131 



Mr. Chairman, I realize this is a very general statement. It does not 

 address itself to the specifics of the problem or to the many details 

 that were brought out in "Our Nation and the Sea," the report of 

 the Commission. My principal purpose here is to urge you to continue 

 with what you have started here and follow it all the way through to 

 the point of submitting to the Congress appropriate legislation. 



I would like to add that I do not have too much pride of author- 

 ship in the drafting of H.R. 4838, which does address itself to part of 

 the Commission report; I submitted the bill as a first step. It would 

 be easy for us to set back and give lip service to the proposition of re- 

 organizing the entire Federal Government so that we have in it a 

 department of the environment. This could be done in the Depart- 

 ment of the Interior by taking out certain of its functions such as 

 the territorial and insular affairs function, perhaps the Indian func- 

 tions, and others, and restructuring it so it would be a department of 

 environmental management; but I think we all know the practical 

 side of this. I think we all are familiar with the structures of the 

 Congress well enough to know that preceding the attainment of such 

 a final goal we have to take intermediate steps. I think a bill which 

 this committee can come out with that would establish a national 

 oceanography agency will be a good intermediate step and I hope the 

 committee realizes in its wisdom that in this area we are going to 

 have to crawl before we can walk. 



Mr. Chairman, I would also like to call attention to remarks that 

 were made in the record by the witness a few days ago, pointing out 

 the difficulties we are having in managing the environment of the 

 Chesapeake Bay. This is a more sharply focused document dealing 

 with the problem^s of a specific estuary, but it points out the fact that 

 as of today we do not have the kind of management we need to save 

 areas of the environment from total pollution and total consumption 

 through the works of man. 



I distributed the remarks that I made in the record. I do not ask 



that they be part of the record of this hearing, but I call them to the 



attention of the subcommittee members and would solicit their patience 



to look through them and would be pleased to have any comments, 



. criticisms, or remarks they might have dealing with this subject. 



I certainly appreciate the opportunity of being here, Mr. Chairman. 



Mr. Leistnon. Thank you, Congressman Morton. I commend you for 

 the service dedicated to your district and to your State and the Nation 

 as a member of this full committee and a former member of this sub- 

 committee. You have always been a person who has been fair and im- 

 partial and who, when you reached a decision in your own mind, took 

 it and you stayed with it, and I commend you for it. 



Counsel has suggested to me that he thought it would be appropriate 

 to ha\'e printed in the record immediately following j^our prepared 

 statement the statement that you made on the floor, which we have 

 copies of here and, since it is so inexorably related to the problem in 

 its entirety that we are covering now. without objection, I would ask 

 unanimous consent that it would be printed in the record of the hearing 

 at this point. 



