Remarks at a Meeting of the Water Emergency Conference.

Secretary Udall, distinguished Governors, Members of the Cabinet, Chairman Seaborg, Mr. Ackley:

First, I am happy that I have been able to hear some of the discussion. I deeply regret that I have not heard more, and I do want to have you share with me some of your private thinking. If it is agreeable, and you don't mind the quality of the lunch, why, we'll just have lunch together when we get through.

You may be a little late to your next meeting, but the folks over in the other wing are accustomed to having guests on short notice--as I know they are in your capitals-and so if you will bear in mind anything that you want to raise, we will do it during the lunch hour.

Second, apropos of the very excellent suggestion made by Governor Rockefeller, who has talked to me about this a number of times, I followed his atomic plant with great interest. He's discussed that with me, and I hope our people can be helpful in connection with the matching that he's been discussing. I rather doubt that there will be any comprehensive appropriations possible, in the next few weeks that we will be here, to carry out suggestions that you have made, although I will ask the Director of the Budget and the Secretary of the Interior and the head of the Corps of Engineers to get any very specific ideas you have, after these teams make their visits, and be available for our budget hearings, which will begin September, October, and November in anticipation of the Congress' return in January.

I called you here today in the face of a 4-year drought that is unequaled in the Northeast section of our country. As I said earlier, I have known drought in the Southwest and I have seen what it can do, and I still have a grateful heart for what our then President Eisenhower did to help us in that emergency. And I want to do everything that the White House can do to work with you in this one.

In other sections of this Nation, in times past, the challenge of the drought has been met. The Northeast, though, is facing a serious drought for the first time, really, in its history. And I am confident that the steps that we can take together in the challenge that does face us, that we will somehow meet the test and that the challenge will be overcome.

Now, this is a time for action. It is a time for Federal action, but that never substitutes for State or local action, as you all point out when the mayors meet and the Governors meet and we talk about States' rights and local rights, and so forth. And it is not any substitute for private action.

So, the big thing we must start out with is that we must act together, if that is possible, and I know with this group we can. We must act together, first, to solve the immediate crisis that is facing us. We must act together to prepare for a possible fifth year of drought--as you just said.

We must act together to assure our citizens of the Northeast, and their children, that the supply of water that they need for their industry, and their health, and their recreation is assured and guaranteed so far into the future as we can see now.

So, as a result, I have already tried to mobilize the Federal Government into action. The Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Department of the Interior, the Federal Power Commission, the Corps of Engineers, the Office of Civilian Defense, the Office of Emergency Planning--headed by one of your most popular and able former Governors, Governor Ellington--are already focusing their efforts on the problems in the Northeast.

To continue to fulfill that responsibility, I am directing the Secretary of the Interior today to dispatch, tonight, water crisis teams to the five cities that are represented here today.

I have asked Secretary Udall to make hard and fast decisions immediately and on the spot to assist each affected community.

I have directed the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Army Engineers to move as rapidly as possible on all vital water supply projects in the area.

And how does that happen?

Number one, we're going to add $400,000 to the Tocks Island reservoir project in the Delaware River Basin immediately, and this will quicken the construction of that project by at least a year.

Second, we're going to add $400,000 to the Beltzville, Pennsylvania, project, and that will greatly expedite construction there.

Third, we're going to add $100,000 to the reservoir project at Blue March, Pennsylvania, so we can speed up the planning and design there.

Fourth, we're going to add $150,000 to planning a $5 million water supply addition to the Prompton Reservoir project.

Fifth, we're going to begin planning a new $11 million water supply project at Trexler Reservoir.

I have asked my Water Resources Council to consult with each of you on a daily basis and to report to the President on any additional action that they think can be taken. Should the Council find that additional White House action is required, I want you to know that I am prepared to do whatever is necessary and to do it immediately.

Now, water problems are no longer limited to manmade State or municipal boundaries. These problems are regional and we recognize them as such.

Many years ago, I had a study made--one of the first in the Nation--of a regional water problem we had. We had to take into consideration the effect on many sections, many regions, many States, and some dozen rivers, before we could have a real comprehensive water plan. And as a result of that survey, we have developed one. So, I am, therefore, initiating a $4 million comprehensive water resource planning survey for the entire Northeast--all the way from Virginia to Maine.

Now, for the long range, I have directed Secretary-designate Gardner of Health, Education, and Welfare, and my very able and imaginative--I hope he did not get me out on these goals too far; I hope they are realistic-Science Adviser, Dr. Hornig, to start to work with you, within 6 months to have a plan of action for pollution control.

I am asking Secretary Udall to work with Dr. Hornig and Dr. Ackley, of my Council of Economic Advisers, and Dr. Seaborg to examine the potential of desalting for the Northeast, and to give me a complete report on the potentialities and possibilities there within 6 months.

As Nelson told you--as you have observed--I have just signed a bill--I hope you still have that pen to take home with you. I am increasing the funds for the desalting program by $185 million--that's 175 more than it was last week. They had me down to $10 million for a period there.

I know you are really interested in this whole field, but in the field of conservation, in the field of highway improvement--sometimes called beautification--in the field of pollution, we need all the leadership we can get. We don't need it here at the White House. We need it in the House and the Senate and in the committees that have those matters under their control.

I hope that you will take a look at that situation. We have a stronger pollution bill in the Senate than we had in the House. We have it in conference now, and it is in conference, and we want it to come out of that conference, and I beseech you and I implore you and I invite you to render me the same kind of effective assistance in that field that Governor Scranton did when Appalachia was pending.

