I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
The Place is Dalton, Georgia.
Since 1948, the place has been a capital of the United States.
Two -thirds of the carpet made in the USA is produced in Dalton.
Of course, it has brought prosperity to this section of the country, and without it, Dalton would probably be a dead town, or a ghost town.
I'm Vester Stanley, and I've lived here ever since 34.
Worked this land and raised my family on this property.
My children, one of them married in Porto Marcos lives straight across.
Another one of my daughters married in Warner Holloway, lives in this house yonder.
Whenever we first came to this place, the environment was very good because you could go out and set you out a bunch of hooks of a night, catch all kinds of good catfish.
In fact, I caught one eel over there in 1930 out of the river, the last thing that I know of being caught in this country.
Vester Stanley's farm is located several miles south of Dalton, Georgia.
The Conosoga River, which flows through Dalton, loops around Mr.
Stanley's land, surrounding him on three sides.
About 48, industrial began to move in, and that has caused the pollution to take hold.
This river here was a very nice river, real clear and clean.
We'd swim in it, kids would have a big time.
Had a picnic set up over here on the river.
Of course, all of that has changed.
I raise cattle all together now, I'd say, and my cattle will not drink the water.
I think it can kill them if it was to, because all the fish, the turtles, gars, and even old carp cannot live in it now.
Dalton's had a phenomenal growth primarily due to the carpet rug industry.
The carpet industry does require large quantities of water, and Dalton has been fortunate in being able to fairly well keep up with these demands.
If we were to keep the carpet industry in Dalton, or keep it largely in Dalton, we had to provide the utilities that were necessary to produce the carpet, and by operating as a business, we've been able to do that.
Dalton pumps about 40 million gallons of water a day to the carpet industry.
The retail value of the carpet produced is now about $2 billion a year.
But as Dalton has prospered, the environment, particularly the river, has taken a beating.
Not that Dalton is unique.
The same thing has happened all over the country.
The United States is ten times as polluted as it was in 1948, because until just recently, nobody considered the environmental cost of producing things.
Pollution was considered by economists to be a mere byproduct of manufacturing, something that did not figure into the cost of the product.
When Con Edison pours smoke into the air, don't tell me there's not a cost.
The cost is partly in the fact that I may have emphysema or that I've got to clean my curtains.
My wife has to clean the curtains more often.
The cost isn't borne by Consolidated Edison, so that the price that Consolidated Edison charges for electricity, so many cents per watt, is less than it ought to be, because a consumer doesn't like to hear that, but it's the truth.
Actually, Consolidated Edison ought to be forced to bear those costs out of its profits, or else if there are no profits, to pass the costs along.
The problem is that electricity costs less than it, quote, really costs.
The result is you use more electricity than you would if it were priced at what the real cost to society is.
Suncoop means fun -coop.
Every time you touch a Skylark Suncoop, it turns to fun.
That's why we call this exciting, pearlescent exterior color the Midas Gold.
Now wouldn't a car like this be fun, with its seats and gold nylon velour, accented with iridescent spangles, looks just like the sun shining in there right now.
By not including pollution cost in our prices, we have actually warped the market value of things.
We use more synthetic fibers, more chemicals, more aluminum, more throwaway bottles, more of a great many products that are produced in polluting ways.
If their prices reflected their true cost, the cost of preventing damage to the environment, we would use less.
We got ourselves into this mess by assuming that the environment would dissipate our pollution, that we could throw it away and it would stay away, free of charge.
Unfortunately, this is not a service nature provides.
There is no such thing as a waste which can be ignored.
For example, we throw away a battery that contains mercury.
That mercury is going to go somewhere.
It doesn't go away.
It goes into the rubbish.
From the rubbish it goes to the incinerator.
The incinerator heats it, puts the mercury vapor into the air.
Then it comes down in the rain.
Then it gets into fish.
Everything has to go somewhere.
The fish is going to go somewhere.
The fish is going to go somewhere.
The fish is going to go somewhere.
The fish is going to go somewhere.
The fish is going to go somewhere.
The fish is going to go somewhere.
The fish is going to go somewhere.
The fish is going to go somewhere.
The fish is going to go somewhere.
The fish is going to go somewhere.
