AT MY request, the Administrator of General Services today issued the attached regulation which requires that federally owned vehicles use low-lead or unleaded gasoline whenever this is practical and feasible. The purposes of this regulation are twofold: to reduce air pollution and to increase the market for low-lead and unleaded gasoline, in order to make such fuels more generally available.
I have also today written to the Governors of our 50 States suggesting that they take similar steps in their administrations. If all government agencies--Federal, State, and local--were to adopt this policy, we could not only reduce pollution, but we could also provide a sizable incentive for production and distribution of low or unleaded fuels and thus make them more readily available.
Note: The regulation, made available with the statement, is published in the Federal Register of October 28, 1970 (35 F.R. 16713).
On October 26, the White House released the transcript of a news briefing on the President's statement and letter to the Governors by Russell E. Train, Chairman, Council on Environmental Quality, and Robert L. Kunzig, Administrator of General Services.
Richard Nixon, Statement About the Use of Low-Lead Gasoline in Federal Vehicles Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/240098