Mr. MEEDS. If I am not incorrect, I think one of your members, the Weyerhaeuser Timber Co., is contributing rather substantially to the establishment and operation of the 586-acre city on Whidby Island where they are building this ecological laboratory about which I spoke the other day.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you very much, indeed, Dr. Westell. Thank you very much, sir. We appreciate your testifying before us.

The subcommittee is adjourned. We will meet tomorrow morning in New York City.

Whereupon, at 10:50 a.m. the subcommittee adjourned, to reconvene on Saturday, April 11, 1970, in New York City.)

ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY EDUCATION ACT

SATURDAY, APRIL 11, 1970

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR,

New York, N.Y.

The subcommittee met at 9:30 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 305, Federal Building, 26 Federal Plaza, New York, N.Y., Hon. John Brademas (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Brademas, Scheuer, and Reid.

Staff members present: Maureen Orth, consultant; Arlene Horowitz, staff assistant.

Mr. BRADEMAS. The Select Subcommittee on Education of the House of Representatives will come to order.

We are very pleased to be in New York City today for further consideration of the bill H.R. 14753, the Environmental Quality Education Act.

The purpose of the bill before us is to take into account the rising concern in the United States about the problem of the deterioration of our environment and the importance of educating Americans, particularly young Americans, about the entire spectrum of what have come to be known as ecological issues.

The bill before us would provide Federal funds for the purpose of developing teaching materials for use in the elementary and secondary schools and for community conferences on every aspect of environmental problems.

The funds could also be used for the support of pilot demonstration projects in the environmental education field, for training courses of all kinds, including the training of school teachers, to offer environmental education courses, grants for community conferences in which there could participate State and local governmental officials, civic and community, business and industrial leaders, as well as grants for the preparation and dissemination of materials on the environment suitable for use by the mass media.

The Chair is particularly pleased to be in New York City today surrounded on either hand by two of the most distinguished and effective members of this subcommittee and of the Committee on Education and Labor.

The gentleman from New York, Mr. Scheuer is one of the principal sponsors of the Environmental Education bill before us and has shown during his career in Congress a particular concern about the entire area of environmental quality and indeed was one of the delegates attending the recent UNESCO conference on the environment in San Francisco.

The other gentleman from New York, Mr. Reid, has likewise long been concerned not only with problems of the environment but with the problems in the field of education and has been a leading spokesman in the House of Representatives in his party for improving the quality of American education.

So the Chair, a simple country boy all the way from Indiana, is especially pleased to know that he has the support of two urban and sophisticated city dwellers from New York and would like to recognize Mr. Scheuer for an opening comment and then Mr. Reid before we call our first witness.

Mr. Scheuer?

Mr. SCHEUER. I want to thank the midwest and its presumably nonurbane Congressman, the Chairman of this subcommittee, for his kind words about us urbane, sophisticated New Yorkers.

Long ago I found out that urbanity, sophistication, and the highest quality of intellect and effectiveness are no monopoly of the eastern seaboard. Some of the most remarkably effective Congressmen who are also urbane and sophisticated do not come from the east or the west coasts at all, and Congressman Brademas, a former Rhodes scholar, is certainly very high on the list of those midwestern Congressmen who have distinguished records in their congressional tenure. When Congressman Brademas and I first discussed the environmental bill with other members of the subcommittee last summer, I felt this was one of the bills that the subcommittee ought to take up because we were thinking of some other bills that have since come out of our committee, narcotics education, pre-school-child education and several others which ought to be developed but are mainly political.

But last July we felt this bill was right because the country needed its citizens' understanding of environmental problems. We felt that in order to get the enforcement legislation and conduct that would support our program, our feeling was, no matter how far ahead of the country we were, it was still the right thing to do.

And here we are 10 months later with an explosion of interest about the environment, with virtually all of the television and radio media deeply involved in environmental programs, with virtually all of our mass circulation magazines and newspapers having news sections on the environment and top editors in charge of stories on the environment.

So our country at this point in time is desperately trying to keep up with our constitutency; namely, the American public and the media in their deep interest and concern.

I want to congratulate my subcommittee chairman for his total support of this bill and the thoughtful and highly intelligent way in which the subcommittee staff and he have put together these hearings. I believe that once the bill is passed, our country will benefit for 10, 20, and 30 years because the preschool child and the child in the elementary school will get a concept of the earth as a planet of limited resources that must look within itself and conserve and reuse. The child in elementary years today will be the voter a decade from now and the political and civic leaders two decades from now so I believe what we have to do now will have tremendous implications for the future. I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Brademas, for the tremendous support he has given this program.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you, Mr. Scheuer.

The Chair wants to recognize another principal sponsor of this legislation, Mr. Reid of New York.

