SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY

LENGTH: 2404 words

COMMITTEE: HOUSE TRANSPORTATION

SUBCOMMITTEE: WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

HEADLINE: WATER QUALITY FINANCING

TESTIMONY-BY: PAUL D. SCHWARTZ, NATIONAL POLICY COORDINATOR

AFFILIATION: CLEAN WATER ACTION

BODY:
Statement of Paul D. Schwartz National Policy Coordinator Clean Water Action before the

U.S. House Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee

March 13, 2002

Good day, Mr. Chairman and other distinguished members of the Committee. I am Paul Schwartz, National Policy Coordinator of Clean Water Action, a national environmental organization working for clean, safe and affordable water; prevention of health- threatening pollution; creation of environmentally-safe jobs and businesses; and empowerment of people to make democracy work. Clean Water Action works in 15 states and has 700,000 members across the nation. Additionally, I serve as co-chair of the Clean Water Networks Wet Weather and Funding Workgroup and am on the Steering Committee of the Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water. Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing today on the draft Water Quality Financing act of 2002, which would reauthorize the Clean Water state revolving funds (CWSRF) under the Clean Water Act (CWA). The Committees sustained focus on water infrastructure funding and the state clean water revolving fund is timely and of vital importance to the nations environment, economy and public health. This hearing is a crucial next step toward securing more dollars for critical wastewater infrastructure needs. Clean Water Action believes that the public's health and welfare will best be served if this Committee chooses to:

-Reinvest in American Communities - Dramatically increase the dollars available for our aging and inadequate core water infrastructure;

-Integrate environmental, public health and neighborhood quality of life approaches at the community level within the built and natural watershed;

-Construct equitable and affordable pricing and income streams and make polluters pay their fair share;

-Secure local control of decision making and resources;

-Require meaningful accountability, transparency, and public participation.

REINVEST IN AMERICAN COMMUNITIES - DRAMATICALLY INCREASE THE DOLLARS AVAILABLE FOR OUR AGING AND INADEQUATE CORE WATER INFRASTRUCTURE

Investing federal tax dollars in establishing and upgrading America's core water infrastructure system over the last three decades has played a large role in bringing our nation's waters from the one-third fishable and swimmable mark to the almost sixty percent we have achieved today. Starting with the sewage construction grants program and from 1987on with the Clean Water State revolving fund (CWSRF) we have largely curtailed the dumping of billions of gallons of polluted contaminants, which foul our lakes, rivers, wetlands and coastal areas. Yet even in this critical area the war against pollution has not been won.

The gains that we have made and the billions of tax and ratepayer dollars that we have marshaled are at risk. Despite the significant gains outlined above the promise of fishable, swimmable and drinkable water has yet to be realized in some forty percent of our waters and we are at risk of slipping backwards. Not only are species biodiversity and the physical and chemical integrity of our nation's waters in jeopardy, but also human health is threatened on a number of fronts.

It has been well established by the USEPA, the Water Infrastructure Network (WIN) and others that there is a gap between all available sources of revenue and the water infrastructure needs in our communities. WIN estimates that we have needs of $1 trillion dollars and projects that $23 billion must be invested annually over the next 20 years to begin to close the gap.

Clean Water Action calls on Congress to authorize and appropriate a much-needed immediate injection of $57 billion spread over the next five fiscal years. This is a small price to pay to live up to the promise of clean, safe and affordable water made in these Clean Water Act thirty years ago. Money should be used primarily to address core water quality problems by being targeted: (1) to fix, modernize and maintain our antiquated and dilapidated stormwater and wastewater collection systems and (2) to assist in modernizing our old and overburdened sewage treatment works. But water spending cannot be focused just on the traditional modes and methods of end-of-the-pipe engineering solutions. Though historically, 98 % of water infrastructure funding has gone to such projects, this Congress needs to support pollution prevention, soft path and green infrastructure measures that enhance the performance and cost effectiveness of the traditional core infrastructure investments.

It is instructive to view the economic and quality of life costs of tolerating dirty water in real life terms. In 1993 rain fell hard in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Normally we think of rain as a cleansing agent. Clean water pours from the sky, the air clears and our streets get cleaned. Unfortunately, in this case, the water carried with it a large slug of cryptosporidium parvum, a hard-shelled pathogen which thrives in pure chlorine and which breached the defenses of Milwaukee's drinking water plant. Over 400,000 people became ill, 4,000 people went to the hospital and 100 vulnerable people (mostly the elderly, infants and people living with AIDS) died. What we are sure about is that our pollution prevention strategy failed. It is likely that the source of the cryptosporidium was a confined feeding operation or an upstream sewage outfall that overflowed into the Milwaukee River above the city's drinking water intake. The Clean Water Act's pollution prevention promise to be the first line of defense for the public's health did not hold and the citizen's of Milwaukee paid the price.

Fearing this type of scenario or more simple contamination from sewage/drinking water pipe cross connections, drinking water systems spend millions of dollars dumping toxic disinfectants such as chlorine and ammonia into our drinking water supply distribution pipes. The problem is that as we are working to stop one problem we are creating a potential Frankenstein: that is that we are creating a class of contaminants that may be a significant contributor to birth defects and may be responsible for many of the fastest growing (bladder, kidney, rectal) cancers in the United States. The disinfectants that we are dumping in on purpose, to kill the microbes from our animal feeding factories and from our sanitary and combined sewer and stormwater overflows, are combing with dirt, and pesticides and other organics to make contaminants such as chloroform and other trihalomethanes, halocetic acids, and various brominated compounds.