The fish is going to go somewhere.
The things we try to throw away come back to haunt us.
Costs not picked up in one place are incurred somewhere by somebody else.
In St.
Louis, a 1 % increase in sulfur trioxide was matched with a similar decrease in property values.
So the pollution was paid for, not by the sources that produced it, but by the homeowner whose house was worth less.
In East St.
Louis, across the Mississippi, Mr.
and Mrs.
Desi Phillips have lived downwind of several large factories and have experienced what economists call external costs.
The house was a mess.
The house was a mess.
The house was a mess.
The house was a mess.
The house was a mess.
The house was a mess.
The house was a mess.
The house was a mess.
The house was a mess.
The house was a mess.
It ain't half as bad now as it used to be.
Good evening and welcome to Pass the Box.
This place, Pass the Box.
Yes, indeed.
TV's first game show with no winners, only losers.
I'm your host and mediator, Leonard Woodchuck.
But before we start passing the box, why don't we meet our challengers? And to help me with that, my beautiful assistant, Betty.
Thank you, Betty.
Thank you.
Our first challenger representing government is Mr.
Jack Hughes.
And now let's meet our representative of management, Mr.
C.
Steele Mills.
Mr.
Mills.
And finally, representing labor, Mr.
Jimmy Friendly alias Fiore Fifi Bucciaro.
Mr.
Bucciaro.
Well, now we've met the challengers, why don't we meet the representative of you, the public? That's right.
She was originally selected at random from the FBI surveillance files.
Here she is, Mrs.
Amanda Jones, all the way from Horsesmith, Montana.
Well, we all know the rules now.
Our contestants are all blank for a major problem in our society.
Now to get off the hook, they must pass the box.
Round one.
Okay, we spin the magic wheel of crisis.
The big A, air pollution.
Air pollution? There's the issue.
Here's the box.
Hey, Mrs.
Jones, who's fault is it? Pass the box.
My husband and I don't burn what you would call a significant amount of soft coal or anything like that.
None of our friends do either.
But the air keeps getting worse and I don't think I should be the one to clean it up.
The government should take care of this.
I blame government.
Excuse, pass the box.
Excuse.
Mr.
Quizmaster, fellow panelists, distinguished guests.
Come on, Jack, it's time to pass the box.
All right, Leonard, I'm getting to it.
Now, we wouldn't like to cut back on some of the worst offenders of air pollution, but we can't do that without putting off thousands and thousands of laborers right out of their jobs.
Now, labor won't stand for that.
I blame labor.
Come on.
All right, now why does labor always have to pay? If management wasn't so concerned about making a profit, then there would be a buzzer.
In our society, we do not attack the profit motive because it is a sacred cow.
Fifteen seconds, I'll leave.
Pass the box.
Get out of here.
All right.
Now, somebody's got to start finding technological solutions to these problems without laying off workers.
And if management is so smart, let management do it.
I blame management.
Pass the box.
Hey, hey.
Hey, hey, give him the box.
Pass the box.
Management cares about you, the public.
Now, we are looking for solutions to these problems, but at the same time, we're forced to meet an ever -increasing consumer demand for new products and services.
Don't blame us for giving people what they want.
I blame the public.
Oh, Mr.
Jocko.
I didn't actually want my son to buy that new car.
Oh, Mr.
Jocko, don't look over there.
Every guy's got a gun.
Time is up, and you're left holding the box.
And Betty, what's our score? Well, Lenny, at the end of round one, government has one point, labor one, management one, and the public, nothing.
Since the dawning of awareness about pollution in the late 60s, the overall quality of our air has continued to decline.
The Air Control Act of 1970 set tougher standards than ever before, requiring auto manufacturers to reduce emissions by 90 percent by 1975.
But even if these standards are met, our problems are far from solved.
Our way of life rests on many industrial processes that are polluting.
For example, the pollution in the industrial industry is much higher than in the industrial industry.
The generation of electric power is a polluting process, and there are no technological means on the horizon to prevent that.
We're going to have to choose between uses that are frivolous and uses that really add to our quality of life.
If you put a flip top on a beer can, that requires an aluminum top on a steel beer can.
That triples the amount of electricity used to deliver that beer, and of course, triples the amount of air pollution.
