that has
given this duck the nickname
of "the squealer." If you walk
along the C&O Canal south of
Shepherdstown, W.Va., at this
time of year, you will often hear
a strident "wh-e-e-ek, wh-e-e-k"
cry as the hen flies off her nest
and plunges behind a screen of
wood and shrubbery down-
stream.
Although the female has the
loud voice, she is, despite her
white eye rings, relatively drab
compared to the resplendent
male who has a gaudy head
crest and shows many hues of
green and purple and whose
burgundy chest is flecked with
white.
After the breeding season the
wood ducks, both male and
female, gather together, some
times by the thousands, in
swamps or farm ponds each
night until they are ready to
migrate.
Then usually after the first
hard frost in October or Novem-
ber in this area they will sud-
denly explode into flight. The
thunder of their wings gradually
fades to a whisper as they dis-
appear into the southern sky
headed for their wintering
grounds in the deep South
States. —C.D.P.
MAY 1981
23
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Around the Nation
Artificial Reef
Region 1 officials recently
informed developers of
a proposed artificial reef
that will use some
100,000 old tires, located
off the coast of Marble-
head, Mass., that they
must apply for an ocean
dumping permit.
The developers, Fish-
eries Enhancement Cor-
poration, had sought an
exclusion, arguing that
the reef would enhance
the production of fish and
therefore should be
exempt from the permit
process.
EPA, after reviewing
material provided by the
National Marine Fisheries
Service, did not concur
with the developers' be-
lief, and in fact said the
reef could have negative
impacts to the highly pro-
ductive ecosystem in that
area of Massachusetts
Bay. The Agency is con-
cerned about the possibil
ity that the reef could
break up and litter the
ocean floor and interfere
with fish life.
Settlement
Region 1 recently reached
a settlement with Recycl-
ing Industries of Brain-
tree, Mass., for that com-
pany's violations of the
PCB marking regulation.
Recycling Industries is a
licensed PCB storage
facil'ity.
The settlement in-
volves, in addition to a
$3,000 penalty and instal-
lation of sampling and
'testing equipment, an
agreement to transport,
store, and ultimately dis-
pose of 4,000 gallons of
PCB-contaminated wastes
that were removed from
an uncontrolled hazard-
ous waste disposal site in
Coventry, R.I.
Company Cited
Region 2 has cited the
National Gypsum Com-
pany for violations under
air pollution regulations
which makes payment of
penalties mandatory if the
source were still out of
compliance with emission
control requirements after
January 1, 1981.
The company operates
a manufacturing facility
in Burlington Township,
N.J., which makes gyp-
sum products for the
building industry. Recent
stack tests demonstrated
that the kiln at the plant is
emitting particulate mat-
ter at more than twenty
times the allowable limit.
Acting Regional Ad-
ministrator Richard T.
Dewling said that similar
notices have already been
issued to three other firms
in the region and that a
number of air pollution
sources have been asked
to test emissions from
their plants. If these
sources show violations,
they too will receive
notices of noncornpliance.
State Authority
Delaware now has pri-
mary authority to admin-
ister and enforce a State-
wide hazardous waste
program, following ap-
proval of its program by
EPA.
Specifically, the State
has responsibility for:
identification and listing
of hazardous wastes;
regulation of waste treat-
ment, storage, and dis-
posal facilities; develop-
ment of a cradle-to-grave
manifest system; regula-
tion of hazardous waste
generators and transpor-
ters; and inspection and
sampling of all waste
management facilities.
Folfowing developrnpnt
of additional regulations
by EPA, Delaware can
also be authorized to
issue permits to compa-
nies that treat, store, or
dispose of toxic wastes.
Penalty Assessed
Region 3 recently as-
sessed a $25,000 penalty
against Culpeper Wood
Preservers for the firm's
improper operation of a
chemical holding pond.
The firm was ordered to
cease operation of the
pond immediately.
EPA became aware of
the pond in February
when more than 200,000
gallons of copper chro-
mium arsenate solution
spilled into a tributary of
the Rappahannock River
due to a break in the dike
surrounding the pond.
The EPA order also
directed the company to
submit a revised applica-
tion for interim status as
a hazardous waste storage
facility. The company had
previously applied but did
not mention the pond.
Failure to resubmit an
application will mean the
firm will have to go
through a lengthy per-
mit procedure as a
new hazardous waste
facility or dispose of its
waste at an authorized
facility.
The company must
bring the pond into com-
pliance with existing
standards for hazardous
waste facilities before it
can be used again for
chemical storage.
Offshore Dumping
EPA plans to decide by
June 1 whether to grant
Mobil Oil's request for a
research permit to dump
drilling wastes into the
Gulf of Mexico 16 miles
from the company's ex-
ploratory wells under
development in Mobile
Bay.
Under the proposed
permit, Mobil would
transport and deposit
some 20,000 cubic yards
of waste plus 30,000
cubic yards of service
water and rainwater
runoff.
At a public hearing in
March, Alabama officials
did not oppose issuance
of the permit, but asked
that the site be moved
five miles to the south-
east. The State argued
that the original site can
best be used for fishing.
However, some others
testifying at the hearing
claimed the wastes would
contaminate fish and shell
fish, threaten human
health, and ruin the tourist
business.
The permit would re-
quire Mobii to conduct an
extensive environmental
sampling program in the
disposal area over an 18-
month period.
Swamp Cleanup
The Region 4 Environ-
mental Emergency Branch
is directing the cleanup of
a swampy area in Green-
ville, Ala., contaminated
with polychlorinated
biphenyl or PCB wastes.
The site, about 30
miles south of Montgom-
ery, is on land adjacent
to a company which
repairs electrical trans-
formers and capacitors.
Initial emergency actions
taken earlier this year
include construction of a
containment dike to keep
contaminated material
away from a nearby
stream.
Toxics Grants
Three States in Region 5
received three EPA grants
totaling $1.2 million made
recently by the Agency to
study the effects on
human health and the
environment of toxic
chemicals, and to set up
information systems to
monitor these effects. The
grants to Illinois, Michi-
gan, and Ohio were made
under provisions of the
Toxic Substances Control
Act to develop such State
research programs.
The Illinois Department
of Public Health was
awarded $475,626 to
develop a Statewide com-
munications and informa-
tion network to detect
sickness and death
caused by human expo-
sure to toxic substances.
Ohio EPA will use its
$180,512 to inspect
plants using acrylonitrile,
a chemical used in making
plastics, for a possible
link between cancer and
exposure to this
substance.
And a $532,250 grant
to the Michigan Depart-
ment of Natural Re-
sources will be used to
develop an interdepart-
mental risk assessment
program and to increase
occupational and
products monitoring.
24
EPAJOURNAL
-------
Poster Contest
The Region's second
annual poster contest has
been expanded this year
to include all third grade
students in Dallas county
schools. Doubling in size,
this year's contest includ-
ed 12 school districts
with almost 20,000
students participating in
the contest.
The winning poster
from each school was
judged in mid-April and a
special awards ceremony,
naming the first, second,
and third place winners,
was held on Earth Day—
April 22. A leading envi-
ronmentalist, investiga-
tive reporter, and art critic
selected the winning
posters.
Last year's contest had
the theme, "Environment
Has An I—How Can
I Help," and this year,
the students let their
imaginations lead them in
creating environmental
theme posters. The win-
ning poster from last year
was featured in a special
Dallas Morning News
story, selected for a tenth
anniversary poster, and
featured on the back
cover of the tenth anni-
versary issue of the EPA
Journal.
Hazardous Waste
Four Kansas City area
firms and an individual
have been charged with
endangering public health
and the environment by
maintaining a hazardous
waste storage area in
Kansas City, Mo.
Named as defendants
are Kansas City Coatings,
Inc., which operates a
plant in Lenexa, Kan.;
James C. Reed, an inde-
pendent hauler from
Kansas City, Mo.; the
Kansas City Terminal
Railway, Inc., Kansas
City, Mo.; Jasper Land
and Improvement Co., a
subsidiary of the railroad;
and the Black Economic
Union of Kansas City, Mo.
