so on. It is definitely time to recouple the house of man and the house of 
nature and assess and manage them as one integrated ecosystem. 
In recent months the writing of environmental impact statements, as 
required by NEPA, has been criticized in the pages of Science and other 
professional magazines as being superficial and exercises of bureaucratic 
futility. As I see it, current impact assessment is not so much bad or inadequate 
science as it is wrong-level applied science, a viewpoint that has not been 
emphasized in recent discussions of the subject. In other words, if NEPA is to 
survive the economic and political pressure of the future, assessment must 
evolve as rapidly as possible from the present largely descriptive component 
approach to a more holistic approach which combines the use of broad 
ecosystem-level indices of structure and function with specific local or 
population factors (i.e., “red flags”) that are of special public concern (such as 
fish or game, or an endangered species). Also, economic and ecologic 
considerations must be integrated, not undertaken as separate studies without 
common denominators. This can be done, and if I had time I could describe 
two cases where we were successful in such a merger. (Write me and I’ll send 
reprints.) 
Finally, the impact-assessor and the decision-maker should be part of the 
same team, or at least sit around the same table to review all the alternatives. In 
other words, a good assessment cannot be made piecemeal any more than one 
can understand water or a coral reef by component study alone. 
So much for general theory; now for some suggestions for EPA and 
Directors of EPA laboratories. In pursuing its mission to reduce and control 
pollution, EPA has so far concentrated efforts in two areas: (1) monitoring 
technology, designed to determine the what, where, and how much of 
undesirable inputs into our environment, and (2) control technology and 
regulations designed to roll back the tide of effluents which threaten our health 
and the quality of our life. These efforts, of course, are appropriate and need 
to be continued without let-up, but they are essentially negative in approach 
since they indicate to industry and to people in general what they must not do, 
but not what they can do. I believe the time has come to add two positive 
dimensions to the menu; namely, (1) waste-management systems that couple 
in-house waste treatment with the assimilatory capacity of surrounding natural 
ecosystems that serve as the ultimate tertiary treatment plants, and (2) a 
merging of ecologic and economic assessments, along lines mentioned in my 
earlier review of theory so as to demonstrate what we all believe to be true; 
namely, that the economic return of clean environments is greater than the 
short-term gains that may result from ignoring or postponing pollution 
abatement. 
vi 
