ENVIRONMENTAL
CURRENTS
Capital Spending for Pollution Abatement
In I967 U. S. industry expects to up its spending for pollution abatement equipment by alniost 7 0 % . A National Industrial Conference Board surccy of 392 companies indicates spending will increase from last year's $17 1 million to a predicted $29 1 million this year. Of all industrial categories, only transportation equipment (excluding motor vehicles) will probably show a decrease. Still, pollution expenditures averaged only 1.7% of total capital budget for 1966, ranging from 3.76% in primary nonferrous metals to 0.18% in rubber products. NICB figures indicate that company size is apparently of little significance in determining the extent of a company's expenditures. With the exception of smaller companies (assets of $10 to $25 million and pollution at a rate of O S % ) , all groups averaged between 1-296. Investment for abatement equipment in 1966 was about evenly split between air and watcr control; durable goods producers allocate more of their funds to air, while the reverse is true for nondurable goods producers. However, companies reporting to NICB expect to cut their appropriations by about IO% in 1967, with cutbacks coming primarily from the durable goods industrics. Many companies feel their expenditures during the next few years will be heavily influenced by new legislation, and most of them see more vigorous legislation coming. Predicting Floods via Satellite A fast, reliable operational system of reporting potential flood conditions is the aim of an experiment the Weather Bureau is carrying out with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's ATS- 1, the synchronous
satellite over the Pacific. Three unattended stations (in Arkansas, Oregon, and California) automatically record river levels and accumulated precipitation every 15 minutes and send measurements to the satellite upon demand. The information is relayed to Weather Bureau hydrologists responsible for issuing public flood warnings. But the Weather Bureau is not the only agency exploring the use of satellites to acquire hydrologic data. The Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation Satellite (EROS) , planned for operation in 1970 (ES&T,June, page 460), will study distribution of water, as well as other problems in cartography, geography, geology, and the marine sciences. Volume I , Number 9, Septemher 1967 685
Pollution-Not
for the Cities Alone
Montana, which spreads its 700,000 people over almost 150,000 square miles, is wrestling with two pollution problems: one involves the copper pollution of a trout-rich stream, the other fluoride discharges from a phosphate plant. The copper pollution is the side effect of the nationwide copper strike, which began on July 15. Ordinarily, water pumped from Anaconda Co.’s mines in Butte goes through a precipitation plant before it is discharged into the Clark Fork of the Columbia River. During the strike, maintenance men have continued to pump the water out; the unions have refused to operate the precipitation plant, since they consider the copper reclaimed in the plant a part of production, Anaconda started adding lime to precipitate the copper, but the river was soon in trouble. One 30-mile section was completely dead. Recalling the six years the river required to recover from pollution resulting from a 1959 strike, the State Fish and Game Department sought and received a restraining order from the courts. Anaconda reopened the precipitator on Aug. 1 1. A big river with quantities of fresh water being added from many side streams, the Clark Fork quickly bounced back. But to the unions, operation of the precipitator was tantamount to strikebreaking. Under union threat to pull out all maintenance men, Anaconda stopped the precipitator in early September. Instead, it is liming the water twice, then storing it in holding ponds. Fish and Game Department Director Frank H. Dunkle is adopting a wait-and-see attitude: “Anaconda has been very cooperative in our effortsto stop pollution of the river, but if the strike goes on for very long. I don’t think the ponds can handle the volumes of water involved. Also, liming gives a copper precipitate that is light and doesn’t seem to settle out permanently. Meanwhile, twice daily we are sampling the river at six points along a 70-mile stretch below the waste water input. The Clark Fork has some of the finest brown trout fishing in the United States. We went to court to protect it. and we’ll go again if we have to.” The phosphate plant is the subject of the first intrastate air pollution abatement action taken under the Clean Air Act (ES&T,June, page 463). Participants at the conference, which starts off the abatement proceedings, concluded that the air pollution problem “is so serious that, if it were within the power of the conference participants, Rocky Mountain Phosphates, Inc., would be shut down immediately and remain closed until air pollution control measures, operating and maintenance practices have been demonstrated to be adequate to achieve compliance with the Montana Ambient Air Quality Standards.” Lacking the power, the participants recommended that the Montana State Board of Health close the phosphate plant until the company indicates how it plans to control the fluoride emissions. The conference recommendations are now in the hands of the Secretary of HEW. Although not required to approve the conference recommendations, the Secretary has gone along with recommendations forwarded by other pollution abatement conferences. 686 Environmental Science and Technology
ENVIRONMENTAL
CURRENTS
D worsky Technical inanpower and trvhnical inforrnation singled out
New Chief a t COWRR
A new chairman has signed in at the Committee on Water Resources Research. He is Dr. Leonard Du.orskj, on leave from Cornel1 University where he is professor of civil engineering and head of the Water Resources Center. From 1946 to 1964 Dworsky worked in the Public Health Service on the federal water pollution control program, where one of his main interests was in integrating pollution control efforts in the over-all water development program. This background will serve him well in COWRR where emphasis is on coordinating the Government’s water resources research program (ES&T, May, page 400). The fifth chairman in COWRR’s five-year history, Dworsky minimizes the problems of these frequent changes : “My prcdecessor, Robert Smith, provided a great deal of background to smooth the transition before he returned to the University of Kansas. Many of the other members of the committee have serLed for a number of years. Working groups in the various areas have continued to function through this transition, and I’m confident our program will move along.” For the year he will spend as COWRR chairman, Dworsky sees two areas coming in for special attention. The first is that of technical manpower: “At its meeting in July the Universities Council on Water Resources, on which I served, posed this problem. UCOWR is concerned about where funds will come from to meet the manpower needs, particularly at thc graduate level.” The other area Dworsky singles out is technical information, where he sees the start-up of the Water Resources Scientific Information Center having a significant impact. Preserving the Habitability of Earth
“Man is becoming a geological and biological agent who through his technology can not only change the world but destroy large parts of it without realizing that he is doing so,” says Dr. Roger Revelle of Harvarcl University and chairman of the U. S. National Committee for the International Biological Program. Fifty nations are participating in the IBP which will initiate and correlate world-wide research efforts directed at an understanding of man’s effects on his environment. Dr. Revelle announced five major research programs and 104 individual projects as the U. S. contribution to IBP. The five major research studies include aerobiology, large ecosystems, the Eskimo population, terrestrial life in the Hawaiian Islands, and phenology. Volume 1, Number 9, September 1967 687
