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Monday, February 14, 2005
Volume 10; Number 23
Cover Story
Senators Blast Sewer Fund Cut
Bruce Geiselman
Senators expressed bipartisan disappointment last week with a Bush
administration plan to slash $361 million from a fund that helps communities
upgrade their wastewater treatment systems. The Republican chairman of the
Senate environment committee indicated the president's cut would not remain when
Congress approves the final budget.
The Bush administration's fiscal year 2006 budget - which would trim overall
Environmental Protection Agency discretionary funding by 6 percent - calls for a
33 percent funding cut for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which loans
money to communities needing to upgrade their sewer systems to meet federal
requirements. The level of CWSRF funding would go from $1.1 billion in 2005 to
$730 million in 2006.
Democrats and Republicans on the environment committee criticized the cut, and
recent history shows Congress is reluctant to slash funding for the popular
program.
"I, like many of my colleagues on the committee, continue to be troubled by the
administration's and its predecessor's history of cuts to the Clean Water SRF,
the primary federal clean water mechanism," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.,
environment committee chairman, said at a Feb. 9 hearing.
Communities need assistance to meet EPA mandates, he said.
"Not only do we need to ensure these costs are necessary because they are
addressing legitimate public health and environmental threats, but evidently we
also need to convince some that Congress and the EPA have a role in this
escalating cost crisis," Inhofe said.
Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., the committee's ranking member, said the proposed
EPA cuts in general go too far, and the cuts in clean water funding are
particularly troubling.
"The nationwide need for infrastructure dollars continues to far outpace the
amount of funding that is available from all levels of government," Jeffords
said.
Acting EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said the allocation is sufficient for
the administration to reach its goal of providing $6.8 billion in capitalization
for the fund between 2004 and 2011.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., also criticized funding reduction for the fund.
"If Congress enacts this amount, it would be a cut of more than $600 million
from the average historical funding level of $1.37 billion per year for the
program," she said.
In submitting its budget to Congress, the EPA has a history of proposing cuts it
knows Congress will reject, Inhofe told Johnson.
"It seems like every year, and it happened in the previous administration, the
Clinton administration, it's happened every time that I've been up here, that
there are cuts in programs that you know in your heart are going to be put back
in," Inhofe said. He mentioned the clean water fund as an example. "I would
prefer that the agency start making cuts in areas where they think there could
be general agreement," he said.
In 2005, Bush proposed only $850 million for the Clean Water State Revolving
Loan Fund, but Congress eventually increased the funding to nearly $1.1 billion.
Groups representing municipal wastewater system operators also criticized the
president's proposal.
"Without a long-term, sustainable federal-state-local partnership, communities
will not be able to tackle essential capital replacement projects needed to meet
federal Clean Water Act mandates and improve the quality of the nation's
waters," said Ken Kirk, executive director of the Association of Metropolitan
Sewerage Agencies.