AMSA Legal Alert (Leg03-4)

Privileged and Confidential
Attorney-Client Communication

The Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies (AMSA) is pleased to announce the release of our newest publication, Wet Weather Consent Decrees … Protecting POTWs in Negotiations: An AMSA Handbook. The publication was unveiled to the membership at AMSA’s May 17-21, 2003 National Environmental Policy Forum and 33rd Annual Meeting. Developed through AMSA’s Technical Action Fund (TAF), the Handbook is the latest in cutting edge legal resource tools prepared by the Association to benefit the clean water community. The Handbook was created as a unique resource for the growing number of publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) facing negotiations and litigation with the federal or state governments regarding combined and sanitary sewer overflow issues. These negotiations and court proceedings can have a dramatic impact on municipal wastewater operations for decades into the future. Furthermore, wet weather negotiations generally require POTWs to plan for, fund, and make million – and even billion – dollar investments in their wastewater infrastructure. Given their high stakes, it is in a municipality’s best interest to enter these negotiations armed with as much knowledge as possible regarding the government’s past practices and agreements with other municipalities.

The Handbook covers key issues that municipal attorneys, managers, and staff may wish to consider before, during, and after wet weather negotiations. The Handbook assesses the various ways the government’s boilerplate Clean Water Act (CWA) consent decree language can be modified via negotiation to be more workable for a municipality and addresses techniques to craft workable standard decree provisions, such as definitions, compliance with law, stipulated penalties, force majeure, dispute resolution, and termination clauses. The Handbook also covers topics such as strategies to maintain municipal autonomy, leveraging POTW expertise in negotiations, and techniques to integrate legal obligations and deadlines into daily municipal operations. To complement the Handbook, the more than 30 municipal wet weather decrees and orders discussed in the Handbook are posted on AMSA’s website as a reference library. AMSA expects the Handbook to be a key resource for our members for many years to come.

While the new publication focuses on wet weather decrees, the information covered will be of broad use to AMSA member agencies, as many of the topics addressed are common in other types of environmental decrees, orders, and agreements. AMSA expects Wet Weather Consent Decrees … Protecting POTWs in Negotiations to become a key tool for our members for many years to come. Additional copies are available for purchase on AMSA’s publications web page at http://www.amsa-cleanwater.org/pubs/ or via the online order form.

Please contact Robin Davis, AMSA’s Manager of Marketing and Membership Development with any questions regarding this publication at 202/533-1802 or rdavis@amsa-cleanwater.org.