Industrial Waste Treatment in the USA Today
REINHOLD W. THIEME, Deputy Assistant Secretary
of the Interior for Water
Quality and Research
U. S. Department of the Interior
Washington, D. C.
(Paper presented by Dr. A. Gordon Everett)
Two weeks ago, we all observed a vast outpouring of concern over the environment which was expressed in demonstrations marking the Nation's first Earth Day.
We at the Interior Department welcomed the efforts to draw public attention
to our environmental problems. We participated in programs in schools, colleges and
universities as well as with a variety of other groups. The response was most encouraging. But, what now?
Experience tells us it takes more than legislation, law suits, and even money, to
make a success of a program the size of the antipollution campaign. It takes commitment.
If we are to produce long lasting results in our pollution abatement efforts, we
must sustain the momentum that was built up in the past few weeks and channel it
into constructive methods for ensuring the cleanup of our Nation's rivers, streams
and lakes.
President Nixon's $ 10 billion environmental program and other Administration
proposals offer the guidelines for achieving these goals. Industry also has a major
contribution to make to this effort, and its cooperation must be achieved if we really
are to solve our pollution problems.
Since the national water pollution control program was inaugurated in 1956,
the principal emphasis in this struggle has been on abating municipal pollution. As a
result, the largest share of Federal funds for pollution abatement has been directed to
municipalities for the construction of waste treatment facilities.
This is only natural. It is almost the only fair way to provide the widest
possible use for the pollution control tax dollar. Then, too, technology has been
sufficiently advanced to deal effectively with pollution in this area.
Although the municipal waste problem is far from being solved, progress is
being made. In conjunction with the Federal funding to treatment facilities, the
states have been required to set definite pollution abatement schedules for municipalities. The progress now being made should bring a great many of the discharges that
have long been inadequately treated under control by 1971.
Since the initiation of the Federal construction grant program in 1957, the
population served by some deg of waste treatment has increased by more the 51 mil
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