Thus, Allin concluded, the nation could eventually look forward to a system with 100 to 130 million acres in wilderness, about 5 percent of the land area of the U.S. While conservationists wanted more, he wrote,
The magnitude of the victory for preservation will be greater than preservationists could have imagined as recently as 1964. That victory will come none too soon, for the time is now within our comprehension when the only wilderness that will remain is the wilderness that has been purposefully preserved.4
“Of all our natural resources,” Rachel Carson wrote in Silent Spring, “water has become our most precious.” Yet the U.S. was squandering this critical asset by polluting its rivers, lakes, streams, wetlands, and seashores. Collectively they had become the nation’s dump. They received the chemical garbage from industry, the human, household, and commercial wastes from the cities, agricultural runoff from farms and feedlots, radioactive wastes from nuclear reactors, and, now, the residues of chemical pesticides.
By 1965 all of the nation’s significant rivers were polluted. The lower Great Lakes—Michigan, Erie, and Ontario—were in dreadful shape and it was often said that Lake Erie was “dead.” A very large number of other waterways were either already cesspools or well on their way to becoming them.
The White House Task Force on the Quality of the Environment informed the President of the damage. The 1966 report stated that the most abundant wastes consisted of sediment from erosion and organic materials. Some organic chemicals—phosphates, nitrates, and other minerals—removed oxygen from the water and destroyed aquatic life. They were potentially toxic to humans and so prevented the use of polluted waters for recreation: “Children have become ill swimming in rivers temporarily saturated with toxic pollutants.” The 1967 report stressed agricultural waste. A beef feedlot which held 10,000 head of cattle produced daily 260 tons of solid waste and 100 tons of liquids. A dairy barn with 500 cows had the waste equivalent of 8000 people. Fertilizer and pesticide consumption was growing exponentially, much finding its way as drainage into bodies of water with the resulting growth of algae.
The Savannah River rises from clear mountain streams in the Blue Ridge of the Carolinas and upper Georgia and races for 300 miles to the Atlantic, forming the boundary between South Carolina and Georgia. Flowing through an area which receives 46 inches of annual rainfall, second only to the Pacific Northwest, it is a mighty river with an average daily flow of 7.2 million gallons of water. For most of man’s history along its banks, it seemed big enough to withstand any abuse.
But in the twentieth century the twin forces of population growth and industrialization overpowered the river. Savannah, a city of 135,000, poured raw sewage into the stream. The stench was unbearable, swimming and boating became impossible, and the fishing grounds and oyster beds were declared off-limits. Bad as this was, the industrial effluents were worse. The main culprit was the huge kraft paper mill opened in 1935 by Union Bag, later Union Camp, which pushed a torrent of coffee-colored waste into the river. Combined with the outfall from the town’s sewage system, James M. Fallows wrote, “At times the water in front of City Hall literally boils as pockets of hydrogen sulfide and methane gas rise from the wastes on the river bed.” The final insult was delivered by American Cyanimid, which poured sulfuric acid into the Savannah. Oxygen-consuming wastes killed the fish.
Gallinée, a missionary, was on the northeastern shore of Lake Erie during the winter of 1669–70, an area he called “the earthly Paradise of Canada.” “The woods are open,” he wrote, “interspersed with beautiful meadows, watered by rivers and rivulets, filled with fish and beaver, an abundance of fruits, and … full of game.” The men had more meat than they could eat, picked wild walnuts, chestnuts, apples, plums, cranberries, and grapes. They made 25 or 30 hogsheads of red wine “as good as vin de Grave.” Lake Erie and its region retained these pristine qualities for a century and a half.
In the middle of the nineteenth century the south shore of the lake became critically important to the iron and steel industry. Coal was readily available by rail from the mines in western Pennsylvania, southeastern Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky. After the building of canals and locks, iron ore was shipped cheaply by ore carriers from the great northern Minnesota deposits through the Great Lakes to Lake Erie. Steel mills, metal-working industries, and, later, the auto industry grew in the large cities on the U.S. side of the lake—Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, and Detroit—and in smaller towns like Huron, Sandusky, Lorain, Ashtabula, Conneaut, and Erie. The St. Lawrence Seaway in the mid-twentieth century connected the lake to the Atlantic and so to the world. By the 1960s, 10.4 million people lived on the south shore of Lake Erie and it had become one of the world’s greatest concentrations of heavy industry.