The pollution bill, this highway improvement bill, the conservation measures that apply to your States--those decisions are being made right this session. They are going to be decided in the next 3 weeks. And I think they will all be decided favorably, but maybe more expeditiously and maybe a little more favorably if your views are known to your people from your States.

Now, top priority is going to be given to every one of these problems that exists in the Northeast. You are in trouble and when you are in trouble we're in trouble. And we are going to be there to help.

I have told you that this is what we can do and this is what we will do.

But water supply really is a local responsibility. Only you are going to be able to conserve the water that you now have. There is not much I can do about the third of Bob Wagner's water that we don't know where it is going.

You must devise and you must enforce the necessary procedures to avoid the waste of water by leakage or by unnecessary use. And you can do a good deal about the unnecessary pollution. The pollution that is taking place in this country, and the effect that a few industrial plants are having on the future of our country, is absolutely disgraceful. I don't want to put it on your doorstep. I'm putting it on mine here--right here on the Potomac, where George Washington threw his dollar. It is disgraceful.

I was out on it last night and you can hardly go down the river without reflecting and wondering why we have been so shortsighted these years. And it has got to stop. We have got to do something about it. And good men, and great men, and wise men, and good Americans, like you, can do something about it.

You can do it in your leadership in your States, and you can do it in your speeches, and you can do it here in Washington. I need all the help I can get in that field.

I have been getting a lot of it. Your brother is giving a lot to it. I want to give you at lunch a book that he has had published in that very field, showing some of the beauties of America and also some of the shame.¹

¹Laurance S. Rockefeller, Chairman of the White House Conference on Natural Beauty held in Washington May 24-25 1965. The book is entitled "Beauty for America--Proceedings of the Whit House Conference on Natural Beauty" (Government Printing Office, 1965, 782 pp.).

So, as leaders of your States, and as leaders of your cities, I think that if you do nothing else out of this White House Conference except go back and urge your citizens to use the water they now have, but use it with prudence, and use it wisely, and use it without contaminating it and without polluting it--and to say to these giants and titans, who may not have had the appreciation of all the conservation angles that some professor would have, that you take a new look at what you are doing to the water that belongs to all the people. It is not your private water to do what you want to do with it.

So, no one will solve this problem by himself. No one single program is going to solve it. But the expertise of the Federal Government is available to you, and it is going to help you and it is going to try to provide what leadership it can.

Comprehensive planning is available to you and it can help you, and we are going to use it. Antipollution and desalting programs can help. And if you will help me get the pollution bill through the Congress, the desalting bill and the appropriation bill to supply it, well, we will give you some matching-we can and we will help.

The Senate passed $200 million and the House was ready for $10 million, and we compromised with them for $185 million-but you understand those things. That one is behind us. But this Conference might have had something to do with helping along a little bit on that.

These programs must be welded together by men working together. And they must work together into an effective weapon to end the current crisis, and to prevent any such crises from developing again.

Now there are some much more ambitious programs that could be developed. Where they are realistic I will ask our people, within the limits of our resources, to try to help match you on a local and State basis to meet them.

We are going to have severe drains because of the new programs we are passing in other fields this year. I have signed at least 40 major bills in this session--more major bills have been signed, I think, than in any other period in the history of the Congress.

That is the work of the Congress. It is not the work of anyone else. And you have sent these men to Congress. And they have acted as Americans.

I heard Dean Rusk say the other day he was going to the Foreign Relations Committee, and you could not tell when you were heating Fulbright and Aiken--if you were a foreigner--which one was the Republican and which one was the Democrat. All you knew was that both of them were good Americans. And the Congress is pretty well functioning that way this year.

Some of our people don't always see things as we do, but we expect that. But these 40 bills are the fruits of their labor--and we still have 40 more to come. They are coming every day, tight down the line.

We're going to have an Urban Affairs Department this afternoon. We're going to have a public works and area redevelopment bill this afternoon--I hope--unless I'm disappointed. They're voting in the House and Senate now.

But we do want, before we leave here, something that is important to you. Do you know that the tourist trade has picked up unbelievably abroad? And if you travel over some of our country you can see why people want to get away from it. Yet a few men are coming in and insisting that we keep these dirty little old signs up in these dirty little old towns, and that this is going to affect free enterprise, and this is going to do this and do that--while our tourist trade is picking up, and picking up, and picking up.

When I leave this meeting I'm going out to talk to the "See the U.S.A." group that is traveling the U.S.A., and try to see that we point up the glories of this country.

My wife has been going in one direction, my daughter has been going in another direction, and I hope, before the summer is over and Congress leaves, that I can go in another direction to illustrate "America the Beautiful."

And you Governors can contribute a great deal, not only by helping us with this present program that we are considering--how to make Pennsylvania and New Jersey and New York and Delaware and Texas more beautiful--but to conserve our resources and to help us conserve some of our dollars here at home, too.

Our net loss this year is going to be nearly $2 billion on tourists abroad--almost $2 billion--and that has got to be made up somewhere. It is one of our major problems. I know of no problem I have that is as important as the balance of payments problem.

I just wish that these States could evolve and develop their water supply and their rivers in such a way--their scenery and their parks and their concessions and their affairs, and other things--so as to be able to compete successfully with their sister States and their sister countries.

We don't want to ban any travel. We're for people traveling. We are not against them traveling abroad. We want them to see all the world. But we want to make our place so beautiful that we want them to see it, too.

So, if you will collect your papers and indulge me about 5 minutes--until I appear before the "U.S.A." group--we will explore this further at lunch. And I hope the Senators have returned by that time, if they have passed the bill. If they haven't, I hope they stay there until they do.