And it seems to me that the main thing that we have to do in this country is to make explicit the benefits and the costs.
I think that we ought to have on the beer can with a flip top this flip top, a label like the Surgeon General's label on cigarette packs.
For the benefit of this flip top, this can has tripled the air pollution.
While the benefits of many of the things we produce are obvious, frequently the costs are not.
In St.
Louis, in an old district called Soulard, a young man named Lee Lawless is concerned about the effects of air pollution on the community.
He's trying to find out the human costs of filthy air.
But one of the major problems that we have right now is air pollution.
We've got Monsanto with the organic chemical plant right at the foot of the neighborhood between the river and us.
A big coal burning plant across the river.
Over here we have Anheuser -Busch, which is the fourth largest producer of SO2 in St.
Louis.
And then surrounding us on the west, we have I -55, which is one of the major arteries of the area.
Hey, Bob, wait a second, okay? This is Bob McClintock, and he just recently bought a house here in the area and offered to put the high -volume air stamper up on his roof for us.
Do you want to tell him what to do about it? Every other day I come out, take a flow reading, change the filter, and send it to the university.
Lee, why don't you tell them what they do there? They're going to measure it to find out actually grossly how much particulate matter there is on the filter.
And then they're going to chop it up into smaller sections and place these in a reactor.
They'll be able to tell what chemicals and metals have been coated on the particulates.
What we hope you'll be able to do with this is to establish it clearly that these things are in the air here in our neighborhood.
And see if with this information, hopefully we can get some action to stop the kind of emissions that are taking place in our area.
The people down here who have always been aware of at least the air problems that they have because it stinks so badly, hopefully some of them are becoming aware of the fact that they might be able to do something about it.
One company that I tried to contact about this problem was Anheuser -Busch.
I wrote to them and they answered and I found their answer very unsatisfactory and wrote back again and they've yet to hear from them.
We've also talked with the Environmental Protection Agency and they have set this up as one of their inner city areas in St.
Louis that they're going to set up a full -scale monitoring station and do pulmonary function tests on school -age children and on older residents.
Whoa, dude! Let's hope in around June that Mrs.
Jones can get back into the mainstream of the American power structure.
We hope so! On magic wheels! Water pollution! Oh, water pollution! There's the issue! Here's the buck! Mrs.
Jones, whose fault is it? That number! We recently had some house guests from Mexico and they refused to drink our tap water.
Now I don't blame them.
You can see the gunk pouring in from those big factories.
I blame management.
Management cares about you, the public.
Now we no longer pour industrial waste into the water, we pour it onto the ground.
As a matter of fact, we'd like to change the whole industrial process, but organized labor is fighting us every step of the way.
I blame labor! Labor, tap! Yeah, they're going to change the industrial process, all right? They're going to move the factory to Japan.
We're not going to stand for it.
Now somebody ought to be able to get in there and clean up the water without laying off thousands of American workers.
And I think the only person big enough to do that is Uncle Sam, so I blame Uncle Sam.
Come on, Mr.
Mark! I'm reminded of a humorous story.
Come on, Mr.
Mark! All right, all right.
Now we would seriously like to clean up all our water waste, but that's going to cost billions and billions of dollars, which means an increase in taxes.
Now the public won't stand for that, so I blame the public.
Mr.
Mark! It's the Jews.
Gables! It's the blacks.
Gables! Is it the commies? And hurry time is up! Well, commies would have worked a few years ago, right folks? Okay, Betty, what's that good? Well, any government has two points, labor two, management two, and the public nothing.
Oh, gentlemen, congratulations.
You've succeeded in getting off the hook.
Mrs.
Jones, come on up here.
Because we don't want you to go away empty -handed, Betty.
What do we have? For Mrs.
Jones, we have a week's supply of food stamps.
Fantastic, Mrs.
Jones.
You take these food stamps home and eat your heart out.
And now, as we show Mrs.
Jones through our door of despair, I'd like to say she will be back next week, right, Betty? Yes, she'll match wits against General Electric, General Motors, and United States Steel.
Of course, if she loses that round, we'll have to send a trained team of ecologists out to her home to destroy her environment.