In a complaint filed in
U.S. District Court, Kan-
sas City, Mo., the Federal
government asked for an
injunction to compel the
defendants to secure the
site immediately, recon-
tainerize deteriorating
drums and pails of waste,
remove them from the
property, post a bond to
pay for the entire cleanup
effort, and reimburse EPA
for its investigation and
other expenses.
Smelter
Preliminary findings and
conclusions of an inves-
tigation released recently
by EPA Region 8 indicate
that the closure of
Anaconda Copper Com-
pany's Montana Smelter
was not due solely to the
cost of meeting Federal
air pollution control and
occupational health
requirements.
Regional Administrator
Roger Williams said,
"Anaconda's estimated
cost of $400 million for
complying with Federal
environmental and health
standards is misleading
and cannot be
substantiated."
Continuing, he said,
"The smelter was a mar-
ginal operation. Its his-
torically low profitability
can be traced to high op-
erating costs associated
with an energy-intensive
smelting process, the
processing of low grade
mineral concentrates,
cost of needed process
modernization, cost of
environmental and health
controls, high mining
costs, under-utilization of
smelter capacity, lack of
profitable markets for by-
product sulfuric acid, and
competition from foreign
producers."
Water Reuse
In Orange and Los
Angeles Counties a water
reuse study by major
water and wastewater
agencies serving the area
has found that it would be
feasible to reuse up to
148,000 acre-feet of
water per year by the year
2000. An acre-foot is
enough water to meet the
needs of a family of five
for one year. The reused
water would not be used
for domestic water sup-
plies, but could be used
for landscape irrigation,
industrial use, and ground
water recharge.
The study was begun in
1978 to investigate reuse
potentials for the highly
treated wastewater now
being produced and that
expected by the year
2,000. The study covered
health effects, preliminary
engineering, market and
project feasibility, and the
economic, financial and
institutional basis for
large scale water reuse.
The staff conducting
the study also developed
five financing options
ranging from complete
regional financing to State
financing as part of the
State Water Project.
Toxics Sampling
Within a week after receiv-
ing laboratory confirma-
tion that heavy metals and
a variety of organic chem-
icals had been found at
an inactive disposal site
in the rural suburbs of
Seattle, Region 10 dis-
patched a sampling team
to the vicinity to collect
samples from five drink-
ing water wells used by
nearby residents.
Even though most of
the materials in the dispo-
sal ponds appear on one
or more of EPA's lists of
toxic or other hazardous
chemicals, they may not
pose any other danger as
long as they have not mi-
grated into surface waters
or groundwater. Region
10's first step to check on
the migration of the chem-
icals was to check for
contaminants in the five
drinking water wells, the
nearest of which was
about a quarter mile from
the ponds.
So far, the only imme-
diately known danger
appears to have been to
any person who came in
direct contact with the
sludges and liquids in the
ponds. For that reason.
EPA took the precaution
of instructing the property
owner to keep trespassers
from the immediate area,
refuse to accept any addi-
tional wastes, and-—until
further notice—not to
disturb the wastes already
there. D
States Served by EPA Regions
Region 1 (Boston)
Connecticut, Maine.
Massachusetts, New
Hampshire. Rhode Island.
Vermont
617-223-7210
Region 2 (New York
City)
New Jersey, New York.
Puerto Rico, Virgin
Islands
212264-2525
Region 3
(Philadelphia)
Delaware. Maryland,
Pennsylvania, Virginia.
West Virginia. District of
Columbia
215-597-9814
Region 4 (Atlanta)
Alabama, Georgia
Florida. Mississippi.
North Carolina, South
Carolina. Tennessee.
Kentucky
404-881-4727
Region 5 (Chicago)
Illinois, Indiana, Ohio.
Michigan. Wisconsin.
Minnesota
312-353-2000
Region 6 (Dallas)
Arkansas. Louisiana.
Oklahoma. Texas, New
Mexico
214-767-2600
Region 7 (Kansas
City)
Iowa, Kansas, Missouri,
Nebraska
816-374-5493
Region 8 (Denver)
Colorado. Utah.
Wyoming, Montana,
North Dakota, South
Dakota
303-837-3895
Region 9 (San
Francisco)
Ari/ona, California.
Nevada, Hawaii
415-5562320
Region 10 (Seattle)
Alaska, Idaho. Oregon,
Washington
206-442-1220
MAY 1981
25
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5 5
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~
-t.
- *»
V
26
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Rivers
Wild and
Pure:
A Priceless
Legacy
Adapted from an article by Robert E. Doyle
Vice Chairman of the Board, National
Geographic Society, in the July 1977, issue
of National Geographic.
"The river called. The call
is the thundering rumble
of distant rapids, the in-
timate roar of white
water... a primeval
summons to primordial
values."
John J. Craighead, "Naturalist"magazine.
Autumn J 965
Big South Fork National River and Recre-
ation Area, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Clear and pure they ran, out of the hills
and mountains of a new world toward
the sea. And men driven by vision, by lust
for wealth, or by religious conviction fol-
lowed the shining pathways—the St. Law-
rence, the Penobscot, the Connecticut, the
Hudson, the Potomac, the James, the
Savannah, the Mississippi.
Always it was the river that beckoned
onward through the deep and shadowed
forest, toward the mountain pass, and later
across the plains—the Missouri, the Platte,
the Arkansas, the Snake, the Columbia, the
Colorado.
These were living streams, sometimes
raging with destructive floods, sometimes
blocked by treacherous rapids, sometimes
so shallowed that Meriwether Lewis's party
in 1803 "walked almost as much ... on
the Ohio's bed as they had floated on its
bosom."
If they represented difficulty and danger,
the grand, clean rivers of what would be-
come the United States were also highways
to a destiny considered manifest. Flatboats
carried settlers from old Fort Duquesne,
later Pittsburgh, to Cairo on the Mississippi
in twenty days. Of the Missouri—Old
Misery—it was said that it "follows you
around like a pet dog with a dynamite
cracker tied to his tail." But it also opened
the way to the great northern plains and
beyond.
The rivers also offered the priceless
gifts of economical power and water. The
first dam for a water-powered grinding
mill was built in Milton, Massachusetts, in
1634. By the 19th century the old mill-
stream had become a part of every New
England town.
Since that time there has been a con-
tinuous development of our rivers as a
matter of public policy—to aid navigation,
generate power, control floods, provide
fishing and recreation, irrigate fields, and
provide water for growing cities and
industries.
Old Misery now is contained by seven
major dams, and we would pay a terrible
price in some years if it were not. And we
would expect a great working river like the
Ohio to feel the constraints of 21 naviga-
tional locks. Most of our other major rivers
have also been altered and manipulated to
various degrees. In short, there are prob-
ably few of them left across the entire
country that flow pure and free from head
to mouth.
Today, writes John M. Kauffmann, an
author who knows and loves rivers, "Much
of the damming and industrialization of
riverine beauty in the East is already an
accomplished fact." And ecologist Kenneth
W. Cummins adds, "due to the activities of
engineers in concert with power companies
and agronomists, most of the large . . .
American rivers are now only a series of
impoundments. . , ."
As with so many other resources, we
have taken our rivers for granted. No one,
no Federal agency, has made an overall
assessment of the free-flowing rivers that
are left. Statistics are seldom comprehen-
sive, and river conservation is usually a
defensive campaign.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
which has been in the dam-building busi-
ness for more than half a century, says
that about 63,000 dams restrain U.S.
rivers. But they also estimate that as many
as 4,500 sites have the physical potential
to be dammed for hydroelectric power
generation, although economic and other
factors may eliminate some of these.
The U.S. Geological Survey has other
figures—on the discharge of rivers and on
their water quality. But much information
on the Nation's rivers is widely spread
among agencies.
In 1968, in the spirit of a new awareness
that some of our beautiful rivers should be
preserved, Congress passed the Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act. The legislation finally
provided the incentive and the money to
begin.
Eight rivers were immediately selected.
They all seemed to qualify under the Act's
terms as rivers that "with their immediate
environments, possess outstandingly re-
markable scenic, recreational, geologic,
fish and wildlife, historic, cultural, or other
similar values. . . ."The Act named 27 other
rivers as candidates and set a ten-year
limit to determine if they qualified. With
subsequent amendments and additions
the National System now has 61 river seg-
ments (50 Federal and 11 State) and 88
rivers designated to be studied for possible
inclusion.
