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Toledo Blade
Sewer work looks safe from cutbacks, Water funds slashed in
Bush budget
March 7, 2005
By TOM HENRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Though Toledo's historic $450 million sewer project apparently won't be held
up by the Bush administration's latest budget plan, the same can't be said for
other large Ohio cities trying to comply with orders to keep waste out of
rivers, lakes, and streams.
Columbus has taken a keen interest in the outcome of the annual federal budget
process that begins in earnest this week at the House and Senate committee
levels.
President Bush's proposed budget for the 2006 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1,
calls for a $500 million cut in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's
overall $8.1 billion budget.
More than two-thirds of that cutback - $360 million - would come from the
agency's Clean Water State Revolving Fund. That fund is the primary source of
federal revenue that state agencies, such as the Ohio EPA, use to offer
low-interest loans for sewage work.
If approved, Mr. Bush's cut in the U.S. EPA budget would result in Ohio's share
of that money being cut nearly in half, from $76 million to $40.3 million.
"Everybody's going to be scrambling for these funds," said John Skunza, capital
projects loan manager for the Columbus public utilities department. "It
definitely is a concern for us."
How much of a concern? Columbus expects to spend $2 billion or more in the next
three decades to comply with a pair of consent decrees related to sewage
overflows.
Mr. Skunza said Columbus is banking on those low-interest loans to help keep its
sewage rates from rising faster than projected. Such loans are typically 1.25
percentage points below market value.
"It adds up to millions of dollars in interest savings over the 20-year life of
a loan," he said. "The savings are pretty substantial."
Toledo officials don't have quite the same anxiety - yet.
Bob Stevenson, Toledo's public utilities director, has said the city has enough
low-interest loan money committed through the current fiscal year to get it at
least halfway into its project.
The project is to resolve years of litigation by minimizing the amount of
untreated waste that goes into area streams after heavy rains. Instead of
releasing raw sewage, the city will be able to blend partially treated effluent
with fully treated effluent.
But will Toledo's financial luck hold out the further it gets into its project?
Some believe the situation could change if officials invariably find themselves
competing even harder against cities the size of Columbus for money.
"Demand is not going down, it's going up," Dan Binder, Ohio Environmental
Council watershed programs director, said.
The council was one of about 20 environmental groups in Ohio, including the Ohio
Public Interest Research Group, Rivers Unlimited, and the Ohio division of the
Izaak Walton League, to join the Ohio Council of Churches last week in asking
Ohio's U.S. senators to cross party lines and oppose such cuts.
Neither Sen. Mike DeWine nor Sen. George Voinovich is on the Senate Budget
Committee. But the groups said in a letter to them they should have a role in
the eventual outcome.
In their letter, the groups said they're concerned about the "potential harm to
Ohio's air, land, and water" if many of Mr. Bush's proposed cuts are enacted.
Also stepping up lobbying efforts on the eve of budget hearings was the
Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, a Washington trade group that
represents the nation's sewage plants.
Citing results of a recent poll, that association claimed 86 percent of
Americans are so concerned about the future of the nation's water supply that
they would support creating a trust fund to help pay for sewage improvements and
other clean water programs.
The poll it cited claimed a trust fund for protecting water is more than three
times as coveted as one for building and maintaining roads, and seen as almost
25 times more of a priority than one for airports.
But Stephen L. Johnson, who Mr. Bush nominated Friday to succeed former U.S. EPA
Administrator Mike Leavitt, will have more than just sewage budgetary concerns
to address if he is confirmed by the Senate.
Mr. Johnson, the agency's acting chief since Jan. 26, was asked by a bipartisan
coalition of 137 congressmen to reject the Bush administration's controversial
plan to allow "blending" of partially and fully treated sewage. Toledo claims it
already has been authorized to blend effluent under its consent decree with the
U.S. EPA.
"We believe there should be less sewage entering our environment, not more," the
letter said, with signers claiming the policy could undo 30 years of gains under
the Clean Water Act. "The EPA should enforce existing Clean Water Act
regulations instead of attempting to change the law so that more sewage would
enter into the environment where it will make people ill, sicken our wildlife,
and contaminate our waters."