The Canadian north shore, excepting Windsor, did not develop industrially, in part because of the virtual absence of coal in Ontario. Windsor, which is just across the river from Detroit, became an auto town. But the entire Canadian population along the lake was only 1.4 million.
As with the Savannah River, the dumping of untreated human excrement and industrial wastes into rivers that drained into the lake and directly into the lake itself created massive pollution. Cholera epidemics in the late nineteenth century had been an unheeded omen. The pollution became progressively worse and by the 1960s was desperate. Noel M. Burns, an authority on Lake Erie, identified seven major problems which demanded “serious attention:” soil erosion, creating siltation; loss of shoreline marshes; destruction of one of the world’s great fisheries for herring, lake trout, sturgeon, whitefish, sauger, and walleye, along with the accidental introduction of new parasitic species; a great increase in pathogenic bacteria and refuse; an immense increase in the water’s phosphorous content, causing rapid algae growth; an enormous rise in the number and amounts of toxics, especially the dangerous heavy metals; and the killing of fish at electrical stations and water works, aggravated by the recent development of nuclear generating plants.
By the early sixties, Democratic Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine had emerged as the leading congressional authority on both water and air pollution and became known as “Mr. Clean.” Muskie’s father had come to the U.S. from Poland in 1903 and settled in the small town of Rumford, Maine, where he ran a tailor shop. Edmund was born in 1914, the second of six children. He was educated at the local public schools, at Bates College, and at the Cornell Law School. He was an outstanding student and a natural leader. During World War II he served on destroyer escorts in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.
The state of Maine, with dense woods, myriad lakes and streams, spare industry, and low population density, was hardly a leading polluter. But Muskie learned about “public concern and indignation” in Rumford, where he was raised. “Our river,” he wrote, “the Androscoggin, … begins its run to the ocean in the high, clear mountain streams in the northwestern corner of Maine. It flows into New Hampshire, then back into Maine, picking up pulp and paper wastes in Berlin, New Hampshire, Rumford and Livermore Falls-Jay, Maine.” As David Nevin wrote, “Nature made [the river] one of the most beautiful and a whole series of pulp and paper mills have made it one of the filthiest rivers in America. A pall of smoke and a sour odor seeping from the single mill chat dominates Rumford hangs overhead like a rich uncle’s foul breath which everyone resolutely ignores.”
After the war Muskie practiced law in Waterville. Moved by FDR and the New Deal, he became a Democrat. This was a problem in Maine, which was overwhelmingly Republican. Muskie pretty much created a viable Democratic party so that he could have a political career. He won several elections to the state legislature. He then challenged the dominant Republicans by running for governor. He was elected narrowly in 1954 and then handsomely in 1956. In 1958 he ran for the Senate and in the Democratic sweep defeated the Republican incumbent by a wide margin, a victory that attracted national attention.
Early in 1959 he ran into trouble with his majority leader, Lyndon Johnson. Their first conversation began p
leasantly enough, and the Texan gave him some avuncular advice. “There will be times, Ed, when you won’t know how you’re going to vote until they start calling the M’s.” The key issue of the moment was an amendment to Rule 22, limiting filibusters on civil rights. The liberals wanted restriction and Johnson had advanced a compromise that he explained. Muskie, who had lined up with the liberals, was silent. “Well, Ed,” Johnson said, “you haven’t much to say on Rule 22.” Putting on the laconic style of the Maine farmer, Nevin wrote, Muskie “took the straw out of his mouth, hooked a thumb in his overalls and said, ‘Well, Lyndon, we haven’t gotten to the M’s yet.’ ” Johnson did not like that crack.
He punished Muskie by giving him his fourth, fifth, and sixth choices of committees—Banking and Currency, Government Operations, and Public Works. While Muskie was disappointed at the outset, as things worked out, Johnson had done him a favor. Fate did him another: two powerful senior Democrats on the Public Works Committee died—chairman Dennis Chavez of New Mexico and the formidable Robert Kerr of Oklahoma. Liberal Pat McNamara of Michigan became chairman. He created a new special Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution and installed Muskie as chairman. A quick study, he soon was an acknowledged expert and his dedication and intelligence won the admiration of his fellow senators as well as Lyndon Johnson. He would play the central congressional role in shaping the water and air pollution legislation of the sixties.5
The first federal statute that addressed degraded water was the Water Pollution Control Act of 1948. It provided for abatement procedures against industrial and public polluters as well as federal financial assistance to localities for the building of sewage treatment plants. The Justice Department, with the consent of the state, could bring action against a polluter before a board. It would issue recommendations to end the pollution. If the state did not comply, the government would seek an injunction. The law applied only to interstate waterways. Until 1956 it was virtually unenforced. It also provided $27.8 million for loans to the states for construction of treatment plants, a token amount. The Public Health Service was responsible for administration and its performance was dismal. Amendments in 1956 mildly strengthened enforcement and in the next five years 13 abatement actions were filed, none brought to conclusion. There was another round of amendments for enforcement in 1961. By 1965, a total of 21 actions had been started, only one of which reached a court, where it was settled by a consent agreement.
Thus, by the mid-sixties the nation confronted an immense water pollution problem which was rapidly growing worse as a result of rising population, industrial growth, and the obsolescence of treatment facilities. But there was virtually no program to deal with it. On January 31, 1963, Senator Muskie introduced his pollution control bill. The states would be required to establish water quality standards for all interstate waterways. Failing to do so, the federal government would step in. Recently introduced laundry detergents, which formed great mounds of suds in rivers and lakes and brought water out of taps with heads, would be banned unless the detergents met standards of biodegradability. Grants for treatment plants would be significantly increased. Pollution by federal agencies would be regulated. A new Water Pollution Control Administration in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, replacing the Public Health Service, would administer the program.
Muskie held hearings and pushed his bill through the Public Works Committee and the Senate, the latter on October 16, 1963, by a vote of 69 to 11. As usual, the lobbies made their stand in the House. The committee stalled for more than a year and the measure it reported on September 4, 1964, made a shambles of Muskie’s bill. HEW would recommend, not set, water quality standards. The provisions covering detergents and federal installations were removed. A new gimmick, certain to cause trouble, forbade construction of an interceptor drain in northern California. The Rules Committee dutifully objected and denied a rule. Muskie had to start over.
He introduced S.4 on January 6, 1965, his 1963 bill with two deletions. The federal installation provision was eliminated because the President had taken care of that problem by executive order. On May 21, 1965, the Soap and Detergent Association announced that the industry had licked the sudsing problem and that all the large firms would switch to the new formula by July 1, 1965. The detergent provision was removed. But the heart of the bill remained: the establishment of state water quality standards under federal supervision.
Senate hearings were held in January 1965 and the committee reported favorably on the 27th of that month by a vote of 16 to 1. The next day the Senate went along 68 to 8; 3 Republicans who had voted against the 1963 bill now switched.
The speed with which Muskie had moved caught the Johnson administration by surprise. In mid-February Bill Moyers held a White House meeting of representatives from HEW, the Bureau of the Budget, and the Office of Science and Technology to figure out what the President should do. They agreed to accept Muskie’s S.4 except for strengthening enforcement. But they were worried about what the House Public Works Committee might do.
In his message to Congress on conservation and beauty on February 8, 1965, the President spoke at length on water quality. He noted that “every major river is now polluted,” that in the summer of 1964 over a fourth of Lake Erie had been almost wholly without oxygen, that waterborne viruses constituted a “significant health hazard,” and so on. He urged passage of the Senate bill with stronger enforcement. Clearly, he was nudging the House.
While the new House elected in 1964 viewed water quality more sympathetically than its predecessor, it remained more obstinate than the Senate. The powerful polluting industries were determined to strip authority over state standards from the federal government, with the oil industry, a massive polluter, leading the way.
Democratic Representative John A. Blatnik of Minnesota introduced H.R. 3988, a bill much like S. 4. Hearings were held in February 1965, highlighted by the testimony of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York calling for substantially larger grants to the states for treatment plants.
In its March 31 report the Public Works Committee radically changed the standards provision. HEW’s final authority was abandoned. Now each state would be required to file notice of intent to accept standards. If it failed to do so, it would lose eligibility for federal construction awards. The committee added $50 million for these grants. On April 28, 1965, the House accepted this version 396 to 0.
The developments in the House caused great concern in the White House. Philip S. Hughes of the Bureau of the Budget wrote that the committee report “threatens the President’s objectives by deleting authority to establish Federal water quality and by increasing the waste treatment authorization carrot without adding the enforcement improvement stick,” a view shared by Budget Director Kermit Gordon. Wilbur Cohen of HEW called the result a “very weak ineffectual bill which carries with it none of the President’s recommendations.”
Since the houses differed so fundamentally, it took the conference nearly five months to reach a compromise. Muskie and the administration held out for a restoration of federal authority and won. The state would have the first crack at fixing quality standards for its interstate waterways. If it failed to act or set inadequate standards by June 30, 1967, HEW would determine its standards. The conference also increased the appropriation for sewage treatment plants from $100 to $150 million. A Water Pollution Control Administration under a new assistant secretary of HEW would administer the program.
Both houses approved the conference report on September 21, the House 379 to 0 and the Senate by voice vote. The President signed the Water Quality Act of 1965 in the White House on October 2, 1965. He pointed out that two centuries earlier George Washington had stood on his lawn at Mt. Vernon and had looked down on a Potomac that was “clean and sweet and pure.” Theodore Roosevelt swam in the river. “But today the Potomac is a river of decaying sewage and rotten algae. … All the swimmers are gone.” He promised that “we are going to reopen the Potomac for swimming by 1975.
” Not so. Larry O’Brien observed in 1986: “As we sit here that hasn’t been fulfilled.”
Stewart Udall, no mean bureaucratic infighter, had watched these legislative developments with keen interest. While Congress, the administration, and HEW saw water and air pollution as a public health question, he viewed them as natural resource issues. He wanted to take over the new water agency and the small HEW air program that would soon be expanded. Water was a big issue in the currently dry Northeast and he already had a small desalinization program in Interior. Both Udall and the President were interested in a river basin program which would treat water as a resource, including cleaning up the basins.
Udall moved a month and a half before the water bill was signed. He discussed reorganization with Joe Califano, who handled domestic issues in the White House, and with Charles Schultze, the new director of the budget. On September 2, 1965, he wrote the President, “Our Great Society goals will be achieved by new laws, by appropriations, by reorganization, and by crusading leadership.” Water and air pollution required the last two. They demanded “a reorganization to put the various programs under a single Cabinet officer, prepared to give crusading leadership on this issue.” Secretary John Gardner of HEW provided this leadership on Medicare and education. Water and air, however, are at the “heart of our paramount program interests here.” Udall suggested a trade: he might agree to transfer to HEW the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ jurisdiction over education on the reservations.
Califano suggested that the President wait until HEW had picked the new assistant secretary. Udall, he wrote, was the “most enthusiastic” member of the cabinet, and that has “advantages.” He asked the President for authorization to discuss the matter with Udall. Johnson approved and scribbled, “I think without any info Udall is right.”
Udall told Gardner of his plan to convert Interior into a department of natural resources in which water pollution would be a central feature in the proposed federal-state river basin system. Gardner had no interest in releasing the new water agency or in getting the Indian education jurisdiction. Udall went ahead with a bill to launch the river basin plan, including transfer of the water agency.
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