Under theAct,rivers or sections of
rivers are classified as either (1) Wild—
unpolluted, undammed, with primitive
surroundings, accessible only by trails; (2)
Scenic—undammed, with shoreline largely
undeveloped, accessible by road; or (3)
Recreational—readily accessible, with
some development and preexisting dams
allowed.
There seems to be general public ac-
ceptanceof the need to keep some of our
rivers undeveloped, but compromise often
seems impossible. After a disastrous flood,
the cry for dams goes up—and conserva-
tion takes the rumble seat. In the middle of
a drought, we often hear earnest entreaties
for impoundment.
And although conservationists point out
that the majority of economic hydroelectric
power sites are already dammed, today's
energy crunch provides incentives to de-
velop more. Hydroelectricity now provides
only 1 2.9 percent of the Nation's electric
power generation.
MAY 1981
27
-------
"Rivers have what man
most respects and longs
for in his own life and *
thought—a capacity for
renewal and replenish-
ment, continual energy,
creativity, cleansing/
John M. Kauflmann. "Flow East"
Though spiritual, recreational and eco-
nomic needs continue to conflict, there
seems little question that most people in
the United States still regard their rivers
as an ever flowing resource.
Yet even the picture of water use in 1970
is quite enough to give us pause. Our
streams provide 67 percent of all the water
used by the population. In 1970 the num-
ber of gallonsfunneled through the Na-
tion's water pipes, turbines, and irrigation
systems was 3.1 7 trillion gallons a day, or
eight times the average daily flow of the
Mississippi River. That huge volume in-
cluded 1,800 gallons daily for every person
in the country. The average home used a
hundred gallons a day per person. Total
water consumption in the country is ex-
pected to increase 220 percent by the
year 2000.
As water use rises and our rivers are
pressured by an energy-hungry Nation, the
inevitable decisions will have to be made,
case by case. At what price do we exploit
our rivers? What will be left for others?
The National Wild and Scenic Rivers
System can make a difference. Dams and
dredging will be prohibited on protected
rivers, development curtailed, water qual-
ity assured.
In time this river system will preserve
portions of our geography and our history,
and, in a way, indicate our character as a
people. From Maine's Allagash to North
Carolina's New, from Wisconsin's Wolf to
California's Feather, from Idaho's Salmon
to the upper Rio Grande in New Mexico,
the Nation is assembling living portraits of
the beauty of our streams.
The needs of our people have been great
indeed, and the rate of river use for naviga-
tion, irrigation, and industry has paralleled
the remarkable growth of our economy. Yet
one remembers the lament of Washington
Irving more than a century ago: "The
march of mechanical invention is driving
every thing poetical before it."
There are rivers running clean and frse,
as of old, and others that offer a respite to
the modern soul. In places, that purest
poetry of nature, the chiming of a mountain
stream, may still be heard. There are dark-
shadowed rivers that evoke our past. Surely
this is a legacy we will have the wisdom to
preserve for generations to come. D
Obed Wild and Scenic River in Tennessee.
EPAJOURNAL
-------
Update
A review of recent major
EPA activities and devei-
opments in the pollution
control program areas.
AIR
Rules Change
The EPA recently pro-
posed an important
change in its national air
pollution regulations that
will do much to ease the
regulatory burden on
industries. This change,
dealing with how EPA
defines a pollution source,
will sharply cut the red
tape binding new indus-
trial development while
continuing to protect
public health against air
pollution, said EPAActing
Administrator Walter C.
Barber.
Though the change
applies to all types of
industry nationwide, Cali-
fornia offers one example
of the benefits this change
could bring.
In much of California,
substantial modifications
of petrol-eum refinery
facilities are prohibited
under the current EPA
rule defining pollution
sources—with serious
consequences for the
State and the country. A
study conducted last year
by the Governor's office
concluded that California
could probably achieve
energy self-sufficiency in
the 1980's provided that
over a billion dollars in
modifications of Cali-
fornia refineries could be
made in the next few
years.
In addition, this pro-
posed change will allow
two General Motors as-
sembly plants, in Van
Nuysand Southgate,
Calif., to retool. This, in
turn, will allow them to
build smaller cars and
also reduce emission
rates at both plants.
Bubble
EPA has approved an air
pollution control program
in New Jersey that will
eliminate time-consuming
and duplJcative Federal
review of many industrial
"bubble" projects. The
bubble policy is an im-
portant regulatory reform
initiative which allows
pollution sources the
flexibility to meet Clean
Air Act requirements in
more cost-effective ways.
Specifically, final hy-
drocarbon bubble ap-
proval has been put into
State hands, and the re-
quirement for explicit
Federal approval of each
bubble of this nature
eliminated. Hydrocarbon
emissions are a prime in-
gredient in the formation
of smog. Major sources
of this pollutant include
petroleum refineries and
chemical plants.
More than 20 bubble
applications have already
been submitted to New
Jersey for early review
under these streamlined
procedures, and officials
there are predicting that
this change will result in
over 100 bubbles this
year in that State alone.
ENFORCEMENT
Suit Filed
The EPA recently filed an
administrative complaint
seeking $422,000 from
the Ethyl Corporation for
violations of the Agency's
unleaded fuel regulations.
The complaint was issued
under provisions of the
Clean Air Act.
The Agency alleges
that 1 5 company-owned
vehicles which require
unleaded fuel were
serviced with leaded
gasoline from company
pumps at the firm's Baton
Rouge, La., facility on at
least 60 occasions prior
to May 1980. The
Agency also alleged that
the company-owned
pumps were not properly
labeled and did not have
the proper warning signs.
Ethyl is a manufacturer
of tetraethyi lead which
is used in leaded gaso-
line. The corporation may
request a formal hearing
to protest Agency charges.
HAZARDOUS
WASTE
States
EPA recently announced
that 1 6 States have been
authorized to manage
Federally-approved haz-
ardous waste programs in
their jurisdictions.
The States are Ala-
bama, Arkansas, Dela-
ware, Georgia, Iowa,
Louisiana, Massachusetts,
Mississippi, Montana,
North Carolina, North
Dakota, Oklahoma, South
Carolina, Texas, Utah,
and Vermont.
To qualify to manage
its own hazardous waste
program, each State must
develop a program sub-
stantially equivalent to
Federal requirements.
EPA will operate the
Federal hazardous waste
control program in those
States that do not apply
for authorization or are
not authorized to operate
their own programs.
Agreement
EPA announced recently
that a settlement agree-
ment had been reached
between Occidental
Chemical Company, the
Federal Government and
the State of California
requiring Occidental to
clean up any contamina-
tion of the soils or ground-
water due to the operation
of its Lathrop, Calif.,
pesticide and fertilizer
production plant. Under
the agreement. Occiden-
tal Chemical is also
required to eliminate
future threats to the Lath-
rop County drinking water
supply.
The agreement was
reached after more than a
year of negotiations
between the parties. The
company is a wholly
owned subsidiary of
Hooker Chemical Cor-
poration and Occidental
Petroleum Corporation.
Under the agreement,
which has been submitted
for court approval. Occi-
dental will undertake a
comprehensive monitor-
ing and remedial program
at its Lathrop facility to
contain and clean-up the
wastes. So far, the com-
pany has spent more than
$4 million responding to
the problem.
PESTICIDES
Voluntary Ban
A voluntary ban on all
uses of the soil fumigant
dibromochloropropane or
DBCP, except for treat-
ment of Hawaiian pine-
apple fields, has been
approved by the EPA.
EPA said the manufac-
turers of the pesticide,
which is used against
ground worms called
nematodes, have volun-
tarily agreed to the perma-
nent ban, thus avoiding
lengthy and costly hear-
ings on the subject. The
agreement was signed by
the EPA, Amvac Chemical
Corp. of California, the
Gowan Co. of Arizona,
and the Pineapple Grow-
ers Association of Hawaii.
Government action
against DBCP began
more than three years ago
after it was discovered to
cause adverse health
effects among male
workers producing it in
California and elsewhere.
There have been a limited
number of incidents of
DBCP groundwater con-
tamination in Hawaii but
they do not, in the
Agency's view, represent
a significant health risk.
