Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
Bush Budget Mixed Bag For Environment
Good for brownfields but bad for
Del. streams and bays
By JEFF MONTGOMERY / The News Journal
02/09/2005
The Bush administration's proposed 2006 budget would boost funding for
reclaiming industrial "brownfields" in Delaware, while slashing subsidies for
water pollution control considered crucial to cleaning up the state's streams
and bays, according to early reviews of the spending plan.
A. Richard Heffron, governmental affairs vice president for the Delaware State
Chamber of Commerce, said the business group was encouraged by a potential 24
percent increase in spending for cleaning up abandoned or underused industrial
sites.
Spending on cleanups of the worst-contaminated properties under the Superfund
program would rise by 48 percent, to $124 million in Bush's proposed budget.
Those sites include the former Metachem Products chemical plant near Delaware
City, where the state and EPA already have spent more than $25 million just to
prepare the site for remediation work that could cost more than $100 million.
The EPA granted Delaware $1 million in 2003 to help step up redevelopment of
usable but contaminated properties. The Minner administration and lawmakers
later boosted state aid to businesses that reclaim blighted land, under a
program that aims in part to encourage reuse of land and discourage new
development and suburban sprawl.
"We think it's an important area," Heffron said. "I'm sure that if we look,
there will be others where they've put more money" into the federal budget
proposal for 2006, he said.
Some of the heaviest cuts proposed by Bush were in "clean water" programs
especially important to Delaware, where most waterways and ponds fail to meet
federal standards for swimming and aquatic life.
Spending on the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Water State Revolving
Fund would drop from $1.09 billion this year to $730 million in the fiscal year
that begins Oct. 1. State officials consider the fund important because it helps
the state comply with a court-ordered requirement to set pollution limits in all
waterways that fail to meet federal pollution limits.
Gov. Ruth Ann Minner's draft budget for 2006 anticipates receiving $6.4 million
from the federal program next year, to be used to help improve sewage treatment
plants and systems across the state. Officials said the White House cuts,
amounting to 46 percent from 2004 levels, were certain to affect Delaware's
program.
"If that holds, we'll feel it. I don't think there's any doubt," said David
Small, deputy secretary for Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and
Environmental Control. "How that might affect any specific project at this point
is way too early to say."
The Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies on Tuesday branded the Bush
proposals as "the wrong measure at the wrong time," and warned that cuts in
federal aid would hamstring attempts to rehabilitate the nation's waterways.
"It's no surprise that this administration is cutting environmental programs,
because they don't see it as a priority. They're not focused on environmental
issues," said Matt Urban, chairman of the Sierra Club Delaware Chapter.
Eric Schaeffer, a former EPA attorney, said the administration has steadily held
down or cut spending for programs that enforce air pollution laws. Schaeffer,
who led EPA talks that produced an agreement leading to drastic pollution cuts
at the Delaware City refinery, now directs the Environmental Integrity Project,
a nonprofit group supported by the Rockefeller Family Fund and other
foundations.
"Obviously, the EPA's budget is down, and we don't think that's good because
environmental expenditures tend to save money in the long run," Schaeffer said.
"The Office of Management and Budget has estimated that every ton of sulfur
dioxide costs $7,000 in public health costs, while it costs less than $500 a ton
to control. The payback doesn't get any better than that."
Schaeffer predicted that citizen groups would increase their efforts to enforce
pollution laws if the trend toward decreasing federal spending continues.
Reach Jeff Montgomery at 678-4277 or
jmontgomery@delawareonline.com.