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us to get to new products or new processes which will replace the 

 dirty ones that we have today. Fundamental research of that type 

 is absolutely necessary, but very often could not be handled just by 

 EPA because they don't have the contacts with the fundamental 

 science community which is able to do that kind of work. So we 

 need teamwork. We need teamwork at the Federal agency level 

 and we need teamwork with industry and academia. 



Senator Reid. Dr. Ford? 



Dr. Ford. It is a particularly interesting issue to me, coming 

 from a big company. We have talked about this for years. 



Certainly there are things that need to be done. There need to 

 be new unit operations, new solvent systems, and things like this. 

 I think we all know about those things. But there are some system- 

 atic things that need to be done, too. 



If I were in a big company today, and I wanted to make my 

 stockholders happy and make some money, I would go out and look 

 for a commodity chemical market — maybe aspirin or something like 

 that where you have a high end-of-pipe pollution control cost — in 

 the commodity market, everybody has about the same process, ev- 

 erybody makes a thin dime and makes a few dollars, nobody upsets 

 the apple cart. I would develop a whole new process that didn't 

 have these end-of-pipe costs. Right away that market would be 

 mine because there is no reason why a chemical process needs to 

 pollute. There is nothing inherent in it. We have not discovered 

 how to make these kind of process chemistries, and that is where 

 we need to be. There ought to be some kinds of tax incentives, reg- 

 ulatory incentives, and so forth for moving in this direction. The 

 opportunity is there. 



Senator Reid. Mr. DeGennaro? 



Mr. DeGennaro. I have nothing to add, Mr. Chairman. 



Senator Reid. Dr. Ford, during your career, you have worked 

 both in industry and in the academic world. In your testimony you 

 mentioned that you have worked with several EPA labs, including 

 the one in Nevada. 



How do you compare the EPA labs to academic and industry 

 labs? 



Dr. FORD. As I said earlier, they are multi-disciplinary, so they 

 are very friendly to industrial people. The real weakness is that 

 they haven't had the money over the years. 



Mr. DeGennaro made some comments about the budget over 

 time. It is my understanding that they have been flat budgeted 

 since about 1980. Before that they had taken some hits. But of 

 equal importance is the fact that the overall EPA budget has been 

 going up. If I were trying to operate a company where R&D as a 

 percentage of my budget were going down, I don't think anybody 

 would buy my stock. 



And that is what is happening here. It is becoming a less impor- 

 tant function within EPA. 



As Dr. Glaze said, there needs to be at each EPA laboratory a 

 group of nationally known scientists. At one time I could go 

 through each EPA laboratory and I could talk about people who 

 had a national reputation. A lot of these people have retired and 

 have not been replaced. A lot of people just haven't had the funding 

 and have gone off some place else. 



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