Unabated stench on Capitol Hill

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32634, 16 June 1971, Page 22

Unabated stench on Capitol Hill

(By

BRUCE KOHN,

, N.Z.P.A. Correspondent)

WASHINGTON, June 15.

A foul-smelling odour rises from the Potomac River in the summer heat. Green slime and white flecks of chemicals float about in the waterless than half a mile from Capitol Hill, the working home of America’s lawmakers.

Visitors and Washington residents come upon beautiful, tree-fringed sandy beaches on the water’s edge, Where signs warn them that swimming is dangerous because of pollution. The stench is such that the signs seem unnecessary. Forty miles east of Washington, at George Washington’s birthplace, the brown waters of the estuary confirm that it is only when the Potomac reaches the ocean that the polution is acceptably diluted. Yet even with this striking example of the fouling of the nation’s water right under their noses, America’s politicians move slowly to establish effective waterpollution control measures. It is not that they lack proposals for consideration; the fault lies rather with the cumbersome law-making process which inhibits swift action.

In a Parliamentary system such as that of New Zealand, a Government measure is almost certain of passage once introduced into the House of Representatives. But in Washington a bill backed by the Administration has no guarantee of passage, and can be subject to considerable amendment as Congressmen push their own views. The Administration wants to provide SUS6OOOm to local authorities for treatment facilities over a three-year period; Senator Edmund Muskie, of Maine, wants SUSI2,OOOm spent over five years; and a third measure would have SUSSOOOm spent by the Federal Government each year for five years. Reports made this year disclosed that the homes of about one-third of the 200 million people in the United States are not served by a sewerage system, and that less than one-third are served by both sewerage systems and adequate treatment plants. The National League of Cities estimates that about SUS3S,OOOm is needed for urban writer treatment.

But while Congress debates how much should be spent, the Potomac River and hundreds of others in a similar state of pollution in the United States steadily become thicker and murkier.