In none of the cities that we have visited have we seen any evidence that convinces us that our State, local, and Federal Governments cannot afford to increase their efforts to clear the air. We have seen a good deal of evidence which suggests that we cannot afford not to increase our efforts. The costs of uncontrolled air pollution in economic damages alone, not to mention the threat to our health, far exceed the costs of adequate air pollution control. In short, if we do not pay enough for the prevention of air pollution, we are doomed to pay a higher price for our neglect. This paradox, I am sure, applies to most of our other pressing urban problems. The techniques of air pollution control may be complex. The problems of dealing with air pollution in an area such as this, where many millions of people and scores of different government jurisdictions depend on the same regional air resource, may be formidable, but the choice we face is simple: We can begin now an earnest cooperative effort to draw back the curtain of smog that too frequently hides our cities, or we can wait and pay a much higher price in human suffering and in dollars some time in the future. Some of the testimony this subcommittee has heard would suggest that air pollution is a necessary part of industrial progress, that our field of choice is limited to prosperity in dirty air or a lower standard of living in clean air. It is implied that levels of air pollution which are below those which would asphyxiate people on the street are a penalty that we must pay for our way of life. This is the expression of a naive philosophy of despair which would have us believe that you must keep the bath water if you want the baby. From this point of view, the way to eliminate traffic snarls would be to stop making automobiles; problems of overcrowding in schools would be solved by stopping education, and the problems of juvenile delinquency by making juveniles, not delinquency, unlawful. In developing the Clean Air Act, we approach the problem of air pollution from a more constructive point of view. The Clean Air Act was drafted after extensive hearings in Washington held before this subcommittee and before a similar subcommittee of the House of Representatives. Like the Federal legislation which preceded it, the Clean Air Act was developed on the premise that those nearest the problem should shoulder the primary responsibility for its solution. Unlike previous legislation in this field, however, the Clean Air Act enables the Federal Government to provide more fully the assistance that State and local governments need and deserve to cope with an environmental hazard that is truly national in scope. Passage of the Clean Air Act by unanimous vote in the Senate, by an overwhelming majority in the House, and with strong support from the administration, is proof that the Federal Government is convinced that air pollution is a serious hazard to the people of this entire Nation. The Clean Air Act expands the research and assistance programs that the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has conducted for the past 8 years. This expanded research and assistance should certainly be of value to this tristate metropolitan area encompassing scores of communities where there are more people and more sources of air pollution than anywhere else in the country. It requires no scientific research in order to see that the problem of this vast metropolitan area cuts across a great number of geographic and political boundary lines. But, cooperative technical study of this region's varied pollution sources, and of the meterological and other factors bearing on the problem, would bring you one gigantic step closer to the development of a workable cooperative approach to a common problem. In Chicago, this subcommittee learned that you cannot determine where one city's problem begins and the next city's begins by guessing and then placing the blame on your neighbor. I am sure that after our hearings are finished today there will still remain some confusion as to where the New York problem ends and the New Jersey problem begins, and vice versa. To realize that your community and State share an air pollution problem with another community and State is necessary to cooperative action, but it is of no value if further steps are never taken. One of the several important new provisions in the Clean Air Act authorizes the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, for the first time, to grant Federal funds to help local, State, and regional air pollution control agencies to initiate, expand, or improve their programs. This provision of the act brings us one step closer to that cooperative approach to air pollution control among all levels of government, which has been so long endorsed in principle. This provision was placed in the act because the level of control effort expended by State and local governments throughout the Nation is extremely low compared to the seriousness of the problem they face. Here, in the New York metropolitan area, for example, where more tax money is spent proportionately on air pollution control than by other jurisdictions sharing the same air resource, the per capita expenditure is less than 10 cents. The per capita expenditure in Los Angeles