UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY WASHINGTON, D.C. 20460 OFFICIAL BUSINESS PENALTY FOR PRIVATE USE $300 AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER A Environmental News Fitzwater (202) 755-0344 O'Neill (202) 755-0344 FOR RELEASE AFTER 1;30 P.M., TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1974 TRAIN ADVOCATES TRANSIT SUPPORT FROM WINDFALL PROFITS TAX Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Russell E. Train today recommended that revenues from the windfall profits tax on oil companies proposed by President Nixon should be used to promote mass transit. Speaking before the National Resources Conference of the American Farm Bureau Federation in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Train said the profits tax should be used to cut fuel demand rather than just to increase supply. "By far the most profitable investment we can make of any and all revenues we may raise from a windfall profits tax," Train said, "is to put them into a fund to fuel the growth and development of genuine mass transit alternatives to the urban automobile." Train said that he is opposed in principle to trust funds, but as long as the highway trust fund exists there should also be a transit trust fund fed by the windfall profits tax. (more) POSTAGE AND FEES PAID U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY EPA-335 Return this sheet if you do NOT wish to receive this material ~, or if change of address is needed ~ (indicate change, including zip code). EPA FORM 1510-1 (REV. 8-72) R-333 ------- -2- "With the gaunt and grim specter of rationing looming ever larger on the horizon," Train said, "it becomes all the more important that we take direct and decisive action to ensure that we do not waste in gas-guzzling, air-polluting automobiles the fuel that we desperately need for far more basic activities such as the production of food and fiber. "Every single gallon of fuel that we save in our cities — through mass transit, insulated buildings or other means — is one more gallon that we free to power a tractor or a combine, or truck or a train to take produce to market, or a plant to produce fertilizer." Train said the nation suffers more from "an excessive and unsustainable level of energy demand" than from an energy shortage. "There are those who would have you believe," Train said, "that the good news in the energy crisis is that the environ- ment is up for grabs again — that the green light is on again to plunder and poison and pollute — that our air and earth and water can once more serve as nature's own original, free and easy, eternal and inexhaustible public dump. The trouble is that the 'dump' has long since begun to back up and boomerang on us. "Whatever the temporary conflicts between our energy and environmental needs," Train said, "the fact is that both our energy and environmental ills stem essentially from the same source — from patterns of growth and development that waste our energy resources just as surely and shamefully as they lay waste to our natural environment." "The truth is," he said, "that the energy binge is over, and we had better start going on the wagon." # # # R-333 ------- |