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House OKs wastewater security bill; Senate may follow
WATER RESOURCES
E&E Daily
10/08/2002
Darren Samuelsohn, Environment & Energy Daily staff writer
The House on Monday approved legislation by voice vote that is aimed at
increasing security of the nation's wastewater treatment plants. Meantime,
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff hope to resolve differences
with the House over sensitive information disclosure issues in an attempt to
gain President Bush's signature on the measure before Congress adjourns this
session.
The Wastewater Treatment Works Security Act, H.R. 5169, authorizes $200 million
in grants to the Environmental Protection Agency for vulnerability assessments
and security enhancements at publicly owned treatment facilities. The bill also
provides $15 million in technical assistance on security measures to small,
publicly owned treatment works and $5 million to guide improvements in
vulnerability self-assessment methodologies and tools.
H.R. 5169 passed in July out of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Its cosponsors include Committee Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska), Committee
ranking member James Oberstar (D-Minn.), Water Resources and Environment
Subcommittee Chairman John Duncan (R-Tenn.) and Subcommittee ranking member
Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.).
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, most water vulnerability assessment attention has
focused on the drinking water sector. For example, Congress appropriated $90
million in the FY '01 emergency supplemental (P.L. 107-117) for drinking water
systems while the bioterrorism legislation (P.L. 107-188) signed earlier this
year by Bush authorized another $160 million for FY '02 and beyond.
The Senate sought to address wastewater security during the bioterrorism
conference but was rejected by the House due to jurisdictional issues. Last
week, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Jeffords (I-Vt.)
introduced a nearly $200 million wastewater measure, S. 3037, that serves in
some ways as a companion to the House bill. Erik Smulson, a Jeffords spokesman,
said staff are working out differences between the bills, adding that S. 3037
may come up on the Senate floor for unanimous-consent passage either this week
or at some point before Congress adjourns for the year, perhaps during a
lame-duck session.
The House and Senate wastewater security bills diverge on the issue of whether
or not completed vulnerability assessments should be housed at EPA. In S. 3037,
the assessments must be turned over to the agency while H.R. 5169 requires EPA
certification of the materials but not permanent storage. S. 3037 also requires
the wastewater industry to complete emergency response plans within 180 days of
an assessment's completion; the House bill has no such provision.
While the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies supports both bills, it
still prefers the House text on the issue of each assessment's final storage
location. Lee Garrigan, an AMSA spokeswoman, questioned what EPA would do with
the materials and whether or not the agency has the in-house personnel to handle
them. Garrigan also pointed out that EPA is likely to contract out the
vulnerability assessment certifications, an approach that leaves sensitive
materials open to public leaks.
Environmental and government watchdog groups were skeptical of the industry's
information disclosure concerns during a similar debate on the bioterrorism
bill's drinking water language. Ultimately, lawmakers settled on a conference
report that required the utilities to provide a copy of their security analysis
to EPA. Addressing lawmakers' concerns that the assessments would be available
to a wider audience upon their transmission to EPA, the bioterrorism law
included a Freedom of Information Act exemption, as well as direction for EPA to
establish protocols for the release of the information to states and Congress
and stiff penalties for intentional disclosure.