The new agreement
extends and tightens
restrictions now in effect
to require pineapple
workers to take such pre-
cautions as wearing
protective clothing while
handling DBCP and to
assure that pineapple
worker exposure is not
greater than that per-
mitted for manufacturing
workers.
WATER
Highway Permit
EPA recently informed
the Army Corps of Engi-
neers that the Agency will
not request another re-
view by the Assistant
Secretary of the Army on
the Corps' permit for the
Westway highway project
located in New York City.
The pending Corps of
Engineers decision is
whether a dredge or fill
material permit should be
issued under Section 404
and Section 10 of the
Rivers and Harbors Act
of 1899.
EPA continues to have
reservations about the
Westway project, specifi-
cally regarding air pollu-
tion, transportation policy
and possible community
impacts. However, these
controversial issues lie
outside the domain of
Section 404 guidelines.
Those guidelines limit
EPA reviews to water
supply, water quality,
recreation and fish and
wildlife concerns.
The State of New York
has been studying the
replacement of the old
West Side Highway since
1956. The currently pro-
posed project calls for
constructing an interstate
route connection between
the Brooklyn Battery and
Lincoln Tunnels, and
utilizing about 10 million
cubic yards of fill
material to create 234
acres of new land from
existing shallow water to
be used for the highway,
new commercial develop-
ment and a waterfront
park.D
MAY 1981
29
-------
• fisherman in the Connecticut River.
K
X
/f
Id
EPAJOURNAL
-------
-•
Recreational
Fishing
By Jack Lorenz
*v ngiers are happy people. They are also
f-\ the heart and soul of the American
conservation movement and have been for
more than a half century. They have im-
mense impact on the U.S. economy. And
they are slightly wacko.
It is in springtime that fishing best dem-
onstrates its magical power to transform
the human spirit. As the days get longer
and the weather warms, nearly 60,000,000
Americans begin to emerge from steel
mills, fast food kitchens, 18-wheeler cabs,
government cubicles, parish rectories and
corporate board rooms. All have shared the
same winter-long dream of tangling with
the largest, wiliest and most uncatchable
fish that swims.
When men and women and their sons
and daughters head for their favorite fish-
ing hot spots, the socio-economic and
cultural baggage that separates them in the
bleak days of winter falls by the wayside.
The road to the hidden lake with the poten-
tial world record size iargemouth bass is
the same for the penthouse-ensconced
executive as it is for the coal miner who
spends his days 100 feet underground.
Three piece suits and dingy levis are ex-
changed for the same brands of funny-
looking hats, multi-pocketed flyfishing
vests and chest high waders. Since the
thrill of catching a spirited game fish is so
easily shared by all, angling produces a
bond that is both strong and lasting. That
same welding influence first powered the
American conservation movement, creating
a rich history of achievement and much
hope for the future.
It was on a cold January day in Chicago
in 1922 that fishermen first showed their
collective power as a force for environ-
mental quality in America.
Fed up with the rampant exploitation of
America's natural resources and the grow-
ing pollution of the Nation's waters, 54
anglers from all walks of life gathered
together to build a better outdoor America
through citizen action. Called together by
noted outdoorsman Will H. Dilg, this small
group of evangelistic anglers called them-
selves the Izaak Walton League of America
in honor of the memory of the man they
regarded to be the true patron saint of
fishermen. Soon traveling far and wide to
spread the conservation gospel, they rallied
a Nation to their cause. The spirit of this
new breed of conservationist is embodied
in the front page editorial in the first edition
of the Izaak Walton League's magazine in
1922. In that statement of purpose, Emer-
son Hough, one of the organization's
founders, said:
"Spirit of the Great Angler: all spirits of
patriots and gentle men, look down upon us
and have pity upon us! We are weak. Give
us of your calm and serene strength, your
eternal youth, your cleanliness of soul,
your lofty aristocracy of thought. Help us
set aside material motives. Help us work
out the great miracle, in a land now almost
beyond the aid even of miracle.
When one unclean hand touches the man-
agement of this experiment, then it fails.
When one commercialized motive comes
into its thoughts, then it fails. When it
becomes the organ of any man's vanity, the
tool of any man's selfishness, then it fails.
At the suspicion of any one of those things,
at least one name will never again appear
on any of its pages. I willingly lend it here
after fifty years of love and labor in and for
outdoor America—fruitless labor, myself
no better than the next—none the less with
an undiminished love for this America of
ours, and a hope not yet wholly faltering
that the needed miracle EVEN YET MAY
COME."
In the very next issue, famed outdoor
writer Zane Grey, who was soon to join the
League's staff, showed that he had been
baptized and he added his own fire-breath-
ing challenge in another front page editorial
statement he titled "Vanishing America":
"My one hope for conservation of Ameri-
can forests and waters is to plant into every
American father these queries. Do you want
to preserve something of America for your
son? Do you want him to inherit something
of the love of outdoors that made our pio-
neers such great men? Do you want him to
be manly, strong, truthful, and brave?
MAY 1981
-------
Do you want him to be healthy? Do you
want him, when he grows to manhood, to
scorn his father and his Nation for per-
mitting the wanton destruction of our
forests and the depletion of our waters?
In this materialistic day it is almost impos-
sible to get the ear of any man. With all
men it is the selfish zest of the battle of life.
But men do love their sons, and through
them perhaps can be reached before it is
too late. The mighty and unquenchable
spirit of a million fathers could accomplish
much."
Those two statements brought thousands
of converts to the League and within a year
the exploding young organization had
blitzed Capitol Hill and established the
400-mile-long Upper Missiis&ippi Wildlife
and Fish Refuge as its first project to
preserve the best of the country's fishing
waters. It was only a sample of the angler's
power to bring about positive change.
By 1927, the Izaak Walton League was
a truly awesome force with nearly 300,000
members across the country in 2,750 local
chapters. Grass roots conservation action
was in its heyday. In that same year the
League drove a bill through Congress to
take the black bass—America's most popu-
lar game fish—out of interstate commerce;
was selected by President Calvin Coolidge
to conduct the Nation's first water pollution
survey, and spawned the Outdoor Writers
Association of America, another formi-
dable force for resource conservation.
Anglers of the 1920's were joined in
succeeding decades by other fishermen
who banded together to protect water qual-
ity and aggressively pursued a course of
wise use of America's natural resources.
in the intervening years, groups like the
Federation of Fly Fishermen, Trout
Unlimited, Bass Anglers Sportsmen
Society, the American League of Anglers
and myriad other groups have come on
stream to protect the quaMty of the total
environment as weM as the Nation's wild
living aquatic resources. Angler power
continues to grow and today dozens of
fishing groups have united to expand the
Federal Aid to Fish Restoration Act, better
-------
EPA, U.S. Steel
Reach Agreement
EPA and Phelps
Dodge Reach
Accord
The EPA and U.S. Steel have reached agreement on cleaning up air
pollution at the company's plant in Fairless Hills, Pa., outside
Philadelphia, EPA Acting Administrator Walter C. Barber announced
recently. As a result, U.S. Steel will install over $40 million
in pollution control equipment that will enable it to meet air
quality standards while still providing sizable cost savings for
the company over the estimated cost at the start of negotiations.
A major part of the settlement involves the application of EPA's
nationwide bubble policy, which permits companies to specify
control for individual sources of pollution as long as the overall
facility emissions meet State air quality emission standards. The
bubble proposals are awaiting final approval as revisions to the
Pennsylvania air quality plan. Over $17 million in capital cost
savings could result from applying the bubble policy at the Fairless
Hills coke plant. The agreement has been lodged with the U.S.
District Court in Philadelphia.
The EPA and Phelps Dodge Corporation recently announced an agreement
affecting two of the company's copper smelters in Arizona. Under
a "consent decree" signed by EPA and the company, innovative tech-
niques will be used to modify the existing process equipment and
control emissions of sulfur dioxide gas and particulate matter
into the air from copper smelters in Morenci and Ajo, Ariz. The
agreement, filed in the U.S. District Court in Tucson, Ariz., caps
14 months of discussions by resolving such issues as the extent of
emission reductions to be achieved and the timing of cleanup.
Under the decree, Phelps Dodge will bring the Morenci smelter
into compliance with air pollution standards by January 1, 1985;
the Ajo smelter will be brought into compliance by December 31
of that year.
