[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
AGENCY BUDGETS AND PRIORITIES FOR FISCAL YEAR 2007
=======================================================================
(109-54)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 8, 2006
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
____
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28-269 WASHINGTON : 2006
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman
THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin, Vice- JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
Chair NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland Columbia
JOHN L. MICA, Florida JERROLD NADLER, New York
PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan CORRINE BROWN, Florida
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan BOB FILNER, California
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
SUE W. KELLY, New York JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD,
RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana California
ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
JERRY MORAN, Kansas ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
GARY G. MILLER, California BILL PASCRELL, Jr., New Jersey
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania
HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South Carolina BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania JIM MATHESON, Utah
SAM GRAVES, Missouri MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota RICK LARSEN, Washington
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania JULIA CARSON, Indiana
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
JON C. PORTER, Nevada MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine
TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
TED POE, Texas ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado
CONNIE MACK, Florida JOHN BARROW, Georgia
JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New York
LUIS G. FORTUNO, Puerto Rico
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr., Louisiana
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
(ii)
?
Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee, Chairman
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
SUE W. KELLY, New York BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
GARY G. MILLER, California ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South Carolina EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas BILL PASCRELL, Jr., New Jersey
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia
TED POE, Texas ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
CONNIE MACK, Florida Columbia
LUIS G. FORTUNO, Puerto Rico JOHN BARROW, Georgia
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr., JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
Louisiana, Vice-Chair (Ex Officio)
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
DON YOUNG, Alaska
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
TESTIMONY
Page
Baxter, Bill, Chairman, Tennessee Valley Authority.............. 15
Bodine, Susan Parker, Assistant Administrator, Office of Solid
Waste and Emergency Response, U.S. Environmrntal Protection
Agency......................................................... 12
Dunnigan, John H., Assistant Asministrator, National Ocean
Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S.
Department of Commerce......................................... 15
Grumbles, Benjamin H., Assistant Administrator for Water, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency................................ 12
PREPARED STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Carnahan, Hon. Russ, of Missouri................................. 55
Costello, Hon. Jerry F., of Illinois............................. 56
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Baxter, Bill.................................................... 37
Bodine, Susan Parker............................................ 43
Dunnigan, John H................................................ 59
Grumbles, Benjamin H............................................ 69
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Bodine, Susan Parker, Assistant Administrator, Office of Solid
Waste and Emergency Response, U.S. Environmrntal Protection
Agency, responses to questions from Rep. Kelly................. 51
Grumbles, Benjamin H., Assistant Administrator for Water, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, responses to questions from
Rep. Johnson of Texas.......................................... 77
AGENCY BUDGETS AND PRIORITIES FOR FISCAL YEAR 2007
----------
Wednesday, March 8, 2006
House of Representatives, Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee
on Water Resources and Environment, Washington,
D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:00 p.m. in
room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John H. Duncan,
Jr. [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Mr. Duncan. We are going to go ahead and start a little bit
early here. Other members will be joining us.
I first would like to welcome everyone to the second of our
fiscal year 2007 budget hearings. Last week, we heard from the
Army Corps of Engineers, the Natural Resources Conservation
Service, and the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation.
Today's hearing will examine the budgets and priorities of the
Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, and the Tennessee Valley Authority
for fiscal year 2007.
I certainly support the President's efforts to control
Federal spending and I understand that some tough choices need
to be made. But I have to take issue with some of the choices
on where to cut the spending. It is inevitable that the
Administration's priorities and congressional priorities will
not always coincide. However, for the EPA and NOAA programs
that fall within the jurisdiction of this Subcommittee, I would
like to think that we have the same goal of protecting our
environment in a cost effective way.
With that goal in mind, I continue to be disappointed that
the Clean Water Act State Revolving Loan Program, the SRF
Program, is perennially the target of proposed budget cuts. The
SRF Program is one of the most cost effective programs in the
government. For every dollar the Federal Government invests,
more than $2 are made available for environmental improvements.
That is not a pie in the sky figure.
In fact, the Federal investment of $23 billion in the SRFs
has led to the creation of over $55 billion of revolving loan
funds available for clean water projects. In fiscal year 2005
alone, the SRF Program provided over $4.9 billion in loans for
sewer upgrades and other water quality improvements around the
Nation, and certainly we need a lot of work in that regard.
