801 
balanced development of the various uses of the sea as the key and 
primary problem needing solution. 
Therefore, I would like to focus my remarks today on the Commis- 
sion recommendations in chapter 7 for an independent agency report- 
ing directly to the President and intended, to use the Commission’s 
words, “to provide the means for undertaking the full range of actions 
needed to realize the Nation’s growing stake in the effective use of 
the sea.” 
Having commented on chapter 7 and the organizational recommen- 
dations, I would like then to come to what in my opinion is the most 
urgent management problem demanding the attention of such an 
agency, namely heading off an impending environmental crisis in the 
coastal zone. 
This you will remember is discussed in chapter 3 of the Commission’s 
report. Finally if there is time I would like to comment briefly on the 
Commission’s recommendations for global environmental monitoring 
and prediction as developed in chapter 5. 
So let me turn now to the question of Federal organization. As I 
have already said I consider the question of Federal organization the 
most important issue bearing on effective use of the sea facing the 
Nation today. 
Fortunately, it is one that the Commission has dealt with extremely 
well, and I cannot find fault with either the rationale, the analysis, 
nor the recommendations that stem from them. In fact, I should like 
to indicate my admiration for, as well as my endorsement of, the 
material in this section of the report. 
I would like to say more. It is my opinion that if the recommenda- 
tions of this chapter were the only recommendations of the report 
adopted by the Federal Government, all the remaining recommenda- 
tions in the other chapters that were sound would ultimately be 
adopted as a consequence of this one. 
Conversely, without such an agency, and the corresponding modifi- 
cations of the committee structure of Congress to simplify the juris- 
dictional oversight, the other recommendations of the report, however 
desirable and important, would remain in jeopardy. 
I bear in mind that the entire Federal executive structure is under 
review, and that major changes may be in the making over the next 
several years. In my opinion, the formation of NOAA as an independ- 
ent agency should not wait for this larger review and possible over- 
haul of the Federal structure. The Commission report provides ade- 
quate and persuasive reasons for thinking that whatever the ultimate 
Department structure, the activities proposed for consolidation in 
NOAA belong together under a single administrator, and that this 
consolidation is already long overdue. 
Whether NOAA would continue as an independent agency or be 
placed ultimately under some supervening departmental structure is 
a second-order question that need not be answered now. The decision 
to establish NOAA, however, I believe cannot wait. 
To come to matters of detail, I have in the past favored a somewhat 
more inclusive grouping of agencies than the Commission proposes 
for NOAA. My reasoning started with a concept of the functions to 
be performed by such a new agency and its consequent internal organi- 
zation to exercise these functions. 
