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Toldeo Blade
Toledo Sewer Project Escapes U.S. Budget Cuts
Friday, February 18, 2005
By TOM HENRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Toledo's $450 million sewage improvement project won't take an immediate hit
from massive cuts President Bush has proposed for a federal program that
provides seed money for such work.
Bob Stevenson, the city's public utilities director, yesterday expressed relief
about the city's decision to seek $146 million in low-interest loans from the
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's Water Pollution Loan Fund several months
ago.
"We got in, got our funding, and are ready to go," he said.
The city was approved for loans to be allocated during the 2005 fiscal year,
which ends Sept. 30. Combined with revenue from sewage fees and other sources,
it should have enough money to get through at least the first half of the
project, Mr. Stevenson said.
Authorized by voters in 2002, the sewage upgrade is called the Toledo Waterways
Initiative and is the largest such improvement project the city has undertaken.
It ended years of litigation with the U.S. EPA over excessive amounts of
untreated waste that has gotten into area streams after heavy rains.
But the state fund the city tapped to get its low-interest loans stands to be
substantially affected by cuts Mr. Bush has proposed for the nation's 2006
fiscal year budget, which begins Oct. 1.
Mr. Bush has called for a $500 million cut in the U.S. EPA's overall $8.1
billion budget.
The lion's share of that cutback - some $360 million of the proposed $500
million - would come out of the U.S. EPA's Clean Water State Revolving Fund, the
primary source of federal revenue that state agencies use to offer low-interest
loans for sewage work.
Linda Oros, Ohio EPA spokesman, said the state agency had no immediate comment
on Mr. Bush's proposal, even though she said it would cut Ohio's allocation from
about $76 million to $40.3 million.
But the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, a trade group that
represents the nation's sewage plants, said the Bush plan will make it difficult
for municipalities to comply with the federal Clean Water Act. That act,
originally passed in 1972, has been the basis for sewage treatment upgrades for
32 years and was the basis for Toledo's long-standing U.S. EPA violations.
"Clean and safe water is certainly as important to the nation's economic and
public health as our highways and airports," Ken Kirk, the association's
executive director, said.
The association is calling on Congress to restore money. The federal EPA program
in question received $1.35 billion annually for years. Congress trimmed the
allocation back to $1.1 billion this year, yet funded the program at a level
greater than what Mr. Bush proposed a year ago.
Contact Tom Henry at:
thenry@theblade.com
or 419-724-6079.