Dr. TRIBUS. NO; I haven't given thought to it but I certainly will. I think it is an important principle. I can't approach these matters in terms of the broad philosophical point. I tend to be a little more pragmatic. I just don't see how anyone at the Federal level can determine the polluting and nonpolluting habits that occur at a local level. I testified on this in another way. Some years ago, I appeared at a Senate hearing and talked about the problem of making fresh water from the sea and pointed out that the Hyperion sewage plant in Los Angeles was dumping about, I guess, 200 million gallons of water per day into the ocean, but when they polluted 20 miles of beaches decided it wasn't a good idea. So they purified the water a great deal more, then continued to dump it into the ocean.

I thought it was ridiculous to be doing that and at the same time saying, "We have got to have a plant to take fresh water out of the ocean," the very same ocean.

We already do recycle one another's water. People don't talk about it as loudly as perhaps they should, but we do this in space missions, and so in this earth space vehicle we ought to think in those terms.

I was sort of put down on the basis that, well, you know how that is. We ought not to push that. Well, those discussions have to be made at a local level.

But now I come to the economic side. I say when people are trying to make a decision like that they ought to pay. Accordingly, when the people in Los Angeles want fresh water, the economic system ought to be something that impinges upon them.

Likewise, I think it would be impossible for the Federal Government to make rulings and decisions regarding the local disposal of trash because the people who create the trash ought to have some expense associated with it that changes their habits. So, this has to be done through the local system with the Federal Government providing help.

I think the only reason the Federal Government should be giving help today is because of the way our taxes occur. The Federal Government is getting all the money and the problems are at the local level.

I happen to come from the New England area and small towns in New England are taxed very heavily. I pay much higher taxes in New England for much less service than I can get in the big city. The possibilities for getting new resources are extremely limited, so the Federal Government has had to help.

I don't see the Federal Government coming in and explaining how we should handle our waste in that little town. I think it is a very healthy thing that my fellow citizens and I in New England have to face up to this and reexamine what we do in terms of the waste we produce and what it means to our taxes.

Senator BOGGS. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

I thank you for allowing me so much time.

Senator MUSKIE. I think it has been a very useful colloquy.
Senator Baker.

Senator BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Secretary, I couldn't agree more that we need to pull together and have coherent policy as the solution to total environmental quality. On occasion I have the feeling that we on the one hand don't think grand enough on future and new ways to solve the environmental prob

lem, and that on the other hand, we don't think small enough in trying to solve those things that we have the present competence and ability to cope with.

I wonder if it isn't possible to devote a substantially greater effort to research and development on techniques for solving the problems of solid waste disposal for large cities, for industrial facilities and the like, and still go ahead now with fairly energetic and vigorous programs for solving other problems that we know how to solve now.

I am thinking of municipal sewage treatment plants, of incineration of solid wastes, in smaller towns, medium-sized towns and the like, where as far as I know, at least, there isn't any new technology in the offing or likely to be on the smaller projects.

If you would care to comment either on my understanding of the thrust of your testimony and on that alternative suggestion, I would be grateful.

Dr. TRIBUS. I think, first of all, that you have interpreted the thrust of my remarks correctly.

Secondly, that clearly we are talking about matters of degree; that either extreme view, namely, to look only at global questions and assume that the local problem will take care of itself, is just as foolish as looking only at local problems and assuming that global problems will take care of themselves.

The point I would like to make is somewhat more subtle than either of those. It has to do with the fact that all sewage disposal problems are really not alike, and sometimes when you look at them in a different way you find new solutions.

Probably the most dramatic example is one that occurred in Vermont under the State Technical Services Act. There a man in the State, supported partly by the Federal Government, partly by the State, was concerned with getting rid of waste products from farms and particularly waste milk products.

A request was being prepared for an EDA grant to build a new sewage disposal system. He looked at the problem in economic terms and he looked at it in terms of "What should we be doing with this stuff? It really has economic value to someone.'

And by wonderful effort-really, this is the sort of thing that makes you very proud of what our people can do-he had a small study made by the university, and they found this material actually could be used to make cheese.

He got the farmers to agree to allow it to be collected at a very low fee. Then he persuaded a company in Wisconsin to come in and set up a factory.

Now they are creating jobs and cheese instead of building a disposal plant.

This is what I mean, and I am concerned lest we go in this direction which puts so much emphasis on providing for anyone who wants to get half funding or 75 percent funding, even a new plant, and thus provide an easy way out of a problem that really ought to be tackled with a lot more thought and care.

Now I can't say that is going to happen everywhere. What I am saying is that I am concerned lest we not use what we know how to use in looking at the problem systematically, and that the President

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hopes through the Environmental Quality Council to bring to bear this sort of thing and advance the economy.

As a thermodynamicist, I am just unhappy over the notion that material with what we call availability, or roughly speaking something that has economic value, is being disposed of in a way that doesn't add to the economy but takes away from it.

I said earlier that I was concerned about more complex measures of national welfare. I think the GNP as a measure is insufficient. You know money spent on building a disposal plant is counted as money spent to increase the GNP.

We may use that money to destroy an economic resource. Clearly we need other measures and I believe that we can do something in time to be useful under an extension of the Act, and with the kind of approach that the President is bringing about through the Environmental Quality Council and the marshaling of the resources of the Government that already exist.

Senator BAKER. I agree with your philosophy.

I must say, though, that it doesn't tend to respond, in my view, to the admitted urgency of the solid waste situation in this country. What I am groping for is some way to honor and encourage the necessity for a more intelligent utilization of available resources to cope with some of the urgency today.

You point out in your own testimony that the "thresholds of human tolerances for environmental deterioration are being approached or exceeded."

