Rapid achievement of energy independence has become an urgent national goal in the United States. However public opinion, reinforced by general environmental legislation and specific energy-related legislation, demands that the development of energy alternatives will not be at the expense of the environment. One area of strong concern regards landscape restoration.

This subject is highly controversial, and responsibility for research and regulation is currently scattered among a number of Federal and state agencies and bureaux. Examination at the programme level indicates that many groups are working in closely related scientific areas. The Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) is making a detailed project and task analysis to determine whether true duplication rather than complementation of effort exists. From this analysis and a subsequent interagency effort, an integrated and fully coordinated restoration research programme can be designed. The size of this programme will need to be commensurate with the size of the problem. Hence, reclamation activities must be geared to the great diversity of ecological systems that are present in the United States, with due consideration of the full array of alternative energy-development possibilities.

Clearly, energy development involves a process of trade-offs. Thus it is the responsibility of ERDA to ensure that energy options, proposed for the future, are accompanied by a complete assessment of environmental costs—so that energy-environmental tradeoff decisions can be made early in the development of the technology, and can be based on a solid foundation of ecological knowledge. In order to carry out this mandate we shall need to establish sites for longterm energy impact research (in every major ecosystem), help design a coherent national land-reclamation programme, support an adequate amount of basic and imaginative applied research, and develop public demonstration areas where citizens, industrialists, and professional specialists, can observe longterm results of energy-environmental effects.

Prompt action demands that we capitalize upon past studies and develop a programme to learn as rapidly as possible about basic reclamation processes, so as to provide the best available knowledge to society's decision-makers. Follow-on studies must be conducted to validate and improve our reclamation predictions and management activities. The Argonne National Laboratory, which will provide a central focus for the ERDA land-reclamation research, will gather and collate all pertinent data, so that models and generic statements regarding reclamation techniques can be developed to guide us.

In order to have an adequate supply of clean, safe, and environmentally accepted energy, we will need the full cooperation of all. Only by moving together can we ensure for posterity an environmental heritage as rich as that which we ourselves have enjoyed.