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partnershipping and enlarging peripheral vision and seeing what 

 each other are doing. 



It is absolutely productive and a concept that I've believed in for 

 a long time. I would just like to point out and ask you to do some- 

 thing, if you would. 



Earlier this year, the Resources Committee reported a bill that 

 would reorganize the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminis- 

 tration subsequent to the supposed demise of the Department of 

 Commerce. And as part of that bill, we wrote in a provision which 

 moved toward what you all think we ought to do in terms of setting 

 up perhaps a formal way to cooperate with each other. 



We would have established in Subtitle F the National Institute 

 for Aquatic Resources, which was an attempt — of course, it didn't 

 survive the leadership process because we're of course not into ex- 

 panding government at this point. But it is a concept which I be- 

 lieve I heard each of you talk about today, not in these terms, but 

 in terms of the cooperative research and development efforts that 

 we ought to be promoting. 



So I would just like to ask you, and I will provide you each with 

 a copy of this probably through the mail, I'd like to ask you each 

 for your comments relative to this. And maybe we could just use 

 this as a kind of a model to say, okay, well, this is certainly the 

 concept and we're certainly headed in the right direction. But obvi- 

 ously, we've got to do certain things differently because we did this 

 quickly, I must admit. 



Secondly, I'd also like to ask you to take a look at something that 

 Mr. Weldon and Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Gilchrist and I have been 

 working cooperatively on. It is in the form of a bill, number H.R. 

 2827. 



And essentially, this bill would consolidate environmental science 

 activities that are found throughout the Federal Government and 

 in certain other private institutions, to consolidate and improve 

 governmental environmental research by organizing a National In- 

 stitute for the Environment, once again, in a slightly different 

 area — that is, environmental research £ind our understanding of en- 

 vironment. 



And if we had a panel of people who were from environmental 

 and scientific organizations here today, they would have espoused 

 the same common theme. We need to know what each other are 

 doing. We need to be able to help each other. We need not to dupli- 

 cate what each other are doing. We need to increase our peripheral 

 vision. We need to be partners in this effort. 



This bill, interestingly enough — and I was going to read the pre- 

 amble, which I'm not going to do. But it says all the same things 

 that you all said. 



So I would like to ask you if you would take a look at this bill 

 as perhaps a model as well for creating an ongoing formal partner- 

 ship, if you will, and give us some input as to what you think about 

 it. 



And I would just conclude this by sajdng this, and any of you can 

 comment if you like. 



Fifty years ago, in another area of science, we realized the same 

 thing. We realized that we were doing research and development 

 on issues that had to do with health in hospitals all across the 



