The Dilution of America: The Traps of a Bloated Bureaucracy - the Love of Free Money - Where America Went Wrong - How Washington Misguided the Nation for Four Decades - and the “Greatest Generation” Neglected to Rein in Abuse

The Dilution

of America

THE TRAPS OF A BLOATED BUREAUCRACY

- THE LOVE OF FREE MONEY - WHERE

AMERICA WENT WRONG - HOW WASHINGTON

MISGUIDED THE NATION FOR FOUR DECADES

- AND THE GREATEST GENERATION

NEGLECTED TO REIN IN ABUSE

LOUIS C. GILDE &

LAWRENCE C. GAMBONE

AuthorHouse™

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© 2012 Louis C. Gilde & Lawrence C. Gambone. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse    04/29/2016

ISBN: 978-1-4772-7717-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-7718-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-7883-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012918658

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Table of Contents

Book Inserts

Prologue

Part 1.    Introduction

Chapter 1.    Formative Life Synopsis

Chapter 2.    Setting the Stage

Part 2.    Industry Environmentalist.    Government As Partner – Government As Controller

Chapter 3.    Environmental Career

Chapter 4.    Cooperative Waste Water Research Between Industry and Government

Chapter 5.    Salt in the Delaware River

Chapter 6.    Establishing New Plant Sites

Chapter 7.    Testimony Before U.S. Congressional Committee

Chapter 8.    The Sumter Story

Chapter 9.    Back to the Soup Works

Chapter 10.    The 1970’S – A Decade to Improve the Environment

Chapter 11.    Public Law 92-500.    1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments to the Clean Water Act

Chapter 12.    Industrial Cost Recovery (ICR), A Provision of Public Law 92-500 and Industry Cost Exclusion (ICE)

Chapter 13.    Technological Resources, Inc.

Chapter 14.    Final Chapter at the Soup Works

Part 3.    Retirement Years

Chapter 15.    Consulting and Volunteer Work With World Environment Center

Chapter 16.    Haddon Township Environmental Commission

Chapter 17.    Political Turmoil

Part 4.    America’s Cancers – America’s Needs

Chapter 18.    America’s Cancers from the 20th Century

Chapter 19.    The Needs of America Going Forward in the 21st Century

Chapter 20.    The Free World’s Greatest Concern in the 21st Century

Chapter 21.    Need of Religious Freedom and Moral Fortitude

Chapter 22.    Need for Education Choice with Reform of Teacher Union Power

Chapter 23.    Need for True Representative Governance with Regulatory Reform

Chapter 24.    Need for a Positive Business Environment to Grow the Economy and Help Urban Communities

Chapter 25.    Revitalizing Urban Communities –.    A Case for Camden, New Jersey

Chapter 26.    Politics and the Economic Agenda

Chapter 27.    Need for Choice Between a Continued Road.    to Socialism or Revisions to True Capitalism

Chapter 28.    America’s and the World’s Greatest Concern in the 21st Century

Part 5.    Final Considerations

Chapter 29.    What Should We Do?

Chapter 30.    In Summation

Part 6.    Afterthoughts 2016 And Beyond

About the author

BOOK INSERTS

A. Chapter 1 – Letter February 4, 1988, USEPA to United Nations

B. Chapter 3 – Napoleon Air Photo – Experimental Spray System

C. Chapter 4 – Paris Spray Fields

D. Chapter 8 – Sumter Spray Fields and Lagoon

E. Chapter 11 – EPA Literature on Overland Flow

F. Chapter 11 – University of California at Davis Research on Overland Flow

G. Chapter 11 – Corps of Engineers Research on Overland Flow

H. Chapter 12 – American Frozen Food Institute Newsletters

I. Chapter 12 – EPA Certificate of Appreciation

J. Chapter 12 – EPA letter October 8, 1981 re: Design Manual

K. Chapter 14 – County of Sacramento letter June 28, 1988

L. Chapter 14 – Water Resources Association Award

M. Chapter 15 – National Environmental Development Association Commentary on Environmental Risk

N. Chapter 16 – Haddon Township News Article on Fish Kills

PROLOGUE

W HEN WRITING YOUR first book, it is difficult to determine how much information you should provide to document past happenings that shaped the need for change that could improve and insure a better, more practical, more trustworthy governance of America. A Federal Government based primarily on mistrust places costly shackles on its businesses and people. In this respect, the states are in a better position to judge practical reality and the need for results-oriented, minimal regulatory control where absolutely necessary.

