Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
Diverse Coalition Calls on Senate to Restore Clean Water Funds
Sep 17, 2004 WaterWorld
Diverse coalition calls on Senate to restore clean water funds, citing
state-by-state losses
WASHINGTON, DC, Sept. 15, 2004 -- Congress is poised to slash federal clean
water spending by more than a third, which could lead to more sewer overflows,
polluted water, disease outbreaks, and a loss of nearly 50,000 jobs. This
warning comes in a report issued by a broad coalition of state and local
governments, labor, construction, and environmental and public health groups.
The report, "All Dried Up: How Clean Water is Threatened by Budget Cuts,"
highlights the impacts of significant proposed reductions in funding for the
Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund (SRF). Specifically, the report details
how much federal assistance each state stands to lose, how many jobs the lost
funding would have created, how many water improvement projects may be held up
or scrapped, and the scope of water pollution nationwide.
"It boggles the mind that Congress would even consider slashing federal funding
for communities that helps ensure clean water for all Americans," says Nancy
Stoner, clean water director at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). The
White House has repeatedly pushed for massive cuts in clean water spending but
this is the first time Congress appears willing to go along, according to
Stoner. "The Clean Water Act protects America's waterways from polluted
stormwater runoff and inadequately treated sewage but only when the law is fully
implemented and enforced, which requires sufficient funding. That's where the
Clean Water SRF comes in. "
The Clean Water SRF is America's largest water quality financing source. Over
the past 16 years this program has dispersed more than 14,200 loans -- some $47
billion in all -- to communities large and small to rehabilitate aging sewer
plants, minimize raw sewage overflows and reduce stormwater runoff. This year's
federal budget proposal slashed state and local funding by almost $500 million
-- a 37 percent reduction from last year. Despite the program's popularity and
success, the House Appropriations Committee failed to restore Clean Water SRF
funding when it passed the VA-HUD spending bill in July. With the Senate
expected to take up the VA-HUD bill soon, the coalition is urging the
Appropriations Subcommittee to reject the deep cuts in clean water spending and
fully restore a half-billion dollars in federal funding to the program.
"The Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund is among the most successful federal
programs and is responsible for significant water quality improvements
nationwide. Communities rely on this federal funding to tackle a wide array of
water quality problems," says Roberta Savage, Executive Director of the
Association of State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Administrators (ASIWPCA).
"With our nation's infrastructure threatened by natural disasters like the
recent hurricanes, and the increasing potential for terrorist attacks,
decreasing funds for this program is at best untimely, and will undoubtedly have
a significant negative effect on water quality. "
The aging of the nation's sewage treatment infrastructure has a direct effect on
our waters and the people who come into contact with them. Many systems have
exceeded their effective lives and are crumbling because most were designed and
built decades ago when urban areas were more compact and had much smaller
populations. Symptoms of the problem include old pipes that leak or break,
combined sewer and wet weather overflows that overwhelms treatment capacity, and
the growing number of beach closures and "impaired" river miles. Sewage
overflows are an especially large problem. Between 23,000 and 75,000 occur
nationwide every year, resulting in the release of 3 billion to 10 billion
gallons of untreated wastewater, according to EPA estimates. Millions of
Americans get sick every year from swimming in or drinking water contaminated
with raw or inadequately treated sewage.
"The huge strides in water quality since the 1970s owe a lot to the funding of
sewage treatment," says Betsy Otto, senior policy director at American Rivers.
"But we've been significantly shortchanging investments in these systems for
years. If we don't reverse that trend, we're going to see more beach closings,
disease outbreaks, and serious harm to people, fish and wildlife. Cutting
already inadequate funding is the opposite of what we need. "
While water quality and public health are key concerns, the Clean Water SRF is
also a jobs program. At historic spending levels, federal clean water spending
has directly lead to the creation of an estimated 400,000 highly skilled jobs
for engineers, contractors, manufacturers, administrators, and construction
workers in communities throughout the nation.
"The condition of our nation's clean water infrastructure will continue to
diminish rapidly unless the federal share of investment is substantially
increased for a number of years," says Bill Hillman, CEO of the National Utility
Contractors Association (NUCA). "The very real problem is that dilapidated
capital facilities diminish economic health, reduce the tax base, and harm the
quality of life for everyone. An untimely reduction in federal investment this
year will further exacerbate the problem by making the inevitable future fix
significantly more expensive. Congress must reestablish clean water investment
as a national priority and, as an important side benefit, create high-wage
American jobs that cannot be exported. "
The EPA projects that communities across the country will have to spend at least
$388 billion on new and repaired equipment over the next 15 years just to meet
current clean water infrastructure needs. If the Clean Water SRF is cut from $1.
34 billion to $850 million, as proposed, "Communities will not have the funds to
tackle the current backlog of capital replacement projects, to meet mandates
associated with controlling wet weather overflows or to address new pollutants
and security issues in the future," says William B. Schatz, general counsel for
the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District and president of the Association of
Metropolitan Sewage Agencies (AMSA). "Restoring water funding this year is a
crucial step toward addressing a longer-term solution for our nation's water
needs. "
The full report, "All Dried Up: How Clean Water is Threatened by Budget Cuts,"
can be found at:
www.nrdc.org/media/docs/040915.pdf
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