961 
Mr. Kerru. I have been particularly impressed with the comments 
of my colleagues on the committee. There isn’t much left for me to 
say except to fill in the chinks. As you perhaps know, I am on the 
Commerce Committee too, and initially sought membership on this 
committee primarily because I saw more of an opportunity to help 
my constituents here. 
Fish protein concentrate perhaps triggered my interest because that 
was in a way related to the Commerce Committee. The laws regula- 
ting the sale of food that contains filth came out of that committee. I 
have been terribly disappointed in what has not been done in the past, 
and so I thought that the report of the Commission was an extraor- 
dinarily valuable document. It deserves much more response than it 
has had, by being referred to yet another agency or another commis- 
sion which isn’t ready to tackle the problem. 
Tam just going to list some of the things that have been in my baili- 
wick. I have here some clippings that I brought in this morning from 
newspapers I read at my home over the weekend. These are from 
papers in my district, and relate to the problems we are discussing. 
“The fishing industry faces extinction.” This is an editorial] talking 
about what the Russians are doing in violating our 12-mile fishery 
zone. “Oil cleanup cost in bay estimated at $100,000.” “Pressure from 
big brother’—Uncle Sam—trying to get the Continental Shelf re- 
sources that Massachusetts and Maine claim are their own. 
Here is an article on the grounding at Chappaquoit, where a tug, 
unlicensed, towed a barge onto a reef 2 miles off course. The barge 
had 140.000 barrels of oil. “Oil shiek hits.” “Oil damage to shell fishes 
seen.” Keith, we need more rules. “Oil slick hits Falmouth business. 
Protection for ships and water fowl. World fisheries rivalry shifts. 
Oil company wants harbor lands,” I could go on and on. Here is an- 
other paper with three such articles on the front page. 
So let’s look at some of the areas where an agency such as is con- 
templated under the Commission report could be helpful. 
First, it would seem to coordinate joint efforts where an interrela- 
tionship of existing agencies is required. When I came back from the 
Torrey Canyon disaster, I furnished the Department of the Interior 
and the Coast Guard with material that I had brought back, about 
the way the towns handled the oil slick in England. I couldn’t even 
convince the agencies to get together and meet with me to establish a 
standing operating procedure for dealing with such an eventuality, 
should it occur on our own shoreline. I personally had to send to each 
of the towns in my district a standing operating procedure for the 
use of booms and other methods, which only now are becoming avail- 
able. I might add that in this latest instance, it would appear that 
things were well handled but it was mostly because of luck. The barge 
that went aground came free as they were tightening the lines, so that 
it wouldn’t slip further onto the shore, and they floated it off. Oil 
floats, as you know, on top of the surface of water, so the barge 
wouldn’t sink. Booms would have been no good in the seas that existed 
in this particular area, because the oil would slop over the booms; it 
was a No. 2 grade and very thin. 
So, although it came out nicely in the end and the damage was rela- 
tively small, had it been crude or residual it could have been a very, 
