POLLUTION OF NAVIGABLE WATERS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1937 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON RIVERS AND HARBORS, Washington, D. C. The committee met at 10:30 a. m., Hon. Joseph J. Mansfield (chairman) presiding. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please be in order. Gentlemen, I wish all parties interested would give their names to the clerk of the committee and state whether or not they favor or oppose the bills under consideration. Congressman Robertson of Virginia desires to be heard. Mr. Robertson is chairman of a special committee on the conservation of wildlife. We shall be glad to hear you at this time, Mr. Robertson. STATEMENT OF HON. A. WILLIS ROBERTSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF VIRGINIA AND CHAIRMAN OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON CONSERVATION OF WILDLIFE RESOURCES Mr. ROBERTSON. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I was very much pleased when you graciously extended to me an invitation to appear before you today in behalf of H. R. 2711, which tackles the problem of the pollution of waters. The subject of water pollution has been one in which I have been. interested for a number of years. I was interested in it as a lover of the out-of-doors of Virginia; as a member for 6 years of the State senate and for 7 years I was chairman of the Virginia Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries, the duty of which commission, among others, was to study the effect of industrial and trade wastes upon our inland waters affecting their recreational use and their aquatic and other life. Therefore, I have been officially interested in this problem. During the time that I was chairman of that State_commission I made some study of the subject of pollution, although I wish frankly to say that I do not claim to be an expert on the subject. There are some real experts and there are others who are said to learn more and more about less and less. [Laughter.] But my study of the subject, both as it affected the State of Virginia and other States with which I was less familiar, indicated that a real problem existed, which was not being adequately attacked either by our State governments or by our National Government. I have always maintained, Mr. Chairman, that before we seriously approach legislation on any problem we should satisfy ourselves that 1 a problem exists. There can be no question in my mind about the fact that a problem exists with respect to the pollution of waters, and in some localities it is a very serious problem. It affects not only the recreational use of those waters and the fishing therein that many of us so greatly enjoy but it is likewise a public health problem. For instance, right now, in the great cities of the Ohio River shed, such as Cincinnati and Louisville, there is a real problem in the matter of domestic supply of reasonably pure drinking water. An old Virginia farmer once said to me that the tendency of everything is to be more so. And that is certainly true with respect to our pollution problem. In our great anxiety, commencing, I will say roughly, about 1900, to realize the maximum industrial development of our natural resources, we expanded industrially without giving due regard to the incidental effect of that industrial development upon our social and economic life. So at the present time we face many economic and social problems of maladjustment on the one hand, of overexpansion in some respects on another hand, and the waste of certain great natural resources and abuses thereof which challenge our best thought and attention. One of the abuses that we have witnessed in the last 30 years has been the abuse of our inland waters by turning them literally into open sewers to carry the domestic sewage of our cities and trade waste of every conceivable kind and character. In tackling this problem in Virginia, we found it to be virtually impossible to get our State general assembly to adopt mandatory laws; and in fact many of us reached the conclusion that, after all, that was not the best approach. And so it was that when I was charged with that particular responsibility, I organized what we called in Virginia the Cooperative Stream Pollution Committee, made up of representatives of the leading industries that discharge trade waste in our streams, representatives of municipalities, a representative of the State board of health, and representatives of the conservation agencies, public and private, in the State. We employed several of the best biologists that we could find in the country, men who had been trained especially in fresh-water biology and the elimination of contaminating substances. That committee functioned for about 5 years and a large portion of the limited funds at our disposal was voluntarily contributed by industry; because, notwithstanding much that we now hear about industry and industrial leaders, the average industrial leader is a high type of citizen; he is public-spirited. He does not wish flagrantly to violate the rights of others. He does not wish, through his industrial operation, by which he gives