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MAY 1981
33
-------
National
Forest
Trails—
New
Frontiers
By R. Max Peterson
Chief, U.S. Forest Service
EPAJOURNAL
-------
When Daniel Boons explored Indian
footpaths in the Kentucky woods
during the 1 760's, he kept his long rifle
handy. Deer and turkey were plentiful. The
Shawnee Indians captured Boone several
times but once adopted him into the tribe
as "Sheltowee"—Big Turtle. Today in that
territory, you can hike the Sheltowee Trace,
a trail running through the Daniel Boone
National Forest, much more safely than
Boone did. This 254-mile-long trail winds
its way past lakes, waterfalls, wild and
scenic rivers, the spectacular cliffs of the
Red River Gorge, a Pioneer Weapons Hunt-
ing Area, an historic iron-making site, and
a Civil War battlefield. Designated as a
national recreation trail, the Sheltowee
Trace forms just a small part of a 98,000-
mile system of various kinds of trails in
the national forests. About 7,500 miles of
them are part of the National Trails System.
The Forest Service is proud of the exten-
sive trail system it maintains—a system
that represents 85 percent of the trails on
all public lands and 30 percent of the trails
in the entire Nation.
The history of many of these trails and
the history of America are inseparable. The
explorers and the frontiersmen like Boone
who followed Indian paths through the
forests, the voyageurs guiding their canoes
through the network of northern lakes on
the fur trade route, the streams of pioneers
following wagon ruts over endless miles of
prairie and mountain to the "Promised
Land," the cowboys on cattle-drives, and
many others in our history all have
depended on trails.
Evolving from foot trails in the wilder-
ness, some trails eventually became major
routes for transporting goods and services
necessary to the growth and development
of the nation. Today trails have changed in
character and purpose. The evolution in the
need for trails is evident in the history of
national forests, where trails were devel-
oped from the early days as part of the
primary transportation network. The first
trails were designed to move people, equip-
ment, and pack animals quickly for fire-
fighting and administrative activities.
Throughout the seventy-five-year history
of the Forest Service, trails have continued
to play an important management role. But
in recent years, as more and more Ameri-
cans have turned to outdoor activities, trails
have become increasingly important as
a recreation resource.
In fact, each year people spend more
days visiting the National Forest System
than any other Federal lands. With good
reason. Within the 187-million-acre Na-
tional Forest System are opportunities for
every imaginable kind of outdoor recreation
Trail riding in the Sa/it
in New Mexico.
MAY 1981
-------
—from swimming to skiing, from rock
climbing to rock hounding, and the gamut
of activities in between. Where these op-
portunities occur away from developed
sites and highways, access is provided by
trails.
There are bike trails and horse trails,
trails for snowmobiles, and trails for cross-
country skiiers. There are interpretive
nature trails, including those that can be
enjoyed by the blind and other handi-
capped. Some foot trails can be hiked for
the simple pleasure of a day's outing, others
for the challenge and solitude of a
wilderness vacation.
The importance of trails to the recrea-
tional needs of millions of Americans was
affirmed in the "1980 Report to Congress
on the Nation's Renewable Resources."
The program for Forest Service activities in
this document sets a goal of 120,000 miles
of trails in the forest system by 2020.
Three years ago, then-Chief of the Forest
Service John R. McGuire initiated a pro-
gram to emphasize our commitment to
provide recreation trail opportunities. This
initiative provided for trail development,
land acquisition along trail corridors, and
planning in cooperation with other agen-
cies and organizations.
One of these goals was the ctesignation
of two national recreation trails in each
national forest unit by January 1, 1980—
for a total of 244 trails. The Forest Service
enthusiastically met this goal and, in fact,
exceeded it. Now we are continuing to add
more recreation trails to that total—at this
writing there are 300 with more to come.
These trails are part of the National Trails
Systems.
Like other national recreation trails,
those in national forests provide a variety
of outdoor recreation uses within urban
areas or in places reasonably accessible
to them.
Besides the Trace, other recreation trails
that follow historic paths include the Flume
Trail in South Dakota, which traverses the
original route of a mining flume constructed
in 1880 on what is now the Black Hills
National Forest. Traces of the goldminers'
original structures still remain along the
trail. In the Southwest, the Fort Bayard
Sawmill Wagon Road follows an early
transportation route to Fort Bayard, New
Mexico, constructed in 1864 on what is
now the Gila National Forest. Other na-
tional recreation trails, such as the Camp
Creek Trail on the San Bernardino National
Forest in California, provide users with a
sense of independence and closeness to
their natural heritage even though the trails
may be situated only a few miles from an
urban area.
In addition to these passages, the trails
through the national forests also include
national scer»ic and historic trails—other
components of the National Trail System.
In fact, all four scenic trails and all four
historic trails designated to date pass
through national forest lands.
The Forest Service has management re-
sponsibility for two national scenic trails—
which provide for the enjoyment of nation-
ally significant scenic, historic, natural, or
cultural qualities. These are the Pacific
Crest Trail in the West and the Continental
Divide Trail through the heart of the coun-
try. We cooperate with the National Park
Service in management of the other two
scenic tra-ils—the new North Country Trail
and the Appalachian Trail.
An advisory council was created in 1969
to guide the Forest Service in mangaging
and developing the Pacific Crest Trail,
which runs from the Mexico-California
border northward through the mountain
ranges of California, Oregon, and Wash-
ington. About 75 percent of the 2,572-mile
trail has been brought up to standard.
Rights-of-way are now being negotiated for
about 372 miles of the portion that is still
in private ownership. Moreover, a compre-
hensive management plan for the trail has
been started. A similar advisory council has
been formed for the Continental Divide
Trail, which will enable Americans to better
enjoy the spectacular scenery in proximity
to the Divide beginning at the Canadian
border in Glacier National Park, Montana,
and extending 3,100 miles to Mexico. We
have begun to determine the exact location
of the trail and to develop a comprehensive
management plan.
Although the Forest Service does not
manage the entire Appalachian Trail, about
840 of the trail's 2,000 miles pass through
national forests. When the trail was desig-
nated as a national scenic trail in 1968,
about 220 miles were on private land with-
in national forest boundaries. Since that
time, rights-of-way on all but 22 of these
miles have been secured and all but 83
miles of the entire Forest Service mileage
has been constructed or reconstructed to
standard. We are cooperating with the Park
Service to develop a comprehensive man-
agement plan.
We are also working with the Park
Service, Bureau of Land Management, and
State and local governments to begin to
develop management plans for the four
national historic trails—the Lewis and
Clark, Mormon, Oregon, and Iditarod.
As the Forest Service and other land
managing agencies endeavor to improve
our National Trails System, citizen groups
such as the National Parks and Conserva-
tion Association can provide an invaluable
source of assistance and encouragement
to us.
I recently had the pleasure of signing a
cooperative agreement between the Forest
Service and the Appalachian Trail Con-
ference. This document formalizes our
working relationship with this volunteer
group for planning, operating, and main-
taining the Appalachian Trail within na-
tional forests, and I hope it will serve to
encourage other volunteer groups to seek
active roles in trail development and main-
tenance. Such groups provide a voice for
the backpacker, hiker, equestrian, trail-
biker, Nordic skier, and members of other
trail constituencies at the same time that
they help us.
I believe that volunteer efforts will con-
tinue to expand as trail users realize that
the channels are open and as land man-
agers recognize the substantial benefits of
active public participation.
This participation will be a key factor in
the future direction of our recreation pol-
icies. In fact, public involvement already
plays a strong role in current national forest
planning processes that guide each forest's
future programs in recreation, timber,
range, wildlife, and all other activities.
In order to meet the demands of today's
and tomorrow's trail users, land managers
and users must increase their cooperation
to ensure development of programs that
preserve the integrity of the environment
and that recognize the constraints placed
upon an energy-conscious society. For ex-
ample, we will be looking for trail develop-
ment opportunities where access to the
trails can be provided by public transporta-
tion. I look forward to working with al! trail
users in meeting these challenges and I
hope our combined efforts will provide
even better service to the public.
