[EPA press release - October 24, 1975]

The fourth annual meeting of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Joint Committee on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection will open Tuesday, October 28, at the Environmental Protection Agency.

EPA Administrator Russell E. Train and Academician Yuri A. Izrael, head of the Hydrometeorological Service of the U.S.S.R. (Hydromet), will lead their delegations in discussions through Friday, October 31.

The delegates will review progress made in implementing the 1972 Agreement establishing a program of cooperation between the two countries in environmental research and technology development. They will also plan project activities for the coming year.

In announcing plans for the meeting, Train said: "All nations share a single planet and that planet's finite supply of resources. In implementing the Joint Agreement during the past three years we have developed an institutional framework for a sharing of knowledge and techniques that will help both our peoples to use those resources with maximum efficiency and a minimum of waste. These efforts ultimately will benefit all mankind."

The agreement, signed in Moscow in May 1972, has led to joint efforts by the two nations in 11 environmental areas of interest. These have included research in the science of earthquake prediction, the exchange of techniques for building pipelines in areas where the ground is always frozen, measuring the effects of pollutants on life in the ocean, methods for protecting such endangered species as the peregrine falcon and the musk ox, and methods for control of air and water pollution.

In August, two U.S. scientists boarded a Soviet oceanographic vessel to participate with their Soviet counterparts in a study of microscopic marine life in the Gulf Stream. U.S. scientists have taken part in a study of the earthquake-prone region of Tadjikistan in the south-central part of the Soviet Union; similar joint work is being done in California.

A Memorandum of Implementation, specifying activities to take place in 1976 under the Agreement, will be signed at closing ceremonies on Friday.