I agree. Some of it we don't know what to do with. Much of it we don't know how best to handle but for some of it surely we have a fairly definitive answer.

On the question of the milk and cheese situation, I would draw an additional analogy. I need a lot of things, but I need some of them now worse than I need them tomorrow.

So I wonder if the proposition you put isn't met by the idea that doing what we can today in those areas that can be clearly defined does not necessarily preclude doing something else later, and once again, to try to sharpen the issue a little, I am thinking of primary, secondary, tertiary treatment plants for small communities that don't have specialized problems, where you can recognize the problems that you know how to solve and where you don't see any new technology in the offing that would render that plant obsolete or undersirable.

Once again, I am trying to find something in a single course of action to be undertaken now, today.

My 13-year-old daughter very unkindly says when she inquiries into what I did today in the Senate and I try to tell her in my way, "Well, you talk a lot but you don't do much."

I really think that we have got to do something to meet some element of the obvious urgency in this situation, and I am inclined to think that we can.

It may be with continuation of grants for solid waste treatment plants on a small basis and postponing research and development for larger plants for specified situations, but would you object or are you in a position to say whether the administration would object to an effort to synthesize a solution that responded to both near-term and

Dr. TRIBUS. You asked really two questions: One, whether I was prepared to say whether the administration would accept some variation on this, and this is the sort of thing that I would rather defer to those who are above me to make such policy decisions.

But I think we can get caught on an either/or, and I am suggesting another alternative which isn't either of those. What I am saying is this: That today the way we use our information, what little information we have, we don't bring to bear on these questions the information we already have.

I am not talking about stopping while we develop a new kind of disposal plant.

TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

I mean there will be research and development always going on. If you have much experience with research and development you discover every time you are ready to go into production there is somebody running down the hallway with a new idea that is better, so it is a never-ending process. That is the way it ought to be. That is what makes us a dynamic country.

I am concerned more with not the development of hardware, but the development of software, the development of better procedures to pull our information together so that we make a decision relative to a community as to whether we should or should not go ahead with the plant. They have to do planning and we have to provide much more comprehensive information for them than we have provided in the past.

I am saying that the way the President is going about it puts us on the way toward developing that ability, and when that ability is in hand and I can't tell you the timetable-when that ability is in hand, then we can approach these questions of whether you put in this kind of plant or that kind of plant; whether you make a change of one sort or another locally; and we can approach these decisions much more wisely.

Senator BAKER. Aren't there some that you can decide now? I can think of a hypothetical community of 4,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 people that doesn't have any specialized problem, and I can think of some in Tennessee, to be entirely parochial about it, that simply need help in constructing a better secondary or tertiary treatment plant, and that is their big problem now. Nobody yet, that I know of, has come up with a suggestion that we should use reverse osmosis or something for Shelbyville, Tenn.

But can't we do what we can do now?

Dr. TRIBUS. And can't we do that now under existing legislation except for the amounts of money involved?

Senator BAKER. Yes, provided we give them the financial boost to do it.

Dr. TRIBUS. That is the issue, isn't it?

Senator BAKER. Yes. Are you opposed to it, or for it? That is what I am asking.

Dr. TRIBUS. The "it" to which I am supposed to be opposed or against, I have lost during the conversation.

Senator MUSKIE. That is the question that always falls in the crack.

Dr. TRIBUS. Within the constraints that are on all of us with respect to the economy as a whole with respect to governmental expenditures, I certainly am in favor of meeting a need we can identify clearly such as this, and we do now.

What I am concerned about is a special targeting of a certain amount of money on a special crash program to go do this, when under that pressure I fear we are going to spend money on a lot of things that wouldn't be so wise.

When you say that in Shelbyville, Tenn., the studies are all in hand to show the only thing you can do is to put up this particular kind of plant, then I hope that the money can be found to further that. But I maintain that if we were to pass legislation that said look, here is a big reservoir of money that we have set aside especially for you people who need this, then it will promote that kind of activity and we will put in concrete a lot of things that we wish we hadn't done. Senator BAKER. Depending on how well it is administered. It would be up to EDA or somebody to decide whether the problem was soluble today or whether it wasn't.

Dr. TRIBUS. You have hit really on the point. That is why I suggest that the President's aproach through the Environmental Quality Council and the position which has been taken by the administration ought to be followed because they are saying in effect if you ask us to administer it now under the way we are now organized you are going to be pushing us to do it much more rapidly than we think makes good sense to the economy.

Senator BAKER. I tend to try to support the President in those things but I also tend to try to improve on it if I can.

Let me ask you one final hypothetical question that, very frankly, I am afraid may put you on the spot. If there were no statutory expenditure ceiling on expenditures by the Federal Government, if there was no necessity for fiscal restraint right now, as there is, would you be able to support large-scale funding of those waste treatment and disposal projects for which we now have entirely adequate technology?

Dr. TRIBUS. I am just getting into a euphoric state about no limits on money.

Senator BAKER. So has my wife.

Dr. TRIBUS. I have been facing problems in ESSA, National Bureau of Standards, Patent Office, and so on, and I just can't give you what I think is a very good answer about that hypothetical statement.

I always live in a limited budget situation. It is hard. If we had a lot more money to play with I think we would probably be turning-I would urge turning more quickly than perhaps we are going to be able to do now-in the direction that I have indicated.

I think we could probably then afford to put more of a crash program into the gathering of information and getting people together. We probably could afford to spend more money on some of these plants without having thought it through.

But I would still want to be very careful as to how much I spent because this is not entirely a money limit problem. As I said earlier, there is a growing awareness-and I give Apollo great credit for providing it there is a growing awareness that we are all on this spaceship earth and we have to face our relationship to the environ