So, please stay tuned now for the Mayor and the City Council, and let's make a deal! West of Dalton, Georgia, out of the side of Rocky Face Mountain, springs a stream known as Drowning Bear Creek.
By the time Drowning Bear Creek has passed through Dalton, it is so polluted that nothing will live in it.
Prior to the time that environmentalists and others realized that something had to be done in this area, none of the towns were, and none of the communities, none of the industries were providing for their waste treatment.
There's no reason at all why these streams shouldn't be cleaned up.
Responding to the new national mood and to stricter government standards, Dalton has moved quickly to construct a wastewater treatment plant.
To pay for it, the corporate industry will pay an additional one and a half million dollars a year in taxes.
But will the water of the Connoisseur be clean? To answer that question, water samples for analysis were taken from three sources.
Drowning Bear Creek as it enters Dalton, the municipal sewer pipe, and Drowning Bear Creek as it leaves Dalton.
First of all, we received three samples from this particular creek in Dalton, Georgia, and we carried out a number of different analyses that we would carry out in the various rivers and streams in the Chicago area as well as in Canada.
And the water before it flows into this particular community is extremely pure.
It's one of the purest I've ever had seen, whereas the phosphate content of the water leaving this particular area is up to 36 to 28 parts per million, and the sulfate content also is drastically different.
This is a type of chemical that contains chemicals not naturally found in water.
Some of these chemicals can very well be the type such as benzathocenes, other types of things which are dissolved in the water itself, which we know are oncogenic and have the potentials of producing, say, tumors in fish.
This animal is a walleye pike that we find in the polluted waterways.
You can see an epidermoidal type of tumor mass involved in the right side of the animal and the eye of the fish.
Here we have the northern pike, and this animal has a lymphoid type of tumor mass growing from the lower jaw and actually fused onto the upper jaw.
These are samples of animals that show tumor growths from polluted waterways.
The standards for fishing water merely means that the water can support life to the point that a natural inhabitant of fish could live in it, and therefore the fish live in it, people could take the fish out.
But it absolutely eludes the main question, which is this a good water or is it not a good water? Arsenic is a good one which we find in the water which wouldn't be removed until such time as you have a tertiary treatment.
You see, most waters will support life as long as it's got less than 25 parts per million of carbon dioxide in it.
Secondary treatment is a great help and should be emphasized as a great help in trying to clean up the rivers.
This is the first stage in really cleaning up all the rivers and streams, but it's a far cry from tertiary improvement which really means we'd have a good safe water to use.
Dalton is building a secondary treatment plant.
The cost? $12 million.
In spite of the sign, the water will not be clean.
It will be polluted in a more subtle way.
To achieve a really clean effluent water requires tertiary or advanced water treatment, which would cost five times as much, or $60 million.
The water coming out of Dalton's new treatment plant, while still polluted, will, however, meet federal standards.
At present, almost nothing lives in the Conosoga River.
There is almost no oxygen in the water.
When Dalton finishes its secondary treatment plant, fish will return to the water, but they are likely to have a high incidence of tumors.
I guess most people would like to have it like it is, but that ain't what we ought to consider.
We ought to consider our health above everything.
Certainty is bad, but to live on a place and raise your family there, then think about leaving.
I would, but if I was going to do much more of it, I would.
I'd try to go somewhere where it wasn't polluted.
These plants, like coral carpet, have grown to millions of dollars in the last few years.
One of my sons -in -law works there.
It has grown tremendous.
It seems to me that these big plants that make a lot of money ought to take care of some of this pollution, somewhere or another.
In the last 25 years, we have doubled our gross national product, radically changed the way we produce things, and ignored the pollution that was part of the package.
The result is a higher standard of living, but a lower quality of life.
Pollution is something everybody is subjected to.
The American Cancer Society estimates that 75 to 85 percent of cancer is environmentally caused.
So, what we have not paid for one way, we may pay for another.
The question is not whether the costs of pollution will be paid.
The question is when, and by whom.
The American Cancer Society estimates that 75 to 85 percent of the pollution is caused by the pollution of the world.
The answer is yes.
The American Cancer Society estimates that 75 to 85 percent of the pollution is caused by the pollution of the world.
Thank you for watching.