Mr. REID. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to welcome you to New York City and thank you for the leadership you are giving us in this area. I would just like to say one or two things, gentlemen, because we are here to hear witnesses, not ourselves.

New York City probably has the worst air pollution in the country. We have major problems that are in some cases almost out of control in the environment, such as is the spread of pesticides including DDT into the deep oceans or other areas. My main point is fairly simple: I think our educational systems throughout the country need to include a great deal of work and training in ecological relationships. It is equally true that in Washington until the advent of the Council on Environmental Quality at the White House level, there has been very little relationship or study between tanker oil spills, water pollution, thermal pollution, and air pollution. I think it essential to be sensitive to what the judge and jury are doing in relation to total pollution and ecological balance. If what will come out of the study of these relationships will establish some interdisciplinary work that will make it possible to identify the certain areas of interdependence, then I think it will be very meaningful.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you very much.

Our first witness this morning is Mr. John DeLury, president of the Sanitationmen's Association.

I will call on Mr. Scheuer at this point.

Mr. SCHEUER. I want to thank Mr. DeLury for coming here today. Mr. DeLury is one of the men in New York City who have perhaps critical responsibility for our urban environment, how the city looks and feels, and how it relates to the individual.

He is a man of enormous responsibility. He is a man who works under tremendous pressure for the thousands of men whom he represents in the top policymaking activities in which he is engaged. I think it is an indication of his civic concern and tremendous involvement as a civic leader in every aspect of the welfare of New York City that he has chosen to come out here today.

So I want to thank him and welcome him and also thank the very impressive group of delegates from his union whom he has brought along to share the privilege of listening to him this morning. So thank you very much, Mr. DeLury, for coming.

STATEMENT OF JOHN DeLURY, PRESIDENT, THE UNIFORMED SANITATIONMEN'S ASSOCIATION

Mr. DELURY. Thank you for your kind words, Jim.

Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the 10,500 members of the Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association, I strongly support H.R. 14753, and urge its immediate adoption.

It seems as if America is waking up to the damage being done everywhere to the air, water, and soil. I hope that this new interest will be sustained-that it will not be a passing fad for the students, the media, and politicians. I am disturbed by the effort to find scapegoats, one-shot cures, and sure-shot gimmicks. But that won't clean up our physical environment. It will only add to the pollution in the air.

The faddists can always find another fad, but we sanitation men, the practical ecologists of the city streets, must stay with the almost impossible job of striving to keep the capital city of the world clean. I have endorsed H.R. 14753 because it points to a crying need-the need to educate the people-and because it provides the money to educate in this specific area.

I have endorsed H.R. 14753 on the assumption that money for the required educational programs will be available in the first instance to the cities of our country.

The cities are where the people are.

The cities are where the air pollution is.

The cities are where the congestion, slums, rats, vermin, dirt and decay are.

New York, the city I know best, cannot now cope with the pollution of its streets and its garbage problem, in spite of its budgetary allocation.

Yes, additional funds for additional manpower and equipment are clearly necessary. And yet without an educated citizenry more money won't buy the needed results.

Our city is a polluted city. The pollution of our streets is a lasting impression with which vistors leave. Is this inevitable? Is it a necessary byproduct of our size density and congestion? Almost 8 million human beings live here. They occupy 742,582 residential dwellings. Daily they are joined by another 2 million people coming from the suburban bedrooms around the city to make their living here.

Two million automobiles find their way into Manhattan each day. This population living, working, and consuming here, generate more than 10,000 tons of garbage a day. They abandon 60,000 cars on our streets which they no longer want. Our 6,000 miles of streets, are for many, their litter baskets and garbage cans.

How does the city cope? What does the administration do to prevent the people from choking on their own swill and being asphyxiated by the gas fumes of their own cars?

Three hundred fifty-three million dollars is the cost. That's the current annual budget for the Environmental Protection Administration. More than half that amount goes for sanitation services. That makes possible the daily employment of 14,000 people, of whom 10,500 are sanitation men. They are the men who go into the 6,000 miles of streets. They are the men who go to the doors of each of the 742,582 dwellings. They are the ones who collect the 10,000 tons of garbage a day and they clean the 12,000 curb-miles in the city.

They use 3,047 trucks of all types. The cost of this equipment is $60 million.

They dispose of this waste in eight huge incinerators, four landfills, and eight marine stations, using cranes, bulldozers, 40-yard trucks, conveyors, barges, and tugs whose costs exceed $30 million.

That's the city's effort. In addition, another 2,500 tons of garbage, waste, and construction debris collected privately are disposed of by the city each day.

The end is not in sight. Each year sees an escalation in waste generation of 9 percent. And this is the situation throughout the country. A leading business magazine recently estimated the cost of waste removal to be $5 billion a year nationally, with a cost increase of 20 percent a year. (Forbes magazine, Jan. 15, 1970, p. 18.)