is about 57 cents. It is sometimes remarked that expenditures in Los Angeles are fruitless because smog has not been eliminated. The truth is that were it not for these expenditures, air pollution might have critically jeopardized or have halted growth and progress in a vital metropolis. The costs for that would have exceeded 57 cents per capita several times over. Their control effort, incidentally, could not possibly have been effective if it had been confined to the city of Los Angeles alone. The authority of the control district there protects the people living in communities scattered throughout the entire Los Angeles basin. Another new provision of the Clean Air Act is intended to serve that very large segment of citizens who have no direct recourse under law when they are adversely affected by air pollution arising from another State. In the event that local and State efforts fail to protect them from the adverse effects of such pollution, the Clean Air Act provides a means of meeting this problem through procedures for Federal action in interstate areas. The act singles out for special attention two of the major unsolved air pollution problems, both of which are of strong concern to this area motor vehicle exhaust and sulfurous air pollutants. The Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare is directed to appoint a technical committee of representatives from the Department and from the automotive vehicle, exhaust control device, and fuels industries to evaluate progress in the development of methods of curtailing automative exhaust emissions. The Secretary is required to present to Congress periodic reports on the progress made. The act also directs the Secretary to initiate a program of research directed toward the development of improved low-cost techniques for reducing the emission of sulfur compounds to the atmosphere from sources where sulfur-bearing fuels are burned for heat and power. This interstate region, like the Chicago region, is one of those urban areas where sulfur oxides from the domestic, municipal, and industrial use of sulfur-bearing fuels constitute an important part of your air pollution problems. All of the remaining provisions of the Clean Air Act are also germane to your needs. The act gives the Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare the authority to conduct research leading to the development of criteria of air quality for the guidance of control agencies throughout the country in the adoption of enforceable air quality standards and source emission limitations. In addition, it gives to the Secretary the authority to require Federal agencies to obtain permits regulating the discharge of pollutants into the atmosphere from Federal buildings and installations. By itself, the Clean Air Act will not solve the air pollution problem in the New York area or in any other area of the country. It does, however, provide greatly improved assistance to States and local gov ernments. It places a variety of resources for improved air pollution control in one comprehensive Federal air pollution program, where provisions of the act can be administered in such a way as to make the total program responsive to local and State needs, which vary greatly from place to place. It provides new assurance that through cooperation and effort all levels of government, industry, and the public can contribute effectively toward cleaner air throughout the Nation. The subcommittee is here not to add to your list of problems, but to gather as much useful on-the-spot knowledge as is possible about how the Clean Air Act can help lead to more effective control of air pollution. We are grateful for the cooperation that we have received from the Government officials, representatives of industry, research and civic groups, who have so generously agreed to testify here today. I have three telegrams here that I would like to read. From the senior Senator from New York, Senator Javits, the following: SPECIAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON AIR POLLUTION New York, N.Y.: WASHINGTON, D.C., February 15, 1964. Regret not able to be present during hearings today in my home city held by Senate Public Works Special Subcommittee on Air Pollution. 1 fully sup ported the recently enacted Federal Air Pollution legislation, which will provide much-needed increases in research and training. Grants to State and local air pollution control agencies, and more effective abatement machinery. New York State has been a leader in State and local air pollution control efforts. The legislation just enacted contains language, which I suggested, to emphasize State-Federal consultation and cooperation in both planning and enforcement. I hope that your subcommittee's hearings in various urban areas will stimulate increased State and local efforts and utilization of the new law, especially through interstate compact agencies, to combat this metropolitan malady. Regards, JACOB K. JAVITS, U.S. Senate. We also have a telegram from Senator Keating, which we will include in the record at this point, and it is as follows: WASHINGTON, D.C., February 17, 1964, SUBCOMMITTEE ON AIR AND WATER POLLUTION, I want to commend you for your hearings on the grave problem of air pollution in New York City. This health