The year 1964 introduced America to President Johnson’s Great Society. In 1970 President Nixon authorized the Environmental Protection Agency. By 1976, America’s 200th anniversary, it was obvious that no matter how well intentioned both programs were, they created a financial burden that was not relative to their accomplishments. America’s Greatest Generation was aware of this dichotomy and did little to correct it. As a result, the dilution of America’s wealth by unnecessary rules, regulations, and taxes presented a handicap to future generations.

Bureaucratic rule-making has expanded exponentially since the advent of President Johnson’s Great Society. There is a false sense of security in EPA rule makings. For example, in drinking water, the presence of contaminants does not necessarily indicate that tap water or bottled water poses a health risk. EPA regulated contaminate levels are based upon a person drinking two liters of water every day for a lifetime in order to have a one-in-a-million chance of experiencing an adverse health effect such as cancer. How do you rate that risk in your life as compared to inhaling second-hand smoke or other factors of everyday living like texting while driving?

Life is not risk free. This is why zero pollution of contaminates is not reality oriented. And it gives us an indication of the problems involved in obtaining a fair and balanced permit for treated waters discharged to a receiving stream. Obviously, there is a need for rational consideration in regulatory decision making.

Throughout my career, I tried to adhere to a basic behavior that would achieve God-pleasing stewardship of environmental questions. Dr. Ruth Patrick’s concept of use without abuse encapsulates my value system and is expressed relative to many considerations throughout the book. Dr. Patrick, a world renowned scientist, was the guiding force in the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science research center for over a half century.

The focus of this book is primarily the environment. We need an educated electorate on all federal programs, not just the environment, to resolve our past failures. The Dilution of America’s founding principles must be reversed if we are to be a free nation and an economic powerhouse in the 21st century.

From Genesis 1:27-28 we are admonished to …fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over…every living thing that moves upon the earth. Worship the creator not the creation.

PART ONE

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Formative Life Synopsis

T HE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS provide a brief insight into my life experiences before the start of my environmental career in 1950.

I was born in 1924. My parents were devout Missouri Synod Lutherans, which meant traveling to Philadelphia every Sunday for almost a decade via trolley, ferry, and lots of walking. In fact, I was almost born on the ferry because there was no vehicle bridge (now the Benjamin Franklin Bridge) from New Jersey to Philadelphia until two years after my birth.

My parents along with five other couples helped start Martin Luther Chapel in Pennsauken, New Jersey in 1932. This church experience was a vital part of my youth, especially confirmation classes which provided the basis for much of my view point on the environment. We are stewards of God’s creation.

The Collingswood, New Jersey school system was a significant part of my youth, providing a sound education and helping to support my belief in God and patriotism for our country. I graduated from high school in June 1942 with Pearl Harbor on my mind and, in October 1942, I volunteered to enter the military service as a navy pilot. Unfortunately, I washed out because of hay fever conditions. But, much to my surprise, I was called up for infantry duty - my first experience of surprise with the federal government.

On the last day of basic infantry training, I experienced a march fracture, which was a splitting of the metatarsal bone in my left foot caused by too much walking with heavy equipment. Many would consider that lucky because I was scheduled to go to North Africa.

After my hospital stay I was sent to London where I experienced a number of night time bombings. Most of my twenty-three months’ service overseas was as a lowly PFC on detached liaison service from General Bradley’s Field Headquarters; thus from May 1944 to the end of the war, I served with General Montgomery’s Field Headquarters.

There were times in harm’s way; but mostly I served in relative safety with British troops who had experienced years of combat throughout the world prior to D-day. This afforded an unusual war experience: From prior to D-day to the end of the war, I was involved in five campaigns.

