firm, who has worked with utilities and State and local agencies throughout the United States as well as internationally. During my association with R. W. Beck and Associates, I have been involved in power supply and feasibility studies of large generating projects and transmission facilities in the western part of the United States and have, over the past 5 years, undertaken numerous studies involving the electric power supply facilities in all parts of New England. These studies included a detailed review of the electric power requirements in the State of Maine for the State's legislative committee and development of an analysis and forecast of loads and power resources for the consumer-owned systems in New England for the Northeast Public Power Association.

These and the other studies which I and other members of my firm have entered into have allowed us to become familiar with the load requirements of the area, the regional utilities' general method of providing capacity to meet loads and the general problems which the various segments of the utility industry must overcome in order to provide the capacity which is necessary.

The studies and evaluations of power supply costs we have been involved with have clearly shown that there has been a lack of planning and mutual cooperation between the major electric systems throughout the New England area and this appears to have been a major reason for the high power supply cost in the area.

All of us associated with the electric utility field in New England have been greatly encouraged in recent weeks by the apparent progress being made in the NEPOOL negotiations which just recently began to function as the coordinating agency for the operation of the area's power supply facilities on a coordinated regional basis. I personally feel that this is a very significant step toward the coordination needed to obtain reliable power. However, it must be emphasized it is only a first step as many items need to be resolved before full coordinated planning, participation, and operation of power supply facilities by all the New England electric utilities can be assured.

While NEPOOL is taking its first shaky steps of infancy, we find the power industry of New England in a very precarious position. It is today faced with higher than projected loads, an insufficient amount of generating capacity, and unexpected construction delays in its development of needed power supply additions.

In order to meet the demands of the coming critical power supply period, it must be understood by the power users as well as the power suppliers that the combined efforts of both private and governmental agencies are needed to develop the power supply capacity required and meet environmental requirements.

I would like to point out two siting considerations which need to be clearly controlled from an environmental standpoint. These are the planning and development of (1) generating sites and (2) transmission line rights-of-way to their maximum environmental and economic limits.

The development of generating facilities to meet the growing power requirements of the area as well as providing capacity to allow the retirement of existing small inefficient generating plants will require a continuous increase in the number of generating plant sites. The

number of sites which will be required in the future can only be reduced by insuring each site is developed to its maximum environmental and economic limit.

The planning and utilization of transmission line rights-of-way have been the subject of legal debates, have been of major concern to local governments, and have been a major reason for power capacity limitations. The growing power requirements of the area will also require the expansion of transmission line capacity. In order to limit the land area required for transmission line development, close review of existing and planned transmission right-of-way usage must be made and existing transmission lines at lower transmission voltage levels upgraded instead of allowing multiple voltage levels on multiple rights-of-way.

At this time I'd be happy to answer any questions that the Senator may have and I will help Mr. Sahlman in providing any technical assistance to questions you may direct at him.

As pointed out, there were to be three of us here today and I only had a portion of this-four of us-I only had a portion of this presentation.

Senator MUSKIE. All right. When their statements are available we will include them in the record. There are a few questions I would like to ask both of you gentlemen, if I may. I notice the fact you have spoken approvingly of the NEPOOL arrangements as a first step, an encouraging first step in the development of regional planning and the projection of our power needs as well as the environmental values that we seek to attain.

Looking at NEPOOL from a slightly different point of view, do you think that that arrangement provides sufficient protection for the municipals and co-ops in terms of attaining the power supply?

Mr. TAYLOR. That is not consummated as yet, the NEPOOL arrangement. Though we are all encouraged, we have no assurance that this is actually going to be accomplished.

Senator MUSKIE. Has there been contact between NEPOOL and your groups of any kind, formal or informal?

Mr. SAHLMAN. We have been in negotiation with the NEPOOL agreement since last June, June of 1969, and the negotiations between the private parties and consumer groups have been going on almost religiously on a weekly basis, 2 days a week, and a final agreement came a few months ago. We are now working out the problems of getting power to the individual systems and how the member systems of NEPOOL can get their share of power, too.

