Purifying the Effluent Society

Angry residents descended on a Detroit city council meeting last week and demanded that the city shut down the soot-spewing smokestacks of the Budd Co.'s $75 million foundry, even though the company has begun a $700,000 effort to end the nuisance. In Maryland the Federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare -- using for the first time its new powers to attack pollution -- gave the Bishop Processing Co.

until Sept. 1 to eliminate the sickening stench of burning bones from its chicken-rendering plant. At a Chicago convention, the American Petroleum Institute earmarked $1,800,000 for research on purer air and water next year, on top of $41 million that in dividual oil firms will spend to control pollution.

All of these developments symbolize the nation's increasing effort to stop the poisoning of its air and water by industrial plants that often seem to rival Cartoonist Al Capp's highly pungent Skonk Works. They also emphasize the growing pressures on both industry and communities to spend heavily in an effort to speed up the attack. The Gov ernment estimates that 1) U.S. indus try will have to spend ten times its pres ent $100 million annually for treating waste water if it hopes to end industrial pollution of the nation's rivers; 2) communities will have to spend at least another $1 billion a year to halt sewage problems; and 3) cleaning up the air will cost a stiff $2 billion.

Fit for Fish. Prodded by stiffer laws and sterner enforcement -- this year 18 states adopted air-pollution bills, 19 en acted water-pollution legislation -- U.S.

industry is responding with little com plaint and a good deal of action. Today, 94% of the 1,726 plants that discharge wastes into the Ohio River basin meet the requirements set by the Ohio River Valley Sanitation Commission (v. only 75% five years ago). At its Houston refinery, Shell Oil now purifies its used water so thoroughly that fish swim in a pond at the end of the process. Ford Motor Co. announced last month that it will spend $1,000,000 to scrub liquid wastes flowing into the Rouge River from its Dearborn steel plant. Four major steel firms recently agreed to spend $50 million over seven years to eliminate the 160 tons a year of red dust they now spew over every square mile of Chicago.

For industry, the byproducts of a cleanup often offset part of the costs. Los Angeles County's oil refineries strip smelly hydrogen sulphide from crude oil, convert it to 450 tons a day of marketable sulphur. Boston Edison Co. mines vanadium from its oil-fired smoke, exports it to Belgium. For the nation, air and water cleanups mean a huge saving in dollars as well as in health. An air cleanup alone would save $11 billion a year that is now wasted on extra cleaning, painting, corrosion and damage to crops and property.

Barely Enough. To win a foothold in the $200 million market for cleanup equipment, scores of big and little firms are busy devising new kinds of filters, precipitators, sprayers and sensitive measuring apparatus. Last week in Corvallis, Ore., Governor Mark Hatfield dedicated a new office and research center for the five-year-old MicroFLOC Corp., whose high-rate water-filtration system is one of the world's most advanced, has been bought by 50 communities and industries. General Electric has developed a gas and vapor measurer and a condensation nuclei counter that counts dirt particles in the air, is test-marketing an electronic air cleaner for homes.

All the efforts and all the equipment, warned Lyndon Johnson's Science Advisory Committee last week, are "barely enough to stay even in managing pollution, surely not enough to make the improvements that are needed." To add economic incentive to the fight, the panel suggested that air and water polluters be taxed in proportion to how much they despoil the environment. The scientists had a name for the proposed levy: "effluent charges."

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