Member Pipeline - Fax Alerts - August 22, 2003
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August 22, 2003
AMSA Vice President Appears on CNN to Talk Funding
William Schatz, AMSA Vice President and General Counsel of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, appeared on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight this week on behalf of the Water Infrastructure Network (WIN) and re-emphasized the need for long-term, sustainable funding for the nation’s clean and safe water infrastructure. The program was one in a series of news stories that CNN is conducting on the condition and needs of the nation’s various infrastructures following recent power outages. Schatz discussed the growing funding gap and stated that “… because of the lack of sustainable federal funding, or any funding source, we have been unable to spend all of the dollars that need to be spent for these additional capital projects.” Schatz was joined on the program by G. Tracy Mehan III, Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Water, who restated the Agency’s estimate of a clean and safe water infrastructure funding gap in the hundreds of billions of dollars and that action is needed now to avoid serious problems down the road. The American Water Works Association’s Executive Director, Jack Hoffbuhr, also appeared on the program. This high-profile broadcast demonstrates AMSA and WIN’s commitment to increasing its grassroots outreach efforts on this vital issue. A transcript of the program is available at http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/19/ldt.00.html.AMSA Urges EPA to Ensure Sound Science and Conclusions in its CSO/SSO Report
AMSA sent a letter to Assistant Administrator Mehan yesterday to follow up on recent stakeholder meetings regarding EPA’s upcoming Report to Congress on the Impacts and Controls of Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) and Sanitary Sewer Overflows (SSOs) (the Report). EPA presented preliminary conclusions from the data collection efforts associated with the Report, scheduled for release in December. Representatives from AMSA attended both the Washington, D.C. (June 24-25), and Huntington Beach, Calif. (July 8) meetings, and this week’s letter emphasizes AMSA’s concerns with the quality of some of the data and the manner in which the data may be presented in the final Report, most notably with the lack of evidence linking SSOs to waterborne illness. The Association will be meeting in September with key EPA Office of Wastewater Management officials to further discuss this issue and other municipal clean water issues. In addition, an SSO Workgroup project is currently underway, via AMSA’s Technical Action Fund, to develop a risk characterization for pathogens in CSOs and SSOs that will help shed light on the much-discussed but under-studied link between SSOs and waterborne illness. The Association’s letter to EPA can be found at http://www.amsa-cleanwater.org/private/legreg/outreach/2003-08-21RTC.pdf.
- Register for AMSA’s Water and Wastewater Leadership Center being held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, February 22 – March 5, 2004. Applications for the Leadership Center will be distributed to AMSA members via Member Update next week or members can visit AMSA’s website at http://www.amsa-cleanwater.org/meetings/04leader/ for application information. Contact Lisa Headley, Managing Director of Membership and Internal Services at AMSA’s National Office at 202/833-3692 or lheadley@amsa-cleanwater.org for additional information on the Leadership Center.
- This year, for the first time, AMSA is pleased to offer its 2003 AMSA Index Survey form online for your convenience. The Association encourages members to fill out the Survey form — which tracks service charge increases as measured against the rate of inflation — by the September 26, 2003 deadline. The Survey form instructions were made available via Member Update 03-16. Hard copies of the Survey form were distributed to the membership today via regular mail. If you have any questions regarding the Survey form, please contact AMSA consultant, Mark Hoeke, at 202/361-7446 or mhoeke@dfinet.ch.