Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
Arsenic standards overshadow hearings on water infrastructure
Water Pollution
E & E Daily
04/02/2001
Last week's hearings aimed at uncovering the nation's drinking water and
wastewater infrastructure needs may well be remembered more for their
sidetracking into the arsenic controversy. Environmental Protection Agency
Administrator Christie Whitman testified at two of the hearings, leading to
extensive heated debate at what might otherwise have been tedious talk about
aging underground pipes and sewerage.
In particular, Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.) made his feelings known
during opening statements of the Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee
hearing last Wednesday. Waxman mimicked the Academy Awards ceremony by giving
Whitman a "Golden Jackpot" trophy filled with chocolate for her recent decision
to delay the implementation of the Clinton administration's arsenic standard for
the nation's drinking water until further studies could be done.
Whitman insisted she and Waxman were on the same page that a standard needed to
be set. But she also maintained that other factors such as the economic costs on
some small Western communities must be considered before the rule would go into
effect by 2006, a deadline mandated by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
After Waxman and others alleged Whitman and the Bush administration had been
swayed by special interest groups, the EPA chief responded that she had not been
directly lobbied on the issue by timber or mining industry officials. She also
said White House officials kept their distance on the subject. Waxman responded
by saying water systems will continue to be polluted and the public health
remains at risk while the EPA looks into the matter.
Later, following her testimony, Whitman said she was dismayed that the bigger
picture of infrastructure issues had been overlooked by arsenic. "If there are
those who want to score partisan points, that is unfortunate," she said.
Arsenic also made waves last Tuesday during the Senate Environment and Public
Works Committee subcommittee hearing. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) asked for
more details about the science Whitman said she was looking into. At that,
Whitman responded that arsenic might be an endocrine disruptor, referring to a
recent Dartmouth University report revealing for the first time how the
substance can trigger a chain reaction in living cells that leads to cancer. The
study, which appeared in the March issue of Environmental Health Perspectives,
published by the government's National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences, was based on experiments in which rats were exposed to arsenic levels
of 25 ppb to 50 ppb. Based on those numbers, Whitman told Clinton that arsenic
might very well need to be set anywhere from 3 ppb to 15 ppb.
Numbers debated: While arsenic stole the thrust of the spotlight at the water
infrastructure hearings, the topic at hand was not lost by any measure. Included
in the record was testimony from more than a dozen witnesses who offered
everything from anecdotal evidence of local infrastructure needs to some
first-time criticisms of the financial gap figures reported in February by the
Water Infrastructure Network, a group of water interests including sewerage
associations and environmentalists.
Perry Beider, a Congressional Budget Office principal analyst, testified before
the House Transportation and Infrastructure and Energy and Commerce
subcommittees that the WIN estimate of a $23 billion annual funding gap between
needs and current funding levels over the next 20 years is uncertain and
possibly overblown.
WIN has said the federal government should meet local governments halfway on all
new infrastructure costs, spending some $57 billion over five years beginning in
FY '03 through loans, grants and other means as an offset on the costs imposed
to local governments and their ratepayers. But Beider said the "lion's share" of
that money is aimed at paying for investments on rehabilitating or replacing
water and sewer pipes when there is no national inventory of pipe ages and
conditions to base the needs. As well, he said WIN analysts are relying on rough
national assumptions that add significantly to the uncertainty of a 20-year cost
projection.
Beider's comments came at the behest of the House committees' December request
for a second set of eyes to look at WIN's figures as well as others. There are a
multitude of sometimes conflicting studies documenting water and wastewater
needs, with estimates using different data sets to come up with costs that range
from $100 billion to more than $1 trillion.
Beider said a pair of surveys done by the EPA, the Clean Water Needs Survey in
1996 and the Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey submitted in February to
Congress, underestimate 20-year projected costs because many of the systems
surveyed did not identify and document all of their needs. Focusing on the WIN
report, Beider said CBO had found factors suggesting the estimates may be too
large even while WIN said it may have underestimated costs.
Ken Kirk, executive director of the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage
Agencies, said WIN would respond "very soon and very directly" to the CBO
analysis. Kirk added that while he could not speak directly to the specifics
that led to the WIN numbers, his consultants have said CBO is in error.
Whitman, meanwhile, testified that EPA will use past data sets to produce a new
"Gap Analysis" to be published this summer to reveal a historical assessment of
the capital investments of drinking water and wastewater needs. Mike Cook, EPA
director of the Office of Wastewater Management, said the report will include
operations, maintenance and the affordability of passing infrastructure
improvements to consumers.
Al Warburton, director of legislative affairs at the American Water Works
Association, said his organization is finalizing its own report that reaches
beyond EPA to include aging drinking water pipes. "The WIN report is to capture
attention," he said. "To make the case that there is a need out there as clearly
and emphatically as we can."
That message appears to have been heard. Committee heavyweights from both the
Senate and House came out for respective hearings. House Transportation and
Infrastructure Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska), for example, emphatically said
that water infrastructure is both "badly needed" and a "major crisis facing this
country." He suggested one solution would be to organize a federal agency to
head up the issue to ensure there be no "waste in bureaucracy" and"waste on
delays."
Still more critical perspectives may be coming. Concerned with the variety of
studies and figures, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee called
for its own outside review from the General Accounting Office. The GAO report is
in the planning stages and will address the extent that publicly-owned drinking
water and wastewater facilities are potential candidates for privatization.
Lee Garrigan, a WIN spokeswoman, said the statistical mayhem is occurring
because this is the first time infrastructure issues have even been
comprehensively debated. "Everybody involved is feeling their way through," she
said. While there is no complete survey to determine the conditions and extent
of the nation's underground water and wastewater pipes, Garrigan said it is
clear from anecdotes on daily maintenance from across the country that there is
a need to fund a comprehensive overhaul. "You have always have differences in
numbers," she said. "This is Washington."
- Darren Samuelsohn