CONGRESSMEN SEAT IMPACT STATEMENTS IN SECRET SESSION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86-00244R000100200003-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 18, 1999
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: May 1, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

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.\lrcting behind closed doors, the
l louse Public Works Committee gave a
receptive audience to a broad-based at-
tack on the National Environmental
Policy Act (NEPA) that would exempt
major federal public works and high-
_zav projects from environmental re-
views.
Key members of the committee,
piqued by the flood of environmentalist
lawsuits that have held up many proj-
ects authorized by Congress, mapped
their strategy at a super-secret meeting
of the panel in early March.
The transcript of the hearing, leaked
last week, is full of condemnations of
NEPA as a menace. It also quotes some
congressmen as calling the judges who
have used the law to block federal proj-
ects ignoramuses.
Rep. John A. Blatnik (D-Minn.),
chairman of the Public Works Com-
mittee, was ill and did not attend the
controversial meeting of the panel, but
he is known to favor environmental im-
pact statements "whenever there is a
federal impact."
Bloc to blockade. The strategy of the
panel's anti-NEPA bloc is to amend ev-
bl orks and hi hwa
tc w
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r
40
Rep. Robert E. Jones
"A lot of ignoramuses."
Court suits, Jones said, were being "ma-
liciously used to halt the projects that
Congress has worked for years and
years to accomplish. . . . You have a
bunch of ignoramuses who are judges
who are not respecting what has been
done here."
In a plot to cut back the number of
NEPA court cases, the committee
amended this year's House water qual-
ity bill to make it difficult, if not impos-
sible, for citizen groups to file suits
against federal projects unless they
could show a direct interest. The full
House adopted the provision and it is
expected to be a key issue in the House-
Senate conference on the measures the
two passed.
There is some grousing from the
House bill's proponents that the closed-
door testimony was released last week
in an attempt to discredit the House
conferees.
These sources think it is unusual that
more than two months after the meet-
ing was held and shortly before House
and Senate conferees were to begin
their meetings, someone decided to re-
lease the hearing transcript in violation
of committee rules. "Perhaps there are
some who don't want a bill of any
kind," said one.
Other members who took an anti-
NEPA position during the closed hear-
ing were representatives William
Harsha (R-Ohio), the ranking minority
member; James Kee (D-W. Va.), Rob-
ert Roe (D-N.J.), Patrick Caffery (D-
La.), Howard Baker (R-Tenn.), Roger
Zion (R-Ind.), James Cleveland (R-
N.H.), and John Terry (R-N.Y.). No
member expressed a pro-NEPA view.
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bill with statements exempting the bill's FHA-insured housing may get performance code
projects from NEPA reviews.
"If you build this up to a point in The performance criteria developed by oped by the National Bureau of Stan-
time you may then find some way of the federal government for its experi- dards, as, "a new, effective benchmark
modifying and amending the act," said mental housing program, Operation for design efforts and evaluation of in-
committee chief counsel Richard Sulli- Breakthrough, probably will be applied novative technology, and a guide of
van, a proponent of the NEPA attack. in some form to all private housing fi- good practice for improving code ad-
"This is the real answer. If you can nanced by mortgages insured by the ministration."
build up enough pressure to amend the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). But some in the industry, including a
basic act out of the Merchant Marine This would include multifamily high- few building inspectors, call the codes a
Committee, this is the way you should rise structures and one-family housing, forerunner of a national code for hous-
go." (Merchant Marine and not Public both rental and sale type. ing construction. Others questioned the
Works has jurisdiction over NEPA and The possibility was suggested, almost legality of the standards. One code offi-
amendments to it.) casually, last week by Harold B. Finger, cial said they were written without con-
Rep. Jim Wright (D-Tex.) suggested assistant secretary for research and gressional mandate (ENR 11/26/70 p.
making a. retroactive finding in this technology of the Department of Hous- 10).
year's Rivers and Harbors Act that ing and Urban Development (HUD). But the standards, or officially, the
projects already authorized by the com- He told a symposium on the perform- Performance Guide Criteria, are ex-
mittee were presumed automatically to ance concept in buildings that the per- pected to become a part of the industry,
have a favorable environmental im- formance guide criteria developed for although Finger offered no estimate of
pact. Operation Breakthrough "are being when they might be incorporated in
Wright's point got strong support considered in the development of the FHA's minimum property standards.
from the panel's then acting chairman, minimum property standards that are' Finger said the development of the
Rep. Robert E. Jones (D-Ala.). "It used as the basis for federal mortgage criteria indicated that "the whole fam-
seems to me that after a project has insurance." The symposium, in Phila- illy of test methods and procedures
been analyzed and considered in the delphia, was sponsored by the Inter- needs to be reevaluated in light of their
democratic, legislative process, that national Union of Testing and Re- ability to realistically forecast perform-
should have some finality," Jones said search Laboratories for Material and ance in actual service, for the goal is not
at the meeting. Structures, International Council .for merely to demonstrate compliance with
Another target of the committee's Building Research Studies and Docu- a test method, but to employ the test
barbs was the fed RCQ difoc a el& tl t,Q,QOA09La 4~mGvi{ireRDP86- 4ROOO OOO 4o dem-
invoked NEPA consistently in recent for Testing and Materials. onstrate compliance with a perform-
months to block construction projects. Finger described the criteria, devel- ance requirement."