Senator MUSKIE. The agreement will contain arrangements to protect our groups?

Mr. SAHLMAN. That's correct. We feel this will be done.

Senator MUSKIE. Looking at NEPOOL as a first step, do you have any impression as to whether or not it will deal at all or, if it does, effectively, with regional planning or powerplants?

Mr. SAHLMAN. Oh, yes; it has to do with the planning of the powerplants and the transmission lines.

Senator MUSKIE. From the regional point of view?

Mr. SAHLMAN. From the regional point of view. It is that one system approach to the power needs of the region.

Senator MUSKIE. Is there a need as NEPOOL develops for Federal yardsticks of any kind?

Mr. SAHLMAN. From my personal point of view I would say yes. Senator MUSKIE. What contribution can be made by public power and perhaps by federally supported projects to help the New England power situation?

Mr. SAHLMAN. Again from my own personal viewpoint, from my long experience in the public power field, I feel the public utilities ought to be allowed to provide their share of the generation and transmission and be part of the policymaking group.

Senator MUSKIE. Do you think that the individual States of New England are equipped and capable of having ultimate responsibility over powerplant siting and transmission, or do you think this ought to be a regional responsibility?

Mr. SAHLMAN. I believe power system planning is a regional job. In fact, maybe New England alone is not a big enough region, that the region might even include New York State. This is my personal opinion. And I do not think at this point the regulatory bodies have taken the leadership in this area, and whether or not they will get enough money to get the people is very difficult. I say there is doubt in my mind they will be able to do so.

Senator MUSKIE. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your testimony. We appreciate having it for the record.

Our next witness is Mr. Allen H. Morgan, executive vice president of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. I thought we might also bring up Mr. Roger Marshall, executive director, New England chapter, the Sierra Club.

Gentlemen, would you proceed?

STATEMENT OF ALLEN H. MORGAN, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, MASSACHUSETTS AUDUBON SOCIETY

Mr. MORGAN. Senator Muskie, my name is Allen H. Morgan. I am executive vice president of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, a private voluntary association of some 17,000 members operating on an annual budget of $12 million, employing a professional staff of 140 people, and operating a diverse array of properties and programs from Cape Code to the Berkshires designed to educate the public as to our environmental needs and issues. It is an honor and a privilege to be invited to testify before you today.

May I congratulate you? It's the first hearing I have ever been at that actually ran ahead of schedule.

It would be superfluous and repetitious for me to attempt to review the conventional environmental problems of the power industry-they need no detailed review for your benefit, I am sure.

Before casting my stones-which I feel I must cast-let me make a confession. Audubon's records are locked into one of those electronic marvels that requires a steady, unfluctuating electric current or it pouts and gives the wrong information. It also must be pampered by rather constant air conditioning or it becomes unhappy.

So the tower in which I live is electric-power-fed, rather than ivory. It is our hope that this convenience may continue-but not at the ex

pense of the general environment, and in fact, if a choice must be made, we will choose the environment. We hope, in fact, that the brainpower to create new source of power exists so that something more compatible with the environment than most of the present methods can be devised.

The prospects are not too bright, however, that such a solution will be found by an industry that spends less than one-quarter of 1 percent of its gross annual income on research. Indeed, this must be the lowest outlay for research by any industry in America that pretends to social consciousness and public responsibility.

At the same time that the power industry warns us that power demand doubles each 10 years, the industry spends seven times as much money exhorting citizens to use more power than it spends on research to find less destructive power sources.

Glib pronouncements that power demand-and power productionwill double each 10 years have become so commonplace that the public undoubtedly does not recognize what the statement implies and involves. I won't repeat the projected statistics-340 new generating plants by 1990, 200,000 miles of new transmission lines, and so on and so on.

