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Senators Blast Sewer Fund Cut

Bruce Geiselman

Senators expressed bipartisan disappointment last week with a Bush administration plan to slash $361 million from a fund that helps communities upgrade their wastewater treatment systems. The Republican chairman of the Senate environment committee indicated the president's cut would not remain when Congress approves the final budget.

The Bush administration's fiscal year 2006 budget - which would trim overall Environmental Protection Agency discretionary funding by 6 percent - calls for a 33 percent funding cut for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which loans money to communities needing to upgrade their sewer systems to meet federal requirements. The level of CWSRF funding would go from $1.1 billion in 2005 to $730 million in 2006.

Democrats and Republicans on the environment committee criticized the cut, and recent history shows Congress is reluctant to slash funding for the popular program.

"I, like many of my colleagues on the committee, continue to be troubled by the administration's and its predecessor's history of cuts to the Clean Water SRF, the primary federal clean water mechanism," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., environment committee chairman, said at a Feb. 9 hearing.

Communities need assistance to meet EPA mandates, he said.

"Not only do we need to ensure these costs are necessary because they are addressing legitimate public health and environmental threats, but evidently we also need to convince some that Congress and the EPA have a role in this escalating cost crisis," Inhofe said.

Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., the committee's ranking member, said the proposed EPA cuts in general go too far, and the cuts in clean water funding are particularly troubling.

"The nationwide need for infrastructure dollars continues to far outpace the amount of funding that is available from all levels of government," Jeffords said.

Acting EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said the allocation is sufficient for the administration to reach its goal of providing $6.8 billion in capitalization for the fund between 2004 and 2011.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., also criticized funding reduction for the fund. "If Congress enacts this amount, it would be a cut of more than $600 million from the average historical funding level of $1.37 billion per year for the program," she said.

In submitting its budget to Congress, the EPA has a history of proposing cuts it knows Congress will reject, Inhofe told Johnson.

"It seems like every year, and it happened in the previous administration, the Clinton administration, it's happened every time that I've been up here, that there are cuts in programs that you know in your heart are going to be put back in," Inhofe said. He mentioned the clean water fund as an example. "I would prefer that the agency start making cuts in areas where they think there could be general agreement," he said.

In 2005, Bush proposed only $850 million for the Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund, but Congress eventually increased the funding to nearly $1.1 billion.

Groups representing municipal wastewater system operators also criticized the president's proposal.

"Without a long-term, sustainable federal-state-local partnership, communities will not be able to tackle essential capital replacement projects needed to meet federal Clean Water Act mandates and improve the quality of the nation's waters," said Ken Kirk, executive director of the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies.