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Friday March 28, 1997
AMSA Seeks Resolution to Internal EPA Conflict Over SSO Policy
AMSA this week issued an action memorandum to its members in Region IV urging them to write Regional Administrator John Hankinson, Jr., to protest the region's role in stalling the agency's stakeholder-negotiated development of national policy to control sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs). Region IV AMSA members were asked to weigh into the debate in advance of a scheduled April 1 meeting on the issue between Hankinson and EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Robert Perciasepe. Members were also asked to express their support for the concept of affirmative defense for those SSOs that are beyond the reasonable control of an operator, and to highlighting their support for a policy that will control SSOs primarily through program guidance and permitting rather than enforcement.
The March 27 action memorandum follows on the heels of a letter by AMSA and other municipal interests of EPA's SSO Federal Advisory Subcommittee that protested the agency's postponement of an upcoming subcommittee meeting and proposed agency enforcement plan that target SSOs. EPA postponed the April 21-22 SSO Subcommittee meeting due to internal agency conflicts over the policy development. In its March 26 letter to EPA Water Office and enforcement officials, the municipal caucus urges the agency to resolve its differences as "expeditiously as possible" and points out that an undue delay of the process will compel the policy to "languish within internal EPA discussions, while state and regional regulatory officials increasingly focus their attention on enforcement initiatives."
The letter goes on to criticize the agency for an apparent draft memorandum of agreement (MOA) between EPA headquarters and the regions that would focus enforcement activities on SSOs that impact impaired waters or "environmental justice" areas, and that would require the regions to take enforcement action "against a minimum of 25 percent of communities with overflows each year." This action will "undermine the validity" of the stakeholder meeting process "in this and future negotiations," states the letter, which further expresses consternation that the agency would "support and promote a policy dialogue for two years and then begin an enforcement initiative without a consensus policy in place."
U.S. PIRG Again Misrepresents Data, Calls for Stringent New CWA Laws
A professional environmental group this week released a report that points to an alleged 20 percent of major facilities nationwide reporting "significant" Clean Water Act (CWA) violations to urge Congress to pass stringent new citizen suit and right-to-know laws. While the stated purpose of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) report -- Dirty Water Scoundrels -- is "to examine the extent to which major industrial, municipal and federal facilities are illegally discharging pollution into the nation's surface waters," the data do not provide an accurate assessment of actual discharges. For example, of four criteria used by PIRG to identify many of the significant violations, only one pertains to actual discharges of pollution. The other three pertain to reporting and monitoring requirements, yet PIRG fails to take this into account in the context of the report's findings, leading a reader to believe that most of the violations are actual illegal discharges. AMSA will draft a letter to PIRG in response to the discrepancies in the report.