ly increased. Tragically, my own State of Ohio is a microcosm of 

 many of these problems, all the way from radioactive hazards at 

 the Fernald facility, part of our nuclear weapons facility, to toxic 

 waste sites in Newburgh Heights, Uniontown, and on and on and 

 on. In many other States, the damage we have done is equally 

 severe. For decades, most of these problems went unnoticed or were 

 purposely unaddressed. 



We are paying the price now and it is a very high one, indeed. It 

 includes cleanup of DOE Weapons Complex sites, which once was 

 estimated to cost about $110 billion — well, actually, first it started 

 out about $6 billion, then started escalating with every new esti- 

 mate we got. But it w£is up to $110 billion; it is now estimated to be 

 at least $160 billion over a 20- to 30-year period and may well go to 

 over $200 billion during that same period of time. 



The General Accounting Office estimates in a report released 

 last month to our Committee that American industry and Govern- 

 ment combined will spend over $160 billion per year by the year 

 2000 just to meet environmental goals. 



GAO also estimates that we have spent over $1 trillion, "t," tril- 

 lion, on environmental protection in the past 20 years. 



But these problems are not just domestic. They extend to the 

 international arena, as well. The emissions of carbon dioxide and 

 other greenhouse gases are believed to be major contributors to the 

 global warming phenomenon that has potential to cause severe 

 world-wide environmental and economic disruption during the next 

 half century. 



Over this same time period, destruction of the earth's very thin 

 stratospheric ozone layer by chemical emissions poses potentially 

 serious problems affecting the earth's food supplies and the health 

 of hundreds of millions of people. This creation of ozone smog from 

 deteriorating forests and the fall of acid rain, desertification, ocean 

 pollution, trafficking of hazardous wastes are all issues affecting 

 the global commons that require international sigreements to 

 achieve long-term progress. 



The United States must provide aggressive leadership towards 

 solutions to these problems. In point of fact. Vice President Al 

 Gore has written extensively and well on this subject, including his 

 book, "Earth in the Balance." 



The Environmental Protection Agency is our Nation's primary 

 institutional safeguard to ensure that the air we breathe, the water 

 we drink, and the wastes we dispose of are not harmful to our qual- 

 ity of life. Since EPA was created in 1970, its workload has grown 

 in proportion to the burgeoning environmental problems and often 

 complex Federal laws to address them. However, it has become 

 painfully apparent that the status of EPA does not reflect the mag- 

 nitude of the environmental challenges it now faces. 



It is a fact of diplomatic life, for example, that the seriousness 

 with which one views another government's concerns is influenced 

 by the stature of the person who articulates them. A subcabinet 

 EPA sends the wrong signal to the rest of the world about the pri- 

 ority and the leadership given by the United States to the cause of 

 environmental protection. This problem has been underscored re- 

 peatedly in the past by the United States' failure to send Cabinet- 

 level representatives to international meetings. 



