Member Pipeline - Fax Alerts - February 20, 2004
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February 20, 2004
AMSA Takes Action on
Misleading NRDC "Swimming in Sewage" Report
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a report yesterday titled “Swimming in Sewage: The Growing Problem of Sewage Pollution and How the Bush Administration Is Putting Our Health and Environment at Risk" (http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/sewage/sewage.pdf). The report makes numerous misstatements about AMSA, as well as various public agency members, on a number of issues including combined and sanitary sewer overflows and blending. AMSA will contact the utilities cited in the report in order to facilitate their response. The Association plans to compile these responses and share them with key stakeholders, including members of Congress. AMSA will also draft a direct response to the NRDC regarding inaccurate information about AMSA and its positions. Clearly, NRDC’s report seeks to forward both its anti-blending initiative and its ongoing effort to obtain a “zero tolerance” standard for sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) as EPA continues to work on both of these issues. AMSA will continue to voice the position of the nation’s publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) and to counter the fabrications and misstatements put forth by NRDC on these issues.
Of interest is NRDC’s top recommendation. The report states ". . .just as a trust fund exists for highway and airport expenditures, the government should establish a trust fund for clean water" — an idea AMSA has led the fight on for some time. In the hours since the report’s release, AMSA has worked closely with key reporters both via a press release (http://www.amsa-cleanwater.org/advocacy/releases/021904.cfm) and on the phone, pointing out that the report simply rehashes prior NRDC reports – and that only NRDC’s recommendation for a clean water trust fund was newsworthy. To date, primarily the trade press has written articles about the report, with one article stating that “[w]hile the groups' criticisms of federal regulatory efforts on sewage overflows and increased discharges of inadequately treated wastewater during wet weather is not new, the call for a trust fund to provide a dedicated source of money similar to that to pay for airports and highways is” (http://www.amsa-cleanwater.org/private/news/022004.cfm). AMSA will continue its advocacy with the news media to obtain public support for the nation’s true environmentalists, the POTW community.AMSA Receives
EPA Grant to Develop "Wastewater Utility Planning Tool"
AMSA has been awarded a $147,000 grant by EPA to develop and distribute a "Decontamination Wastewater Acceptance and Treatment Planning Tool" that would offer a generic protocol for publicly owned treatment works’ handling of wastewater contaminated with chemical, biological, or radiological agents following a large-scale terrorist attack. Decontamination wastewater is generated in the response to the cleanup of these types of incidents and may be discharged to the sewer system. The Planning Tool will be customized – as information becomes available – to address specific contaminants and will serve as a critical information and planning resource for POTWs. Because many of the decisions POTWs will need to make are likely to depend on site and agency-specific issues, the Planning Tool will guide POTWs by identifying the issues they must consider in their decision-making process and by directing them to existing and evolving resources and research to support site-specific decisions. The Association is in the process of drafting a Request for Proposals (RFP) to assist in the development of the tool. The RFP will be posted next week on AMSA’s web site. This award follows on the heels of the grant of an additional $400,000 from EPA to AMSA to continue to enhance its suite of Vulnerability Self Assessment Tools (VSAT™) (see 01/16/2004 FaxAlert at http://www.amsa-cleanwater.org/private/faxalerts/011604.cfm).