The same pathways that link us to our
Nation's history promise to be new frontiers
of adventure for millions of Americans. Q
Reprinted by permission from National
Parks & Conservation Magazine, October
1980. Copyright© 1980 by National Parks
& Conservation Association. (Now
National Parks]
36
EPAJOURNAL
-------
Wilderness
From A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold. Copyright
1949, renewed 1977, by Oxford University Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission.
Wilderness is the raw material out of
which man has hammered the artifact
called civilization.
Wilderness was never a homogeneous
raw material. It was very diverse, and the
resulting artifacts are very diverse. These
differences in the end-product are known
as cultures. The rich diversity of the
world's cultures reflects a corresponding
diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.
For the first time in the history of the
human species, two changes are now im-
pending. One is the exhaust ion of wilder-
ness in the more habitable portions of the
globe. The other is the worldwide hybridi-
zation of cultures through modern transport
and industrialization. Neither can be pre-
vented and perhaps should not be, but the
question arises whether by some slight
amelioration of the impending changes,
certain values can be preserved that would
otherwise be lost.
To the laborer in the sweat of his labor,
the raw stuff on his anvil is an adversary to
be conquered. So was wilderness an ad-
versary to the pioneer.
But to the laborer in repose, able for the
moment to cast a philosophical eye on his
world, that same raw stuff is something to
be loved and cherished, because it gives
definition and meaning to his life. This is a
plea for the preservation of some tag-ends
of wilderness, as museum pieces, for the
edification of those who may one day wish
to see, feel, or study the origins of their
cultural inheritance.
The Remnants
Many of the diverse wildernesses out of
which we have hammered America are
already gone; hence in any practical pro-
gram the unit areas to be preserved must
vary greatly in size and in degree of
wildness.
No living man will see again the long-
grass prairie, where a sea of prairie flowers
lapped at the stirrups of the pioneer. We
shall do well to find a forty here and there
on which the prairie plants can be kept
alive as species. There were a hundred
such plants, many of exceptiona I beauty.
Most of them are quite unknown to those
who have inherited their domain.
But the short-grass prairie, where Cabeza
de Vaca saw the horizon under the bellies
of the buffalo, is still extant in a few spots
of 10,000-acre size, albeit severely chewed
up by sheep, cattle, and dry-farmers. If the
Forty-Niners are worth commemorating on
Sawtooth National Primitive Area in
Idaho.
the walls of State capitols, is notthe scene
of their mighty hegira worth commemorat-
ing in several national prairie reservations?
Of the coastal prairie there is one block
in Florida, and one in Texas, but oil wells,
onion fields, and citrus groves are closing
in, armed to the teeth with drills and bull-
dozers. It is last call.
No living man will see again the virgin
pineries of the Lake States, or the flatwoods
of the coastal plain, or the giant hard-
woods; of these, samples of a few acres
each will have to suffice. But there are still
several blocks of maple-hemlock of thou-
sand-acre size; there are similar blocks of
Appalachian hardwoods, of southern hard-
wood swamp, of cypress swamp, and of
Adirondack spruce. Few of these tag-ends
are secure from prospective cuttings, and
fewer still from prospective tourist roads.
One of the fastest-shrinking categories
of wilderness is coastlines. Cottages and
tourist roads have all but annihilated wild
coasts on both oceans, and Lake Superior is
now losing the last large remnant of wild
shoreline on the Great Lakes. No single
kind of wilderness is more intimately inter-
woven with history, and none nearer the
point of complete disappearance.
In all of North America east of the
Rockies, there is only one large area for-
mally reserved as a wilderness: the
Quetico-Superior International Park in
Minnesota and Ontario. This magnificent
block of canoe-country, a mosaic of lakes
and rivers, lies mostly in Canada, and can
be about as large as Canada chooses to
make it, but its integrity is threatened by
two recent developments: the growth of
fishing resorts served by pontoon-equipped
airplanes, and a jurisdictional dispute
whether the Minnesota end of the area
shall be all National Forest, or partly State
Forest. The whole region is in danger of
power impoundments, and this regrettable
cleavage among proponents of wilderness
may end in giving power the whip-hand.
In the Rocky Mountain states, a score of
areas in the National Forests, varying in
size from a hundred thousand to half a
million acres, are withdrawn as wilderness,
and closed to roads, hotels, and other
inimical uses. In the National Parks the
same principle is recognized, but no spe-
cific boundaries are delimited. Collectively,
these Federal areas are the backbone of the
wilderness program, but they are not so
secure as the paper record might lead one
to believe. Local pressures for new tourist
roads knockoffa chiphereanda slab
there. There is perennial pressure for exten-
sion of roads for forest-fire control, and
these, by slow degrees, become public
highways. Idle CCC camps presented a
widespread temptation to build new and
often needless roads. Lumber shortages
during World War II gave the impetus of
military necessity to many road extensions,
legitimate and otherwise. At the present
moment, ski-tows and ski-hotels are being
promoted in many mountain areas, often
without regard to their prior designation as
wilderness.
One of the most insidious invasions of
wilderness is via predator control. It works
thus: wolves and lions are cleaned out of a
wilderness area in the interest of big-game
management. The big-game herds (usually
deer or e!k) then increase to the point of
overbrowsing the range. Hunters must then
be encouraged to harvest the surplus, but
modern hunters refuse to operate far from
a car; hence a road must be built to provide
access to the surplus game. Again and
again, wilderness areas have been split
by this process, but it still continues.
The Rocky Mountain system of wilder-
ness area covers a wide gamut of forest
types, from the juniper breaks of the South-
west to the 'illimitable woods where rolls
the Oregon.' It is lacking, however, in
desert areas, probably because of that
under-aged brand of esthetics which limits
the definition of 'scenery' to lakes and pine
trees.
MAY 198'
37
-------
In Canada and Alaska there are still large
expanses of virgin country
Where nameless men by nameless
rivers wander
and in strange valleys die strange
deaths alone.
A representative series of these areas
can, and should, be kept. Many are of
negligible or negative value for economic
use. It will be contended, of course, that no
deliberate planning to this end is neces-
sary; that adequate areas will survive any-
how. All recent history belies so comforting
an assumption. Even if wild spots do sur-
vive, what of their fauna ? The woodland
caribou, the several races of mountain
sheep, the pure form of woods buffalo, the
barren ground grizzly, the freshwater seals,
and the whales are even now threatened.
Of what use are wild areas destitute of
their distinctive faunas? The recently or-
ganized Arctic Institute has embarked on
the industrialization of the Arctic wastes,
with excellent chances of enough success
to ruin them as wilderness. It is last call,
even in the Far North.
To what extent Canada and Alaska will
be able to see and grasp their opportunities
is anybody's guess. Pioneers usually scoff
at any effort to perpetuate pioneering.
Wilderness for Recreation
Physical combat for the means of sub-
sistence was, for unnumbered centuries, an
economic fact. When it disappeared as
such, a sound instinct led us to preserve it
in the form of athletic sports and games.
Physical combat between men and
beasts was, in like manner, an economic
fact, now preserved as hunting and fishing
for sport.
Public wilderness areas are, first of all,
a means of perpetuating, in sport form, the
more virile and primitive skills in pioneer-
ing travel and subsistence.
Some of these skills are of generalized
distribution; the details have been adapted
to the American scene, but the skill is
worldwide. Hunting, fishing, and foot
travel by pack are examples.
Two of them, however, are as American
as a hickory tree; they have been copied
elsewhere, but they were developed to their
full perfection only on this continent. One
of these is canoe travel, and the other is
travel by pack-train. Both are shrinking
rapidly. Your Hudson Bay Indian now has a
put-put, and your mountaineer a Ford. If I
had to make a living by canoe or packhorse,
I should likely do likewise, for both are
grueling labor. But we who seek wilderness
travel for sport a re foiled when we are
forced to compete with mechanized sub-
stitutes. It is footless to execute a portage
to the tune of motor launches, or to turn out
your bell mare in the pasture of a summer
hotel. It is better to stay home.
Wilderness areas are first of all a series
of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wil-
derness travel, especially canoeing and
packing.
I suppose some will wish to debate
whether it is important to keep these primi-
tive arts alive. I shall not debate it. Either
you know it in your bones, or you are very,
very old.