menace can and should be curbed by the cooperative effort of local, State, and Federal Governments, and private industry. I hope your inquiry will be informative and fruitful. KENNETH B. KEATING, U.S. Senator. I have another telegram, this one from Senator Clifford P. Case of New Jersey, on the same subject, and that will be included in the. record, also, and I read it as follows: Hon. EDMUND S. MUSKIE, WASHINGTON, D.C., February 17, 1964. U.S. Senate, Special Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution, Board of Estimates Chambers, City Hall, New York, N.Y.: I understand a number of New Jersey officials and private authorities on air pollution will be testifying before your subcommittee tomorrow in New York City. I regret that I cannot accompany them. For northern New Jersey is a vital part of the metropolitan area and tremendously concerned about air pollution problems there. I testified before your subcommittee in support of the Clean Air Act when it was under consideration last September. I am grateful that your subcommittee saw fit to include the basic provisions of my own bill concerning criteria on the harmful effects of various air pollution agents and that this is now a part of the law. Your subcommittee is to be congratulated for initiating this meaningful exchange of views and information with those concerned with air pollution at the State and local level. CLIFFORD P. CASE, U.S. Senator. The mayor, I understand, has arrived. It is a pleasure this morning for me to welcome him to these hearings in the same way that he welcomed me earlier this morning to his house for a pleasant chat. It is a pleasure, Mayor Wagner, to have you here this morning. I am most grateful to you for taking the time to come here. Your willingness to do this reflects your very great concern with this very difficult problem. I want to say to you that we are here to be as helpful to you as we can be. STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT WAGNER, MAYOR, CITY OF NEW YORK Mayor WAGNER. It is always an honor to be invited to testify before a committee of the U.S. Senate. Today, it is doubly an honor, be cause I function not only as a witness, but as your host. On behalf of the people of the city of New York, I welcome you and I hope that you will find time to enjoy the many pleasures that our city has to offer. Unfortunately, clean, clear, completely unpolluted air is not always one of them. The problems of air pollution have long plagued this region, and I am glad to have the opportunity now to discuss this with you. President Johnson recently estimated the economic loss to the Nation from air pollution at nearly $1 billion a month. Here in New York City we have not attempted to measure our economic loss in exact dollars and cents, but we do have a slogan in our department of air pollution control that: "Clean air costs money; dirty air costs more." Air pollution costs our citizens money through the waste of fuels and materials improperly discharged into the atmosphere. We lose money from the effect of airborne toxic agents on clothing, on buildings and furnishings, on plants, and on livestock. We lose and it is impossible to place a price tag on this-through the impairment of good health. I have no doubt that air-pollution control needs greater emphasis, and that pollution ought to be fought at its source in every community before the time comes for emergency action. But, polluted air is not and can not be a purely local problem. Contaminated air pays no attention to local boundary lines. I have testified before in favor of the expansion and the strengthening of the Federal air-pollution program, and I rejoiced to see the Clean Air Act become a reality. We know that air pollution can aggravate respiratory ailments; we have statistical evidence that in extreme cases it can kill. What we do not know is what a normal amount of tainted air, breathed in day-after-day for years, may be doing to us. We have been informed, for example, that links have been found between polluted air an lung cancer. An allergist in our region has stated, in connection with recent reports on the correlation between tobacco and lung cancer, that the average urban resident, whether he smokes or not, inhales the equivalent in toxic substances of two packs of cigarettes a day. In June of 1962, the laboratory staff of our New York City Department of Air Pollution Control found fallout from Soviet atomic tests in soot-fall samples. We began to get readings from 100 to 200 millicuries per square mile. One day a piece of testing paper from a site in Brooklyn threw off emissions that registered an incredible 2,387 millicuries. Our laboratory people found a tiny particle of a Soviet test bomb on the paper. It was still in the process of violent disintegration. We turned it over to the Atomic Energy Commission for identification and for examination. The Journal of the American Medical Association has suggested a link between excessive pollution and heart disease. We even find connections between polluted air and the common cold. Our laboratories here in New York City have recorded the fact that 15,000 quarts of air inhaled and exhaled by each of our citizens each day may contain as many as several hundred micrograms of the dried fecal matter |