needed employment to many people, to trespass on the rights of those who love to fish or to hamper the operation of municipalities which must draw their domestic water supply from some stream into which his trade waste enters. We found in Virginia, Mr. Chairman, organized industry willing to cooperate with us in a program to study the problem and to work out reasonable plans, plans within their ability to finance, to improve the situation. And we made considerable progress. I regret to say that when the depression came on, we slipped back This committee was discontinued and I fear some of the progress that we made at that time was lost. some. During the past 4 years I have observed the introduction of a number of bills, both in the House and in the Senate, and several resolutions, dealing with this subject. But of all the bills that have been introduced, I believe H. R. 2711 gives the best promise for passage; in the first place Mr. SMITH. What was the number of that bill? Mr. ROBERTSON. H. R. 2711, the Vinson bill, gives the best promise for passage; and, as legislators, we must be practical and give our support in an arena where there is always a conflict of interests-and there must be give and take-to the legislation best calculated to make some headway. I reckon everyone who has ever been before a committee of a State legislature, in behalf of mandatory pollution laws, knows the type of opposition that will be encountered; the old cry of fish versus factory, and various other slogans of that kind, which would indicate to the member of the legislature that "We had better let this thing alone." So if we attempt mandatory legislation in the Congress, the experience of the individual States, in my opinion will be just multiplied 48 times. I do not believe there would be any hope of getting any kind of mandatory bill through Congress that would lay down hard and fast rules to prevent this or that type of pollution and provide penalties and criminal punishments. In the second place, those who claim to know something about the Constitution and again I disclaim any thought that I may be an authority on that subject The CHAIRMAN. I hope you have not passed the age of seventy. [Laughter.] Mr. ROBERTSON. Not in years, but I am aging very rapidly under the strain of recent events, Mr. Chairman. Those who have given thought to it and who know something about such matters tell us that there are, under the Constitution, very definite limitations upon the power of the Federal Government to assume jurisdiction over domestic waters where navigation is not involved. For that reason, some of the other bills that have been introduced would, in my opinion, encounter rough sledding and, if passed, might not stand up under an attack in court. The pending measure, which I will not undertake to discuss in detail, because there are many witnesses here who will do that and can do it Mr. CULKIN. You are talking now about the Vinson bill? Mr. CULKIN. Will you tell us just what it does? Mr. ROBERTSON. The Vinson bill sets up an agency in the Public Health Service whose primary function is to make a scientific study of the problem and, as I have indicated, a problem exists with respect to the domestic source of water supply; possibly the water supply of 85 percent of our major cities is polluted. And, as I said, with reference to some cities like Cincinnati, it is polluted to a point where their purification processes are now at the limit of their capacity. If the pollution load should be suddenly increased, and you get a sharp diminution in the flow of the stream, increasing the biological demand for oxidation, they do not know whether or not their present plants would function successfully. As a matter of fact, I do not think they would want this given publicity, but I think it is true that on the Ohio watershed in the past 2 years there have been serious epidemics growing out of the pollution of that stream. Mr. CULKIN. What sort of epidemics? Mr. ROBERTSON. Well, there has been typhoid fever and other types of sickness that the doctors say can be directly traced to polluted waters. Mr. CULKIN. Have you got any figures on that? Mr. ROBERTSON. I do not have, but the Public Health Service, I think, will be glad to give you those. Mr. Chairman, I am going far beyond the time I intended to take, and I should be glad to discuss the bill, if you wish me to. You have so many important witnesses here Mr. ČULKIN. Do you think they have reached the limit in the treatment of water by chlorinization, if that is the term? Mr. ROBERTSON. You have to do two things. In the first place, you have got to have a settling basin to take out insoluble material so far as possible. In the city of Richmond, for instance, they have to take out of their water supply an insoluble material that is put in there by a large paper mill whose waste is of some kind of sulphite material. That has to go down through the settling basin. It is a dark, discoloring substance, that you cannot chlorinate out of the water. Having settled your water, removed the foreign substances, the mud and other things that floods bring down, you have to chlorinate