European hunting and fishing are largely
devoid of the thing that wilderness areas
might be the means of preserving in this
country. Europeans do not camp, cook, or
do their own work in the woods if they can
avoid doing so. Work chores are delegated
to beaters and servants, and a hunt carries
the atmosphere of a picnic, rather than of
pioneering. The test of skill is confined
largeiy to the actual taking of game or fish.
There are those who decry wilderness
sports as 'undemocratic' because the recre-
ational carrying capacity of a wilderness is
small, as compared with a golf links or a
tourist camp. The basic error in such argu-
ment is that it applies the philosophy of
mass-production to what is intended to
counteract mass-production. The value of
recreation is not a matter of ciphers. Recre-
ation is valuable in proportion to the inten-
sity of its experiences, and to the degree to
which it differs from and contrasts with
workaday life. By these criteria, mech-
anized outings are at best a milk-and-water
affair.
Mechanized recreation already has
seized nine-tenths of the woods and moun-
tains; a decent respect for minorities
should dedicate the other tenth to
wilderness.
Wilderness for Science
The most important characteristic of an
organism is that capacity for internal self-
renewal known as health.
There are two organisms whose proc-
esses of self-renewal have been subjected
to human interference and control. One of
these is man himself (medicine and public
health). The other is land (agriculture and
conservation).
The effort to control the health of land
has not been very successful. It is now
generally understood thatwhen soil loses
fertility, or washes away faster than it
forms, and when water systems exhibit
abnormal floods and shortages, the land
is sick.
Other derangements are known as facts,
but are not yet thought of as symptoms of
land sickness. The disappearance of plants
and animal species without visible cause,
despite efforts to protect them, and the
irruption of others as pests despite efforts
to control them, must, in the absence of
simpler explanations, be regarded as
symptoms of sickness in the land organism.
Both are occurring too frequently to be
dismissed as normal evolutionary events.
The status of thought on these ailments
of the land is reflected in the fact that our
treatments for them are still prevailingly
local. Thus when a soil loses fertility we
pour on fertilizer, or at best alter its tame
flora and fauna, without considering the
fact that its wild flora and fauna, which
built the soil to begin with, may likewise be
important to its maintenance. It was re-
cently discovered, for example, that good
EPAJOURNAL
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Castle Peak in the White Cloud Mountains in Idaho.
tobacco crops depend, for some unknown
reason, on the preconditioning of the soil
by wild ragweed. It does not occur to us
that such unexpected chains of dependency
may have wide prevalence in nature.
When prairie dogs, ground squirrels, or
mice increase to pest levels we poison
them, but we do not look beyond the animal
to find the cause of the irruption. We as-
sume that animal troubles must have
anima! causes. The latest scientific evi-
dence points to derangements of the plant
community as the real seat of rodent irrup-
tions, but few explorations of this clue are
being made.
Many forest plantations are producing
one-log or two-log trees on soil which
originally grew three-log and four-log
trees. Why? Thinking foresters know that
the cause probably lies not in the tree, but
in the micro-flora of the soil, and that it may
take more years to restore the soil flora
than it took to destroy it.
Many conservation treatments are obvi-
ously superficial. Flood-control dams have
no relation to the cause of floods. Check
dams and terraces do not touch the cause
of erosion. Refuges and hatcheries to main-
tain the supply of game and fish do not ex-
plain why the supply fails to maintain itself.
In general, the trend of the evidence in-
dicates that in land, just as in the human
body, the symptoms may lie in one organ
and the cause in another. The practices we
now call conservation are, to a large extent,
local alleviations of biofic pain. They are
necessary, but they must not be confused
with cures. The art of land doctoring is
being practiced with vigor, but the science
of land health is yet to be born.
A science of land health needs, first of
all, a base datum of normality, a picture of
how healthy land maintains itself as an
organism.
We have two available norms. One is
found where land physiology remains
MAY 1981
39
-------
largely normal despite centuries of human
occupation. 1 know of only one such place:
northeastern Europe. !t is not likely that we
shall fail to study it.
The other and most perfect norm is wil-
derness. Paleontology offers abundant evi-
dence that wilderness maintained itself for
immensely long periods; that its com-
ponent species were rarely lost, neither did
they get out of hand; that weather and
water build soil as fast or faster than it was
cafried away. Wilderness, then, assumes
unexpected importance as a laboratory for
the study of land-health.
One cannot study the physiology of
Montana in the Amazon; each biotic prov-
ince needs its own wilderness for compara-
tive studies of used and unused land. It is
of course too late to salvage more than a
lopsided system of wilderness study areas,
and most of these remnants are far too
small to retain their normality in all re-
spects. Even the National Parks, which run
up to a million acres each in size, have not
been large enough to retain their natural
predators, or to exclude animal diseases
carried by livestock. Thus the Yellowstone
has lost its wolves and cougars, with the
result that elk are ruining the flora, particu-
larly on the winter range. At the same time
the grizzly bear and the mountain sheep are
shrinking, the latter by reason of disease.
While even the largest wilderness areas
become partially deranged, it required only
a few acres for J. E. Weaver to discover
why the prairie flora is more drought-
resistant than the agronomic flora which
has supplanted it. Weaver found that the
prairie species practice 'team work' under-
ground by distributing their root-systems
to cover all levels, whereas the species
comprising the agronomic rotation over-
draw one level and neglect another, thus
building up cumulative deficits. An im-
portant agronomic principle emerged from
Weaver's researches.
Again, it required only a few wild acres
for Togrediak to discover why pines on old
fields never achieve the size or wind-firm-
ness of pines on uncleared forest soils. In
the latter case, the roots follow old root
channels, and thus strike deeper.
In many cases we literally do not know
how good a performance to expect of
healthy land unless we have a wild area for
comparison with sick ones. Thus most of
the early travelers in the Southwest de-
scribe the mountain rivers as originally
clear, but a doubt remains, for they may,
by accident, have seen them at favorable
seasons. Erosion engineers had no base
datum until it was discovered that exactly
similar rivers in the Sierra Madre of
Chihuahua, never grazed or used for fear of
Indians, show at their worst a milky hue,
not too cloudy for a trout fly. Moss grows
to the water's edge on their banks. Most of
the corresponding rivers in Arizona and
New Mexico are ribbons of boulders, moss-
less, soil-less, and all but treeless. The
preservation and study of the Sierra Madre
wilderness, by an international experiment
station, as a norm for the cure of sick land
on both sides of the border, would be a
good-neighbor enterprise well worthy of
consideration.
In short all available wild areas, large or
small, are likely to have value as norms for
land science. Recreation is not their only,
or even their principal, utility.
Wilderness for Wildlife
The National Parks do not suffice as a
means of perpetuating the larger carni-
vores; witness the precarious status of the
grizzly bear, and the fact that the park sys-
tem is already wolfless. Neither do they
suffice for mountain sheep; most sheep
herds are shrinking.
The reasons for this are clear in some
cases and obscure in others. The parks are
certainly too small for such a far-ranging
species as the wolf. Many animal species,
for reasons unknown, do not seem to thrive
as detached islands of population.
The most feasible way to enlarge the
a-rea available for wilderness fauna is for
the wilder parts of the National Forests,
which usually surround the Parks, to func-
tion as parks in respect of threatened
species. That they have not so functioned
is tragically illustrated in the case of the
grizzly bear.
In 1909, when I first saw the West, there
were grizzlies in every major mountain
mass, but you could travel for months with-
out meeting a conservation officer. Today
there is some kind of conservation officer
'behind every bush,' yet as wildlife bureaus
grow, our most magnificent mammal re-
treats steadily toward the Canadian border.
Of the 6000 grizzlies officially reported as
remaining in areas owned by the United
States, 5000 are in Alaska. Only five States
have any at all. There seems to be a tacit
assumption that if grizzl'ies survive in
Canada and Alaska, that is good enough. It
is not good enough for me. The Alaskan
bears are a distinct species. Relegating
grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating
happiness to heaven; one may never get
there.
Saving the grizzly requires a series of
large areas from which roads and livestock
are excluded, or in which livestock damage
is compensated. Buying out scattered live-
stock ranches is the only way to create
such areas, but despite large authority to
buy and exchange lands, the conservation
bureaus have accomplished virtually noth-
ing toward this end. The Forest Service
has, I am told, established one grizzly
range in Montana, but I know of a mountain
range 'in Utah in which the Forest Service
actually promoted a sheep industry, de-
spite the fact that it harbored the sole
remnant of grizzlies in that State.
