Cleaning Up the National Mess How Great the Cost? Who Will Pay?

POLLUTION is not only unhealthy but expensive. It destroys crops, depreciates property, discourages economic development, raises municipal bills (and often taxes), and creates countless hazards whose cost is impossible to compute. Yet all the evidence indicates that letting pollution continue would be more expensive than spending the money needed to curb it. To save the U.S. from becoming a malodorous wasteland, experts agree, will cost nearly $100 billion in the next five years. About $30 billion of that will be required merely to halt pollution of the nation's waterways. The probable cost of cleaning up the air that Americans breathe is an astronomical $60 billion over a five-year period.

A major share of this cleanup cost would have to be met by the Government. U.S. cities and towns will need $10 billion by 1975 just to meet current water quality standards, plus an additional $6 billion to build and repair sewer lines under city streets. It will take even more for municipalities to go further and separate the main and storm sewers that now flow together to contribute so heavily to the pollution problem. This would push the total cost to $50 billion.

By comparison, industry could stop polluting the water for a relatively small cost. A surprisingly low $3 billion is all it would take if plants and factories were required to install waste-treatment facilities sufficient to meet existing water standards. A total of only $2 billion would pay for cooling towers to prevent thermal pollution, and $6 billion would bring sediment and acid mine drainage under control. The price of eliminating industrially caused air pollution is somewhat higher because the job must be done on a regular basis. Estimates are that it would cost $600 million a year to curb the sulfur dioxide emitted from power plants and another $100 million annually to clean up other industrial air pollution.

Some steps are already being taken to meet these bills. New York State has $130 million worth of municipal waste-treatment facilities in operation, another $834 million worth under construction. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware have joined with the Federal Government to form the Delaware River Basin Commission. They have enlisted the cooperation of nearly 100 firms and municipalities, including Du Pont, Rohm & Haas and Sun Oil, in a $500 million effort to clean up an 85-mile stretch of the Delaware estuary between the ocean and Trenton, N.J.

Business has begun to invest in environmental preservation, and some firms have found profits in combatting pollution. Zurn Industries, the chief consultant for the Delaware River project, sold nearly $73 million worth of pollution-control equipment last year. Other firms have simply found it good policy to clean up after themselves. Kaiser Steel Corp. has spent $30 million on air-pollution control and $15 million on water-pollution control since it was established in 1942. Bethlehem Steel has earmarked 11% of its total capital expenditures for environmental control over the next five years.

As a way of encouraging industry to do more, President Nixon said last week, "To the extent possible, the price of goods should be made to include the costs of producing and disposing of them without damage to the environment." A plan to do just that has been offered by Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin. He proposes a system of "effluent charges" under which industries would pay by the pound for the pollutants they discharge into the water. His plan could provide the Government with both funds and leverage to combat pollution. Not only would effluent charges bring in an estimated $1.5 billion a year, but, if set sufficiently high, they could make it less expensive for companies to clean up than to continue polluting. More industries might then reuse their waste materials, thus becoming more efficient and working toward the key goal of "recycling."

Whatever the method of financing, the costs of any successful war on pollution will ultimately be borne by the individual taxpayer and consumer. Taxpayers will pay more for all Government programs, and consumers will eventually pay for all industry programs in the form of higher prices. But that burden is far from unbearable. The cost of building tertiary sewage treatment plants to cope with the phosphate-based detergents responsible for much of Lake Erie's pollution, for example, would come to $230 million--a $23 investment for each of the 10 million residents on the U.S. side of the Lake Erie basin. The $700 million annual price tag for industrial and power-plant pollution would add a mere 200 to 300 to most consumers' monthly electric bills. However unpopular such extra tariffs might be, the price is modest if it will buy the fresh air and clean water that is fast becoming only a memory in the U.S.

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