Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
No. 239
Friday, December 14, 2001 Page A-1
ISSN 1521-9402
News
Water Pollution
Costs of Implementing TMDL Regulation Underestimated in EPA Report, Groups Say
The cost of implementing the total maximum daily loads program to clean up
impaired waters will be much higher than the Environmental Protection Agency
estimated, industry groups and public utilities said in comments filed Dec. 7.
However, an environmental advocate said the EPA estimates are largely the cost
of implementing the controls and not of developing the plans.
"If we're saying it's too expensive, we are saying that we as a nation are not
willing to clean up our waters and fulfill the requirements of the Clean Water
Act," Joan Mulhern, legislative counsel for Earthjustice, said Dec. 13.
EPA issued a draft report Aug. 9 estimating a cost range to implement the TMDL
program of between $900 million and $4.4 billion annually (66 Fed. Reg. 41,875;
152 DEN AA-1, 8/8/01).
In the draft, the agency said it "expects" an annual price tag of $900 million
to $3.2 billion to develop up to 36,000 TMDLs for the 20,000 impaired waters
listed in 1998, provided that the rule used "cost-effective reductions among all
sources of the impairments, including trading between point and nonpoint
sources."
However, the agency also estimated that cost for restoring those same waterways
could fall between $1.9 billion and $4.3 billion per year "in the event that the
impaired waters were addressed by requiring all sources to adopt additional
pollution controls."
Flawed Assumptions Alleged
Joint comments filed by a coalition of industrial dischargers and municipal
wastewater treatment facilities said the agency used flawed assumptions and
methodologies causing the estimates to be too low.
The industry group, known as the Federal Water Quality Coalition, and the
Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, which represents publicly owned
treatment works, contracted with an independent firm to do a cost analysis.
The report from the Advent Group Inc. concluded the estimates were too low for
several reasons:
EPA excluded from its cost estimates wastewater facilities whose treatment
capacity went beyond secondary treatment standards;
EPA assumed that concentrated process wastewater at industrial facilities with
high flows could be separated from cooling water and stormwater, and that
cooling water flows would not be subject to TMDLs;
Capital cost functions used by the agency do not address specific treatment
technologies for the pollutants examined, and functions based on municipal
treatment plants were applied to industrial facilities;
The agency inappropriately assumes POTWs can meet permit limits for metals
through pretreatment requirements;
No costs were estimated to treat pesticides, mercury, or polychlorinated
biphenyls; and
The discount rate and implementation timeframe used for discounting final costs
are excessive.
POTW Exclusion
AMSA said in a separate letter that it was inappropriate to exclude POTWs that
go beyond the secondary treatment required under the Clean Water Act because
these plants may still need to upgrade their facilities to address certain types
of impairments.
"For example, a POTW with some degree of advanced treatment may remove nitrogen
but not phosphorus," AMSA said. "If phosphorus were causing the impairment,
additional potentially costly upgrades at the POTW would be required."
Comments from the American Forest and Paper Association also said the costs were
underestimated, particularly as they would apply to silviculture.
"The agency continues to ignore the likely administrative and political
pressures that will require a much broader application of the TMDL program for
silviculture than is assumed in the analysis," the AFPA comments said.
The draft report's assumption that TMDLs could be limited to specific segments
of a water body does not consider that such an scenario would be difficult to
enforce and that citizen suits would dictate a broader application, AFPA said.
Tree Harvesting
Tree harvesting is the only silviculture activity considered in the draft
report, AFPA said, adding that many other operations could also be covered.
"The fact that a TMDL could be established for any forested water body leaves
open the possibility, and perhaps probability, that TMDL implementation will be
widely applied and much more costly than assumed in the draft report," the AFPA
comments said.
Comments submitted by researchers at the Mercatus Center for Regulatory Studies
at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., agreed that EPA's estimates were too
low. Joseph Johnson, a research fellow, said the agency does not have a good
understanding of the extent of local water quality problems and the costs of
appropriate controls.
The Mercatus comments put the estimated cost in the range of $2.45 billion to
$5.26 billion annually.
The comments fault the draft report for looking only at the cost estimates
without considering how effective several TMDL implementation scenarios will be
at improving water quality.
Quantifying Benefits
Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for Earthjustice, made a similar
comment saying the agency does not figure in the benefits, adding that
quantifying such benefits are difficult. She told BNA that while the agency is
trying to estimate the cost of a program that has generated significant
controversy and been the subject of numerous congressional hearings, the cost
that is being discussed is actually the cost of cleaning up polluted waters.
Farm groups have also criticized the report for underestimating the costs.
The cost study was required in EPA's fiscal year 2001 appropriation law and will
be used to guide the agency in its efforts to revise a July 2000 rule on the
TMDL program.
By Susan Bruninga