Permanent grizzly ranges and permanent
wilderness areas are, of course, two names
for one problem. Enthusiasm about either
requires a long view of conservation, and a
historical perspective. Only those able to
see the pageant of evolution can be ex-
pected to value its theater, the wilderness,
or its outstanding achievement, the grizzly.
But if education really educates, there will,
in time, be more and more citizens who
understand that relics of the old West add
meaning and value to the new. Youth yet
unborn will pole up the Missouri with Lewis
and Clark, or climb the Sierras with James
Capen Adams, and each generation in turn
will ask: Where-is the big white bear? It
will be a sorry answer to say he went under
while conservationists weren't looking.
Defenders of Wilderness
Wilderness is a resource which can shrink
but not grow. Invasions can be arrested or
modiified in a manner to keep an area usable
either for recreation, or for science, or for
wildlife, but the creation of new wilderness
in the full sense of the word is impossible.
It follows, then, that any wilderness pro-
gram is a rearguard action, through which
retreats are reduced to a minimum. The
Wilderness Society was organized in 1935
'for the one purpose of saving the wilder-
ness remnants in America.'
It does not suffice, however, to have such
a society. Unless there be wilderrvess-
m-inded men scattered through all the con-
servation bureaus, the Society may never
learn of new invasions until the time for
action has passed. Furthermore a militant
minority of wilderness-minded citizens
must be on watch throughout the Nation,
and available for action in a pinch.
In Europe, where wilderness has now
retreated to the Carpathians and Siberia,
every thinking conservationist bemoans its
loss. Even in Britain, which has less room
for land-luxuries than almost any other
civilized country, there is a vigorous if be-
lated movement for saving a few small
spots of semi-wild land.
Ability to see the cultural value of wil-
derness boils down, in the last analysis,
to a question of intellectual humility. The
shallow-minded modern who has lost his
rootage in the land assumes that he has
already discovered what is important; it is
such who prate of empires, political or
economnc, that will last a thousand years.
It is only the scholar who appreciates that
all history consists of successive excur-
sions from a single starting-point, to which
man returns again and again to organize yet
another search for a durable scale of
values. It is only the scholar who under-
stands why the raw wilderness gives
definition and meaning to the human
enterprise. D
40
EPAJOURNAL
-------
Dr. John W. Hernandez
Excerpts from
Hernandez Testimony:
At his confirmation hearing,
Dr. Hernandez, a former college
dean, told th-e committee that
"I come to the Agency with a
single personal goal: that the
Agency attain a national and
international reputation for
quality and excellence in its
development and use of science
technology in its decision-
making process."
Emphasizing the importance
of quality work in science, Dr.
Hernandez said that in general,
EPA's internal scientific and
technical competence is well
above average when compared
to other State and Federal
agencies and that "in some
areas, EPA scientists are among
the best in the country."
Noting that the need to act
under severe time constraints
has some times been detrimen-
tal to high quality research at
EPA, Dr. Hernandez emphasized
that "it is true that good science
makes good economics."
Dr. Hernandez, who was bom
and raised in New Mexico
where the town of Hernandez is
named after his ancestors, said
that "I started my public health
career 25 years ago when New
Mexico had only three or four
regulations to cover the vast
realm of environmental
management. . . ."
Noting that there has been a
great deal of progress made at
the State level during the
1970's, Dr. Hernandez said that
"returning primary responsibil-
ity for environmental regulation
to the States will result in more
responsive and efficient
government."
Dr. Hernandez, 51, was ap-
pointed a Professor of Civil
Engineering, New Mexico State
University in 1968.
He was Dean of the College
of Engineering at New Mexico
State University from 1975 to
1980. He was also Co-Director
of the Southwest Resource
Center for Science and Engi-
neering—1979 to 1980. He
was a Visitmg Professor of
Civil Engineering, Bogazici
University. Istanbul, Turkey,
1973-74.
His other educational posi-
tions included Research Pro-
fessor, Facultad de Ciencias y
Matematica, Universidad de
Chile, Santiago, March-Decem-
ber, 1970; Teaching Fellow,
Harvard University, 1964-65;
Associate Professor at New
Mexico State University, 1965-
68, and instructor, evening and
Saturday course in Surveying,
College of Santa Fe, 1959-61 .
His administrative experi-
ence includes service in the
U.S. Navy as a staff engineering
and materiel officer for a trans-
port division, Commanding
Officer for a construction bat-
talion unit, and Captain in the
Navy Civil Engineering Corps
Reserves. In positions with the
State of New Mexico he was
the engineer responsible for the
State water pollution control
program, 1957-62; an assistant
engineer in the New Mexico
Department of Game and Fish,
and an associate engineer in
the Office of State Engineer of
New Mexico. At New Mexico
State University he was Direc-
tor of the Environmental-Health
Engineering Program, 1966-70,
and Acting Co-Director, New
Mexico Environmental Insti-
tute, 1 971-73. He has served
as a consultant for the United
Nations, Resources for the
Future, and EPA.
Gorsuch Testimony
people to judge my perform-
ance accordingly.
"My implementation of these
objectives will include empha-
sis in the following initiatives.
"We must recognize that EPA
is affected today by economic,
energy and environmental con-
siderations largely unknown
when many of the laws were
passed. The public is no less
committed to environmental
protection, but increasingly
aware of the need to balance
all of these interests. EPA's
programs must reflect this
public awareness.
"We can and we must im-
prove the scientific and techni-
cal basis for the standards and
regulations developed. A policy
change to require peer review
earlier and more frequently in
the process could make a tre-
mendous difference. I feel for-
tunate to have an individual
like Dr. John Hernandez desig-
nated to be Deputy Adminis-
trator. He has the scientific
and technical expertise to
identify other improvements
that can be made.
"We shall restore the States
to their rightful place as part-
ners with the Federal govern-
ment in policymaking as well as
policy implementation. Rather
than asking States to effectively
enforce programs in which they
have had little meaningful in
put, we will open clear lines of
communication to the Gover-
nors, Legislatures and State
environmental agencies, so that
their concerns can be consid-
ered early in the regulatory
process. My experience has
given me great faith in the
ability of the States to function
as true partners, and I believe;
that far better environmental
protection can be achieved if
we will allow the leve! of gov
eminent closest to the point of
control enough flexibility to
implement the protection pro-
gram best suited to the area
and the people who must live
in it.
"In developing and imple-
menting our national environ-
mental program, we must
•stand that i1
requires the commitment and
investment of the private sec-
tor, and that ultimately the cost
is paid by each individual citi-
zen. Companies do not pay for
these costs. You and I, as con-
sumers, do.
"We can and must simplify
and streamline the regulatory
process. Rules too complex to
be understood serve only to
alienate the public from the
mission of EPA, and that mis-
sion is too important to be left
solely to the regulated and the
regulators.
"We have made considerable
progress in improving the qual-
ity of our environment. Before
leaving office, my predecessor
reported that, at this point in
time, large industrial facilities
have a very high compliance
rate with water pollution stand-
ards. Factories, power plants,
and other major industries
affected have a very high com-
pliance rate with Clean Air Act
requirements. 1981 model cars
emit greatly reduced levels of
hydrocarbons, carbon mon-
oxide and nitrogen oxides as
compared with the uncontrolled
cars of the 1960s. We have
made good progress in con-
trolling drinking water con-
taminants, regulating toxic and
solid waste disposal, preserv-
ing natural ecosystems, and
controlling pests while protect-
ing the environment.
"Much remains to be done
and can be done. The public is
fully committed to environmen-
tal protection, while simultane-
ously aware of the need to
improve our economy and
develop affordable domestic
energy resources. A delicate
balance must emerge.
"I hclievo EPA must take the
li'iici in developing that balance,
cognizant of its opportunities
and constraints, its potential
and limitations, its historic
mission and our changing
times. EPA must be nor
frontational in its approach,
leading by action and encour-
agement. I assure you that, if
confirmed, this will be my
guiding credo."
-------
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Agency
Washington 0 C 20460
Official Business
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