Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
AMSA FEARS "ELECTION POLITICS" WILL BLOCK CONTENTIOUS BLENDING POLICY
Date: February 9, 2004 -
SANTA MONICA, CA -- Despite intense lobbying efforts, Association of
Metropolitan Sewerage Agency (AMSA) officials say election politics are likely
to block EPA's blending policy from moving forward this year.
The officials say the Bush administration is likely to back away from the policy
as the November elections approach because many environmentalists view it as an
environmental rollback. "The Bush administration knows this is a no-win for
them," one AMSA official said last week at the organization's conference here.
"This policy helps big, Democratic cities with histories of overflows. It's easy
for Bush to back away from this to make it look like he's appealing to
environmentalists."
EPA's proposed blending policy, published in the Federal Register in November,
would allow publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) to mix treated wastewater
with partially treated wastewater during wet weather events. Blending is used so
that POTWs can meet their National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES)
permit limits without "washing out" biological treatment systems with an
overwhelming influx of wastewater.
Currently, blending is an accepted practice in some EPA regions, but
inconsistent enforcement practices between regions have sparked concerns and
litigation by municipalities that have been barred from blending.
AMSA has historically supported blending because the group says it enables
municipalities to treat increased wastewater volumes during wet weather events
and minimizes harm to POTW infrastructure. The group has lobbied heavily in
favor of the policy, and joined a coalition of more than 20 municipal
organizations in writing a letter to EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt to support
it.
But as the Feb. 9 deadline for comments on the draft policy approaches, AMSA is
having trouble solidifying support for blending among municipal groups.
Specifically, several AMSA sources said the American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE) reportedly did not support blending because the group believes the
requirements EPA is placing in the draft policy on wastewater treatment
facilities that want to incorporate blending into their NPDES permits transforms
the policy into a rulemaking, which violates the Administrative Procedure Act.
The AMSA source says the group fears this lack of support could prevent EPA from
finalizing the blending policy because it could reflect a split among industry
officials over whether the policy should move forward.
"Having one of our own community members weigh in against it would not be good
at all," the source said at the conference.
AMSA sent a letter to ASCE executive director Pat Natale Jan. 30, asking ASCE to
abandon its opinion that blending "constitutes poor engineering and compromises
environmental quality," according to the letter. The letter is available on
InsideEPA.com.
An ASCE spokesman declined to comment.
Environmentalists and some bipartisan lawmakers, however, have said they oppose
blending because the process allows dischargers to bypass secondary treatment of
some of their wastewater, provided that their effluent meets NPDES permit
limits. These stakeholders have argued that this lesser standard of treatment
harms the environment.
A bipartisan group of 64 House lawmakers, led by Reps. Clay Shaw (R-FL) and
Frank Pallone (D-NJ), wrote a letter last month to Leavitt, criticizing the
policy. "This draft guidance would turn back the clock on clean water
protections, and we urge the EPA to enforce and strengthen these protections,
rather than consider actions that would increase the threat of waterborne
illnesses and environmental degradation," the lawmakers say in a Jan. 12 letter
to Leavitt. (Water Policy Report, Jan. 26, p3).
However, four top House Republican chairmen issued a competing letter to
Leavitt, which supports blending. The chairmen say in the letter that they
support an even more liberal blending policy than the one EPA has proposed,
which they claim includes regulatory-like requirements that impose specific
conditions on the use of blending. The letter was signed by Transportation &
Infrastructure Committee Chairman Don Young (AK), Government Reform Committee
Chairman Tom Davis (VA), water resources subcommittee chair John Duncan (TN) and
natural resources & regulatory affairs subcommittee chairman Doug Ose (CA).
An AMSA source says EPA's decision on whether to move forward with blending will
depend more on who weighs in on the issue than on the actual merits of the
policy itself. It's a numbers game at this point," the source said last week at
the AMSA conference. "What it's going to come down to in the end is who has more
letters of support, not the real details of the policy."