Statement by the President Upon Arrival in Syracuse: Conservation of the Nation's Water Resources.

THE PIONEERS who settled our country found a land blessed with magnificent forests, broad and fertile lands, and great rivers and lakes that provided abundant fresh water and highways for their travel and commerce. Their communities and cities grew beside these rivers and streams. Their pure waters supported growing populations and the establishment of industries to strengthen the sinew of our national prosperity.

But these natural resources proved destructible. The multitudes of our people, and the vast production of our industrial machine, are pouring an ever growing flood of waste products into our waters. Vast quantities of complex products from our technological society are polluting our streams and lakes and, indeed, endangering our strength and our health.

Here in the Northeastern United States, where pure water in sparkling abundance was so long taken for granted, we have learned through harsh experience that those who would command tomorrow must not be idle today in the total development and maximum preservation of our resources.

For those resources, even though bountiful, are not inexhaustible. And they are peculiarly vulnerable to man's abuse.

Just last summer, when drought struck the eastern seaboard, millions of Americans learned for the first time what those in the arid West had long known--that water is life, and that its constant future availability can be no more certain than man's vision to foresee and his determination to forestall.

The rivers and harbors omnibus bill, which I approved October 27, contains as its very first provision the creation of a regional plan for anticipating and meeting the future water needs of vast metropolitan growth.

In taking this step, we have crossed a new threshold in national policy. We have recognized that the impoundment and movement of our waters, their maximum purification and development to power our industries, float our barges, quench the thirst of our growing cities, and renew the earth from which our food is grown, must be undertaken as a coordinated whole.

No longer will piecemeal or halfway efforts suffice.

Last year Congress enacted, and I signed into law, the Water Quality Act of 1965, to help us control and abate the pollution of our waterways.

In May we consolidated and reorganized the Federal Government's water pollution activities under the Interior Department to make them more effective.

The House Committee on Public Works is meeting almost daily to consider a new and expanded clean rivers bill, already approved by the Senate, to provide greater impetus and financial assistance for our war against pollution of our national waters.

Today, here in Syracuse, the House Natural Resources and Power Subcommittee, under the chairmanship of Congressman Robert E. Jones, has been sitting in hearings to consider new means of protecting the water quality of the Great Lakes.

In the United States, at least 20 billion gallons of water are wasted each day by pollution. This is water that could be used and reused, if treated properly. Today, it is ravaged water--a menace to the health. It flows uselessly past water-hungry communities to an indifferent sea.

Citizens of our largest city, in the midst of last summer's drought, could only look wistfully at the broad Hudson River as it rolled through their city. Clean and usable, it could have provided for all of their needs. But it could not be used, because it was too contaminated for human consumption.

This 20-billion-gallon daily waste of water amounts to only about 6 percent of the Nation's total water needs, when we consider the requirements of industry, irrigation, and power. But it is an extremely significant 6 percent, since it constitutes better than onefourth of the pure water needs of our country. Its loss adversely affects the lives, the economy, the health, and the pleasure of far more than half of our population.

Here in the area of the Finger Lakes and in the drainage basin of our Great Lakes, you have seen the sad spectacle of these magnificent bodies of water beset with decay.

Lake Erie contains at its central core a 2,600 square mile area which can be described, for all practical purposes, as a "dead" body of water. It is so lacking in oxygen that marine life entering the area is doomed. It is a vast underwater "desert," and daily this contaminated area spreads.

Nor is Erie the only one of our Great Lakes beset with decay. It is merely the most advanced case. The water level in all five of them has dropped to the lowest point in recorded history.

Clearly, the time for action is at hand. The problems are made by man and can be solved by enlightened man. They are in many ways a reflection of our fantastic growth, our very affluence, our way of life. But we will not yield to carelessness or greed in our determination to preserve, unspoiled and unsullied for future generations of Americans, this natural inheritance which we received as our national birthright.

There is enough water failing annually upon our land to sustain us as a nation for all future time, if we are sufficiently able stewards of the treasure to form an intelligent partnership with nature--to impound it, purify it, conserve it, move it to our areas of need, and thus make it serve our future.

We are determined to preserve our great national water resources. We shall not permit the growing specter of drought, polluted waters, and blighted streams to rob us of our birthright. We shall develop our waterways, as we are doing on the St. Lawrence River. We shall harness the power of our rivers, as we are doing at the Dickey-Lincoln School project. We shall dean up our polluted rivers and lakes. We shah preserve this national treasure for ourselves and for our children. Every one of us has this responsibility. With your cooperation, I know we shall succeed.