Nader on Water

By 1980, Americans will use an estimated 560 billion gallons of water a day--more than twice the rate in 1960. This means that more and more U.S. water must be clean enough to use repeatedly. Pollution, though, is overwhelming the ability of many rivers and lakes to purify themselves. Is the Government doing enough to restore the balance?

Last week Ralph Nader offered a gloomy answer: a 700-page report entitled Water Wasteland, the product of a 21-month study by one of Nader's numerous teams of "raiders." Despite 15 years of effort, seven laws and more than $3 billion in expenditures, say the researchers, the federal program to curb water pollution is "a miserable failure."

Laggard States. The main problem, asserts the Nader group, is the federal program's failure to control industrial effluents. They account for at least 50% of the oxygen-consuming wastes handled by municipal water-treatment plants, many of which are thus overloaded. They also include very dangerous contaminants (arsenic, cadmium, mercury), which few treatment plants can remove from drinking water. Even advanced plants, says the report, may be unable to handle the estimated 500 new chemicals that industry develops each year.

As for manufacturers' ever-rising expenditures on air-and water-pollution controls, the researchers found that in 1969 this amounted to less than .2% ($1.3 billion) of annual revenues ($694.6 billion). Moreover, "much of the $800 million spent in 1969 was for devices to purify incoming water so it could be used in manufacturing, not to clean the waste water going out."

Ever since Congress enacted major water-quality laws in 1956, the Government has left enforcement largely to the states. Under severe pressure from local industries, the states often set low standards; right now, 22 states still do not have their standards fully approved by federal regulators. In addition, Washington has tried to talk offenders into compliance, a process that usually drags on for years. Meantime, the list of gravely contaminated waterways grows. Among the worst: the Houston Ship Canal, plus numerous rivers--the Buffalo, Cuyahoga, Escambia, Passaic, Merrimack, Rouge and Ohio.

New Jobs. Nader's group is not optimistic about the effectiveness of either President Nixon's or Senator Edmund Muskie's water-quality bills now before Congress. Though both improve present laws, they are riddled with loopholes. To close them, the researchers propose several amendments. Example: federal pollution-control officers should be made to investigate all offenses and issue abatement orders immediately--or themselves face penalties.

The Nader report bristles with characteristic impatience. It scoffs at the old argument that the U.S. economy will suffer because pollution control will put marginal industries out of business. A big cleanup, it says, would probably create more jobs than it would destroy "because there is more work to be done." That remains debatable.

Even so, the report has caused surprisingly little criticism of its substantive points. "I agree with Ralph Nader," says William Ruckelshaus, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. "We are in danger of creating a water wasteland if we permit to happen in the future what has happened in the past." Ruckelshaus promises "radical changes" in law enforcement.

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