The point I do wish to make as emphatically as I can is that it is high time that business and industry, and politicians, face up to the basic facts of life relative to growth. I know of no single instance among living things where normal growth is not carefully programed, regulated, and when the organism, or population, is mature, is not leveled off and stopped. When this does not happen, the net result is pathological and the organism, or the population, dies. Yet, the electrical industry and politicians generally, keep repeating the tired phrase that they must "meet the public demand" for electrical power which is "doubling every 10 years." I submit gentlemen, that it is not even theoretically possible to double our electrical output every 10 years, that within a very few decades we will come flat up against the hard reality of our finite environment. It simply cannot be done, it is high time for the electrical industry to face up to and acknowledge it—in a word, to stop their advertising and general promotion of increased use of electricity. They are a public service industry, and they must face up to their responsibility to help us all begin to get the public used to the fact that it is not a divine right to expect that electricity will open its tin cans, sharpen its pencils, or even air condition its homes.

Beyond this question of growth, also basic to any solution to our environmental problems of virtually every kind, is the concept that the consumer of paper, automobiles, electricity, or whatever, must pay the true cost of his product; not just the initial cost of production, but those additional costs associated with cleaning up the waste byproducts and guaranteeing that the end result will not generate environmental problems and that its basic resources will be recycled back into the stream of production whenever possible. This concept embraces as axiomatic that our environmental assets used in the processes of production of any and every sort must be returned to the public domain in the same condition in which they were originally found by our private-enterprise system. They must, in effect, be borrowed, and then

returned undamaged. Thus, the cost of cooling towers, protecting the esthetic values of the countryside against the scars of transmission lines, et cetera, are all basic costs of electricity and must be borne by the consumer of electricity, not by the public as a whole. These costs must be allocated to electricity in order that we know the true environmental cost of this one aspect of our civilization.

Beyond this I wish to make two other basic contributions to your deliberations here today. The first relates to specific siting problems, and the second the question of utility corridors. The immediate problem which you face which I acknowledge-is that we are indeed going to have to build more electrical generating plants, even though I still insist that this must be phased out gradually and leveled off within the next few decades. But the immediate problem arises-how to pick sites which will do the least damage?

It seems to me clearly demonstrated that the capacity of our inland bodies of water and streams are so limited that we cannot look to them much longer for cooling purposes without the premise being granted in advance that greatly improved techniques for recycling cooling water must be developed, that closed systems be utilized, that water taken from a stream or a lake be returned in as good condition or better than it was taken out; that is, that it not be chemically polluted, and that the temperature at least during the warm or other critical periods of the year be no warmer than when it was removed.

I submit that the obvious place where these new plants must be sited is along our coastline, and yet I would not grant that the electrical industry has a prior or superior claim on the unique attributes of the coast. Our coastline is under maximum demand for a wide variety of uses, not the least of which is public enjoyment-recreation-which has no other alternative for its objective. I submit that our electrical generating stations do have another coastal alternative: They could and should be sited at appropriate spots offshore, either on stilts, manmade or other islands, or even floating, perhaps utilizing the hundreds of surplus ships-now rotting in storage-to form floating islands. With careful planning, the waste heat should do no environmental harm and in fact probably can be used to increase fishery resources in the vicinity.

They should be serviceable for purposes of fuel, and so on, at minimum cost by sea; it should be possible to utilize the temperature of the ocean itself to cool underwater transmission lines directly to our big cities so that new offshore installations at such places as Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and so on, could take over the primary load of these huge urban complexes leaving present inland and coastal installations to serve the suburban and rural areas.

I will grant that this concept may present technological problems at the moment, but I submit that these should be solved with relative ease-if we will turn our attention and determination to them.

I also wish to raise the question of utility corridors. The small suburban town in which I live happens to have three underground gas transmission lines and one overhead electrical power transmission line running through it in four separate rights-of-way. Three of the four were installed within a single decade, and absolutely no coordination was even attempted. The result can only be maximum cost to the