to kill the bacteria. Mr. CULKIN. That does kill the bacteria, does it? Mr. ROBERTSON. It does kill the bacteria, but you can chlorinate up to a certain point only, where you begin to affect the character of the water. Dr. Messer, of the State board of health of Richmond, can give you detailed information on that, because for a number of years we have had that problem in the city of Richmond. Mr. CULKIN. This bill does not I am referring to the Vinson billdoes not confer any executive power on the Government, does it? Mr. ROBERTSON. It provides first for a Federal agency to study this problem. It provides for cooperation in study between Federal agencies and other agencies. It sets up a fund, not only for the functioning of this agency and to finance the scientific study of the subject, but a fund that will be passed upon from year to year to provide grants-in-aid to the States and to the subdivisions of the States, and upon State recommendation to private industry, to help finance purification plants. You see, we have two major problems. One is domestic sewage for which our cities are responsibile. Then you have many industries, some of which have problems that have not yet been solved. do not know of any solution of the disposition of the waste of coal mines. There is a very destructive acid involved there. There is difficulty in handling the pickling acid of some steel-finishing plants. There is difficulty in handling the sulphite and sulphate waste of paper mills. There is a lesser difficulty in handling the waste from beet-sugar mills, from dye plants, and tanneries, and a world of other plants that discharge waste into streams. Mr. DONDERO. Might there not be added one other field, and that is the discharge from thousands of garages in the country of oils and greases into our waters? Mr. ROBERTSON. In a way that is, of course, a problem. But the Federal Government does have limited power to reach that, because if oil floats on the surface where it may be ignited, it then becomes a hazard to navigation and can be abated under the existing Federal law. But to what extent that law is now being enforced, I do not know. The CHAIRMAN. The Federal law, I believe, applies to coastal waters only. Mr. ROBERTSON. Coastal waters? The CHAIRMAN. Yes; where there are tides that ebb and flow. Mr. ROBERTSON. But I imagine that it could be extended to any navigable waters that are even inland. General Pillsbury can tell you the extent to which the War Department is acting on that law. Mr. SEGER. You mentioned the pollution from paper mills' discharge in the city of Richmond. Do you know whether or not the Board of Health of the City of Richmond has any power to stop that pollution? Mr. ROBERTSON. The board of health has a limited power, but so far it has never seen fit to take the paper mill into court to test it out. Mr. CULKIN. How about your State board of health? Mr. ROBERTSON. That is what I am referring to the State board of health. We have undertaken to proceed in that matter more by voluntary cooperation than by legal action. But Dr. Messer, I believe, under State law, the State board of health and the city authorities of Richmond could proceed in court, if they could establish as a fact that the paper mill was hazarding the water supply of the people of the city of Richmond. Is that right? Dr. MESSER. It could. Mr. ROBERTSON. They would have to proceed by injunction, but the proof is very hard, to make a case that will stand up. That is the weakness of all the State laws that I know about. Nearly all of them have laws prohibiting the introduction into fresh-water streams, of substances, say, that would be injurious to fish and fish spawn. We have several substances in Virginia that are specifically prohibited, such as sawdust, the waste from the operations of gas-manufacturing plants, coal-tar waste they are specifically prohibited as being per se injurious. But all the other wastes come under the general provision that the burden of proof is upon the State, and even if they put into a stream, as I have known them to do, alkaline wastes, tannery waste, chemical waste that would kill fish by the truckload, so that for miles and miles every living thing in that stream was dead, we have no sufficient remedy in damages, because that property is not privately owned; that is, the fish are not, and you have no way of replacing them. Your remedy is by criminal proceeding, under which I think the offending plant could be fined $10-something like that. Mr. SMITH. Mr. Robertson, are there any mandatory provisions in the Vinson bill which would reach that condition more effectively than under the State law? Mr. ROBERTSON. No, sir; there are no mandatory provisions in the Vinson bill by which they could be reached. The theory of the Vinson bill is that we will make a general start without alarming anybody; we will study this problem and find out exactly what it is and what should be done. And then we believe that we will get the cooperation of industry, and the Federal Government with grants in aid will make the cooperation of the cities that are concerned possible. You see it takes a heap of money. |