Water Pollution Control in the
United States - 1969
Opening Session Remarks
DAVID D. DOMINICK, Commissioner
Federal Water Pollution Control Administration
United States Department of the Interior
Washington, D. C.
INTRODUCTION
I appreciate the honor and the opportunity you have given me to address the
opening session of this most important conference.
Although I've been Commissioner of the Federal Water Pollution Control
Administration for only a little better than a month, my concern for the environment goes back many years.
I was raised in the West. My family owns a ranch high in the mountains of
Northwestern Wyoming. Running right through our ranch is the Sunlight River; and
since my family's ranch is farther upstream than any other, we are the first to see, use,
and enjoy these waters as they make their way down from the snow meadows of the
Continental Divide to the sea.
Any day of the year you or I could step right outside the bunkhouse door and
catch a beautiful — firm — pink fleshed — native or rainbow trout.
And this experience — or perhaps more importantly in our hurried and
complicated world, this possibility - is all based upon the fact that here, as in too
few other places throughout our country, we have in its natural state some of the
purest water to be found anywhere in the world.
On the other hand, I've been educated for the most part in the eastern part of
the United States and I've been made equally aware of the disastrous consequences
which we reap when man presses forward with urban industrial expansion without
adequate regard for his total environment.
So I've seen both sides and I now find myself in the company of men like
yourselves who can, and I think will, take some very positive steps to reverse the
environmental decay that has been tolerated and condoned in this country up to the
present time.
Industry and the Federal Government have joined forces in many times of
crisis during our Nation's lifetime. Today's growing dangers in the environment to
the American people's welfare demand the same sense of partnership and teamwork.
The people expect this cooperation and will accept no less.
In a Gallup poll, conducted recently for the National Wildlife Federation,
more than half of the persons interviewed said they were "deeply concerned"
about the Nation's environmental problems. When asked what could be done to
correct environmental pollution, the most frequent answer was — stop industrial
pollution.
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