Remarks on Transmitting a Special Message to the Congress on Environmental Quality.

I HAVE SENT to the Congress today a sweeping set of proposals to clean up our Nation's air and water and to make our land more livable.

This is the most far-reaching and comprehensive message on conservation and restoration of our natural resources ever submitted to the Congress by a President of the United States.

We are taking these actions not in some distant future but now, because we know that it is now or never.

We are launching this campaign not on a piecemeal basis but nationwide, with nationwide standards and a comprehensive plan.

I am urging the Congress to pass 23 specific proposals, and I am moving on 14 more measures by administrative action. Now, here are some of the highlights:

First, to clean up our Nation's waters, I am proposing a 5-year, $10 billion Clean Waters Act to provide the municipal treatment plants needed to meet our water quality standards nationwide; and I am proposing a comprehensive enforcement plan with strong new legal weapons to insure that no city and no industry is allowed to continue polluting lakes and rivers.

To clean up the Nation's airs, these are some of the things I have proposed: Today we are publishing new and more rigorous standards to limit the pollution that can be caused by tomorrow's automobiles.

I have ordered the start of research on new types of pollution-free automobiles in cooperation with private enterprises.

The words of the automotive pioneer, Charles Kettering, who invented the self-starter, should be of special inspiration to the automotive industry and to all of us. "We should all be concerned about the future," he said, "because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there." The lives we spend there in the future, motorist and pedestrian, are going to be pollution-free.

To cope with air pollution by incinerators and industries, I propose that the Federal Government establish nationwide air quality standards and that strict new enforcement power be provided.

To clean up the land, I have proposed extension of the Solid Waste Disposal Act but with new emphasis on the development of materials for packaging that can be broken down and disposed of more easily.

And to make our land more usable to more people, I have ordered an inventory of all Federal land.

The Federal Government owns thousands of acres of land in and near metropolitan areas that it no longer needs. Under my proposals, this land will either be turned to recreational use or sold to finance creation of new recreational areas.

The task of cleaning up our environment calls for a total effort by ourselves and by our next generation. We shall be reaching out, therefore, in an effort to enlist millions of helping hands, millions of willing spirits, millions of volunteer citizens who will put to themselves the simple question: What can I do?

With vigorous Federal leadership, with active enlistment of governments at every level, with the aid of industry and private groups, and, above all, with the determined participation by individual citizens in every State and in every community, we at last will succeed in restoring the kind of environment we deserve.

My administration's aim here, as in all that we do, is reform, restoration, and renewal. For generations in this country we have sung and loved the song "America the Beautiful." The beauty of this land lifts up our spirits. It provides an inspiration for the American ideals of liberty and opportunity.

Now, more than ever, we need to feel that inspiration, we need to see those ideals clearly. And that is why the restoration of America, the beautiful, is so important. We shall take pride in our surroundings and pass on to coming generations a place of beauty.