In addition to the clean water-drinking water linkage, stormwater and sewage overflows are increasingly shutting down our nation's beaches, fouling our shellfish and fishing stock and disrupting recreational water sports such as sport fishing, boating, diving and surfing. This set of multi-billion dollar industries are put at risk because of our under investment in core water infrastructure. With so much at stake, one would think that raising the needed dollars to solve the problems would be at the top of our budget priorities. But in fact this is not the case. INTEGRATE ENVIRONMENTAL, PUBLIC HEALTH AND NEIGHBORHOOD QUALITY- OF-LIFE APPROACHES AT THE COMMUNITY LEVEL WITHIN THE BUILT AND NATURAL WATERSHED

Clean Water Action, the Clean Water Network and the Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water all stand behind setting aside 10% of the Clean Water SRF for these approaches and hope that subsequent versions of the draft Water Quality Financing Act of 2002, and other bills, reflect this cost-effective priority.

Few municipalities have moved from end-of-the-pipe engineering focus to integrated watershed approaches. There are many reasons for this failure, including: the lack of integration between the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act in policy and implementation; an institutional bias towards big pipe and plumbing projects and against incorporation and integration of green infrastructure, distributive and low impact development pollution prevention approaches, and a lack of tax-paying and rate-paying input to the priority setting and approval process.

The Committee needs to give the States the flexibility to invest in pollution prevention as part of an integrated core infrastructure package. Traditional "core" infrastructure funding requirements can be mitigated by putting an emphasis on non-structural, preventive projects (green infrastructure), and innovative and alternative engineering strategies. These approaches combined with modernization treatment plants, and collection and distribution systems makes economic, public health and environmental sense.

These projects are more cost-effective and produce more environmental benefits than relying solely on the old brick and mortar end-of-the pipe solutions. Establishing stream buffers, instituting real conservation and water efficiency practices, building with roof top gardens, retrofitting gutter spouts to funnel storm water into cisterns to be used for ornamental plants and lawns, planting trees, more frequent street sweeping. All are examples of demonstrated technologies that if funded with the Clean Water SRF will radically transform our water quality picture. Not only do these technologies reduce contamination of our water supply, but they also reduce on the volume of water flowing through stromdrains and homes into overtaxed centralized sewers. Prioritizing use of these clean water tools will provide a huge return from our water infrastructure investment.

The draft Water Quality Financing Act of 2002 reflects positive steps in this regard. The bill requires municipalities to evaluate innovate and alternative systems. It reaffirms that nontraditional approaches to stormwater and wastewater are indeed already eligible under the existing CWSRF. It allows States to provide more subsidies in the form of principal forgiveness and negative interest loans for nontraditional approaches. Further, the bill requires States to provide additional subsidizes for disadvantaged communities and ratepayers and to use alternatives including nonstructural protection of surface waters. This provision, however, only kicks in if Congress appropriates more money to the CWSRF than it has historically.

Clean Water Action believes that for these improvements to see the light of day, the Committee must consider embedding them as set-asides within the existing appropriation levels - thus ensuring their use. Nontraditional projects must overcome many barriers. Incentives and set asides can insure that cost effective projects can overcome those barriers.

FUND EXISTING NEEDS NOT SPRAWL DEVELOPMENT

While Clean Water Action supports additional funding to address existing waste- water and clean water needs, we oppose using scarce federal dollars to subsidize wastewater systems that support new sprawl development. Core water infrastructure systems, most of which were built using taxpayer funds, are now in need of rehabilitation, replacement and repair. This is an investment in the future worth making to ensure that our lakes and streams are safe, support revitalization of our waterfronts and provide safe drinking water throughout America. Funding should not be used to subsidize new systems unless it can be shown that the new system would serve existing populations.

Clean Water Action thinks that the bill misses an opportunity to make sure that State SRF money is not allowed to fund sprawl development. Though we like the draft bill's reintroduction of protections (wisely written into the old construction grants program) against new environmental damage that may result from sprawl and the funding of new collector systems, we believe that scarce CWSRF dollars should be prohibited from going to projects that are about future growth not existing needs. This prohibition is in the Safe Drinking Water Act's version of the SRF. Even though the states must develop a priority list for doling out the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) dollars based on a clear set of public health and environmental criteria, the state has the right to ignore the priority list rankings altogether and fund whatever project it wants. The draft bill requires States to fund only projects or activities included on the priority list - a marked improvement over the silence on this issue in current law. However, except for the legitimate exception of "readiness to proceed" States should be required to fund their projects in priority order. This is not a radical departure from the current practice on the drinking water side of the SRF accounts where lack of readiness to proceed is the only legitimate reason to skip funding a project on the list. This loophole, which is used heavily in some states, goes beyond needed flexibility and potentially undermines the integrity of the CWSRF.

CONSTRUCT EQUITABLE AND AFFORDABLE PRICING AND INCOME STREAMS AND MAKE POLLUTERS PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE

The draft bill reauthorizes the Clean Water SRF for a five-year period, but is silent about the long-term federal interest in funding clean and safe water. Water infrastructure issues, just as our airport and highway infrastructure needs are continuous. Any final bill must provide an ongoing, dedicated revenue stream from sources other than the ratepayers and taxpayers. Clean Water Action believes that a Clean Water Trust Fund will help needy communities meet critical water infrastructure needs. The Clean Water Trust Fund should in part be funded by a polluter pays mechanism that imposes a small fee on those vested interests whose polluting behavior creates the need for water clean up and public health protection in the first place. In addition Clean Water Action supports turning over Clean Water Act enforcement settlements that currently go to the general treasury, to the Clean Water Trust Fund.

Increased water infrastructure funding is essential if we are to curb a trend toward a two-tiered water infrastructure. Many cities have lost much of their rate base while their infrastructure deteriorates. Small water systems lack the scale to spread out costs of installing or maintaining new technologies. Not only are millions of peoples health on the line, but the basic economies of many cities and whole regions of the country are put at risk.



LOAD-DATE: March 21, 2002