Letters. Textile waste data - ACS Publications

total cost and total value of clean water. The total value of clean water is the sum of gains and losses—$381,000,000 per year, for Illinois. Availa...
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totaled $273,000,000 per year, of which recreation contributed $194,000,000. Before these data can be compared with cost, total cost must be separated into cost for enhancing quality and cost for maintaining current quality. I have not yet been able to do this. However, a useful comparison can be made between total cost and total value of clean water. The total value of clean water is the sum of gains and losses-$381,000,000 per year, for Illinois. Available estimates of our annual cost of achieving clean water (including current costs) are significantly less. This aggregate estimate for Illinois does not prove each pollution control project is individually justified. Each deserves its own evaluation. It gives us hope, however, that with good engineering and judicious investment we can achieve clean water with a net gain for society. Bruce Barker Illinois Department of Transportation Springjield, IL 62706 Inflation’s n o t so sweet

DEARSIR: I found the article in your December 1971 issue entitled “Hawaii’s sugar industry faces tough problems” to be interesting and informative. There are, however, a couple of instances in which dollar figures somehow got inflated even faster than the usual rapid rate. In one instance, the article says, “Cane brings about $1.6 billion to the islands each year.” Actually, in 1971 the total returns from production of sugar and molasses is estimated to be $202 million. At another point, Mr. Berg is quoted as saying, “The industry would be spending some $10-12 billion in the next five years for pollution control.” The figures are correct, but again this is millions, not billions.

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Textile waste data

DEARSIR: Many of the data jn the article, “Water uses and wastes in the textile industry,” by Porter, Lyons, and Nolan in the January 1972 issue of ES&T, first appeared in “A simplification of textile waste survey and treatment,” written by Joseph W. Masselli, Nicholas W. (Continued on p 392)

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Volume 6 , Number 5, May 1972 391

Masselli, and M. Gilbert Burford, of the Chemistry Department at Wesleyan University, and published in July 1959, by the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission. We refer specifically to 36 items in Tables I1 and 111, and many of the data on p 40. Correspondence with Professor Porter reveals that he had given full acknowledgment to this work in his original manuscript, but that in the final editing this reference was removed. We would appreciate appropriate indication in your publication.

M. Gilbert Burford Chemistry Department Wesleyan University Middletown, CT 06457 Territorial animals

DEARSIR: Your March editorial on environment, interprofessional rivalry, and interdisciplinary teamwork is well taken. There are, of course, many factors which have contributed to environmental degradation. One such factor has been the attempt to employ single-purpose solu-

tions. As you suggest, “the answer, of course, lies . . . in interdisciplinary teamwork.” Universities, through teaching and research, will hopefully contribute to new approaches and solutions. Their past ‘‘sins” have to some degree at least been directed by the policies of governmental research funding agencies; therefore the latter’s attitudes must change if better solutions are to be tried. Specifically, it appears to me that it was not until the IRPOS program (Interdisciplinary Research Related to Problems of Society) of the National Science Foundation, which gave birth to the present RANN program (Research Applied to National Needs), that a researcher could be funded to investigate more than one aspect of a problem. As I read it, bureaucratic agencies tend to subdivide an entity and consider as sacrosanct and inviolable the defined areas of interest of another subdivision, even within an agency-Le., they are highly “territorial animals.” For example, I know of a case where neither of two agencies would even consider funding a look at sewage sludge conditioning and solid waste disposal combined, for the stated

reason that this would involve violation of the other’s “territory.” The NSF can shoulder only a small portion of the required interdisciplinary effort. The principal burden is EPA’S. They have some new, capable administrators aware of what is required-e.g., Stanley Greenfield-but the task of drastically altering the attitudes of inherited bureaucratic heads is tremendous. The solutions that they must consider in-house as well as “out-house” must in many cases involve several disciplines, including political science, sociology, economics, agriculture, geochemistry, and medicine, in addition to numerous capabilities they now havefrom engineering to science to law. It would indeed be instructive to see the results of a thorough objective evaluation of how well this crucial agency is doing itself and with other agencies at what society and your editorial demand-“interdisciplinaryizing. ” Roger M. Jorden Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Unicersity oj’Colorado Boulder, CO 80302

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392 Environmental Science & Technology

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