My environmental career started after the war between my junior and senior years of college. With Washington out of control economically, it seemed prudent to focus the subject of this book on my unusual experiences as an industry environmentalist from 1950 to President Nixon’s authorization of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970. The EPA was fostered in part by the misconception of a Dying Lake Erie.

My unusual career involved industry cooperative efforts with the federal government at the Taft Sanitary Engineering Center in the late fifties and sixties along with more extensive cooperation with the U.S. Robert Kerr Regional Laboratory in Ada, Oklahoma in the mid-sixties. Until my retirement in 1988, my work afforded me an unusual perspective of industry’s relationship with government; and I now understand why the EPA has cost the average citizen money.

Thomas Jefferson once commented there is no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but people themselves. Washington’s uncontrolled growth, power and present mess suggests that we return decision-making to the lowest political grass roots level possible. There is no need for Congress and its related mass of bureaucracy to make every decision for the welfare of this nation’s citizens. There is too great a disconnect.

Finally, in relating my experiences over the past half century I must make it clear that I am not dead set against EPA or environmentalists. Nevertheless, the overreach of each group, which in their regulatory zeal, wastes valuable resources unnecessarily, increases the cost of living for the average citizen.

CHAPTER 2

Setting the Stage

I T IS APPARENT that spiritually, historically and economically we as a nation have lost our way from the advantages we inherited in 1950. How did we get to today’s muddled state?

Those of us who experienced the Great Depression and served in World War II have been labeled by Tom Brokow as The Greatest Generation; and most of us took pride in that consideration. But, when assessing how America has arrived at its present predicament, my generation shares responsibility for the erosion of the rich inheritance that made us such a powerful, benevolent nation in the decade or so after the end of the war.

In the late ninety’s when I was 74 years old, I discovered that a high school history teacher was proselytizing his own political agenda rather than telling the truth. I kept silent and did nothing about it. In my eighty’s I recognized the importance of passing on to my grandchildren life’s experiences that could be of value to them in their choices. Thus about 2007 I started to scratch out my thoughts primarily in notes for this book. At this time I realized that, after World War II, we should have given our children the same school choice programs that I received as a GI. This also became a time of developing the concept and importance of the sustainability of profits if America was to have a truly free capitalistic economy.

During the past several years it has become clear to me that I, like most of the Greatest Generation who grew up in the depression and were involved in WWII, have not been sufficiently active in politics to stop the erosion of our life’s foundation. As a consequence, we allowed the country to deteriorate into the moral and economic mess that exists today. We were too laid back politically and did not confront the erosion of our heritage. We collectively felt why fight city hall.

America is at a cross roads. We can follow the current progressive agenda and move more and more towards big government with life in general being controlled by elite Washington bureaucrats and politicians. Conversely, we can embrace the potential for achieving spiritual development plus responsible government, bootstrap individual achievement (beginning with the education system), and a gradual return to a free market system.

Today our political and economic choices are perhaps more apparent than they have been since the American Revolution over two centuries ago. Somehow profit has become a dirty word and is, for too large a segment of the population, a scourge considered evil to the welfare of the nation. My life’s experiences have lead me to understand that the sustainability of profit without abuse, by loosening unnecessary chains on capitalism, should be our national goal to economic recovery and improved welfare of the entire population. This requires a better understanding of economic freedom.

We have unnecessarily chained the free market system. It is time to loosen those chains and enjoy the productivity and prosperity that is available to us. Envy of the rich and class warfare has no place in a republic. Most importantly the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. The silent majority of my generation must let their voices be heard before there are too few of us left to make a difference.

Since the 1950’s most of my friends and buddies of the greatest generation have perpetually groused about entitlements and give-away programs that used our tax dollars, the creeping costs of life’s necessities by union demands, etc. Not wanting to make waves or be considered unappreciative or greedy, we allowed the gradual and insidious deterioration of our liberty and our income by ever increasing taxes and regulations. By 1976 we should have remembered the basis of the 200th year celebration of our Declaration of Independence and said enough is enough. Sadly, we did nothing and followed the slippery slope to today’s Congress (2012), which cannot prepare a fiscally responsible budget and, at the state level, legislatures saddled with duplicity such