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bodies of water; even the city at the mouth of a river system pollutes 
coastal areas used by others. We have the example of St. Joseph, Mo., 
designating one of our proudest rivers as its “sewer.” These procedures 
have also injected into considerations of water quality the desire of 
communities to compete with each other for industry. 
In my own State, Maryland, a considerable loss has been suffered 
by the city of Cumberland from the flight to neighboring States of 
industry seeking less stringent control of pollution of the Potomac. 
The results of this policy for Cumberland are obvious to those Mem- 
bers of Congress who deal with depressed-areas legislation; the effects 
on the river can be smelled on a warm day with the right wind from 
the foot of Capitol Hill. 
Mr. Carl L. Klein has testified that present legislation denies the 
Federal Government the one key tool to control water pellution: the 
power to set uniform water quality standards and to enforce them with 
effluent controls designed to prevent the destruction of aquatic environ- 
ments. H.R. 19359 provides this power, and in its permit provisions 
provides a straightforward tool for enforcement. 
The longer we wait to set up up clear procedures and authority to 
protect and restore aquatic environments, the larger the investment 
we will have made in production systems which make inadequate use 
of recycling techniques. The provisions of the bill requiring tertiary 
sewage treatment by 1976 are excellent. Municipal sewage plants pro- 
duce a vast quantity of organic nutrients of great value which are cur- 
rently dumped instead of being put back into agriculture. 
The major reason is the lack of any incentive to develop the dis- 
tribution systems for this nutrient. 
Our present heavy reliance on inorganic nutrients in agriculture 
is costing us dear. Some estimates indicate that first-rate Kansas 
farmland is losing its fertility at the rate of 1 percent a year. 
We need to devote all the skilled manpower and money we can 
to the substantive problems of developing closed and recycled sys- 
tems for waste water. We should not divert these resources to an end- 
less series of negotiations and confrontations between Federal and 
State officials; we should not offer to municipalities a bonus in the 
form of new industry for their failure to enforce water quality 
standards. Business needs to know now what is expected of it; the 
public needs to know now the costs of clean water; the Congress 
needs to know now where the responsibility lies for solving this prob- 
lem. The most effective approach, the approach embodied in this bill, 
is to give the Secretary of the Interior the responsibility for estab- 
lishing effluent and dumping standards sufficient to protect aquatic 
environments and to permit him to increase the sophistication of his 
standards as our increasing knowledge permits. 
This is already an innovative bill; we would like to suggest one 
addition. Pesticide, herbicide, silt, and fertilizer runoff are among 
the more serious threats to our marine and aquatic environments. The 
problem of regulating them is complex. We would, however, like to 
see in this bill authority for the Secretary to publish a list of those 
materials which represent a runoff danger to marine environments, 
and to require that major users of these materials maintain adequate 
records and provide adequate information to determine the degree 
of threat posed by such substances; and to permit the Secretary, in 