It does sound like a lot of money, but the needs are far
greater. We are all well aware that our national water
infrastructure is aging, deteriorating and in need of repair
and replacement. Studies by the EPA, the Congressional Budget
Office and the Water Infrastructure Network have confirmed that
the gap between current levels of spending and the necessary
level of investment in wastewater infrastructure is staggering
and we need to double our efforts at least to close that gap.
We are spending several hundred billions each year in other
countries doing all sorts of things, and as I have mentioned
here before, we have been spending more on the water system in
Iraq at the Federal level than we have in recent years from the
Federal level here in this Country. Of course, we are spending
more total when you add in the rate payers and the State and
local expenditures.
By continuing to cut funding of the Clean Water SRF Program
as the Administration has proposed, SRFs will be unable to help
local communities fund thousands of essential clean water
projects all around the Nation. The consequences of failing to
invest are severe. Without upgrades to wastewater
infrastructure, not only will we fail to make progress in water
quality, but as our population increases we will lose the gains
we have made over the past 30 years.
There has to be a shared commitment to make the needed
improvements to our water infrastructure and there certainly is
an important national role here, but we need local, State and
Federal investment in this area to continue to increase, not
decrease, as our population grows and the needs and the
infrastructure age and the needs become even greater.
And there is an important national role because millions of
people come to and through Tennessee each year, and millions of
Tennesseans go each year to other States. Most people go to
several States in any one year, and they use our water systems
throughout the Country. So there certainly is a legitimate
national role in this area.
The EPA also needs to direct adequate funding towards its
other core clean water programs. As for the Superfund Program,
the overall budget request of $1.26 billion is $17 million more
than the currently enacted level. However, that increase is not
being directed towards on the ground cleanup activities.
Proposed funding for actual removal and remedial actions is
less than the currently enacted funding level and even the
Administration's fiscal year 2006 requested amount. The EPA
needs to reallocate more funding away from overhead and
administrative costs and towards cleanup.
In 2004, the EPA's Inspector General identified a shortfall
of $175 million in funding for cleaning up Superfund sites.
That shortfall has not been addressed. Instead, the President's
budget appears to be deferring to the overall levels Congress
has enacted recently.
For NOAA, I am interested in hearing about NOAA's role in
carrying out the President's Ocean Action plan, particularly
the National Water Quality Monitoring Network. This
Subcommittee has consistently encouraged better coordination of
water monitoring data and would like to hear about what NOAA is
doing to maximize coordination with other agencies.
Finally, I want to comment on TVA's budget for fiscal year
2007. Unlike the other agencies before us today, TVA is self-
financed, drawing its revenues from eight million ratepayers in
the seven States that it supplies with electricity. I
appreciate all the benefits that TVA brings to the people of my
District and our region. I want to see a strong and financially
sound TVA that will continue to benefit the Tennessee Valley
long into the future.
In past hearings, I have expressed concerns about TVA's
long term financial health. Other Members have raised similar
concerns. Since then, the Committee has met with the TVA, its
customers and people in the financial and utility industries. I
am pleased that TVA is now doing more to manage its financial
obligations.
The TVA's strategic plan adopted in 2004 seeks to reduce
the Authority's debt. This is something that I expressed
concern about when I first came to Congress. This is my 18th
year. Many years ago, the TVA's total debt was approaching
almost $30 billion and was moving up rapidly. At one point,
they were spending 34 cents of every dollar just to service
that debt. I am very pleased that under the leadership of
Chairman Baxter that real progress seems to be being made
towards this debt reduction and that debt reduction is a high
priority in the TVA's budgeting to reduce its total financial
obligations.
I remember writing to the Federal Financing Bank to ask if
they would allow TVA to refinance some of its debt, and that
certainly has helped, but there have been many, many actions
taken under the leadership of Chairman Baxter and I will say
that I certainly admire and appreciate and respect the work
that he has done. We are pleased to have him here today.
I should say I am pleased to have all the witnesses here.
Mr. Grumbles has been with us many times before, and Mr.
Dunnigan also, but we have the former Staff Director, Susan
Bodine, here. I know that she misses us terribly.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Duncan. At any rate, we are certainly honored to have
her back with us as well.
And now I would like to turn to my good friend, the Ranking
Member, Ms. Johnson, for any comments she wishes to make.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding
this second hearing on the fiscal year 2007 budget and its
impact on programs within the jurisdiction of this
Subcommittee.
The President's budget highlights the disconnect between
the priorities of the American people and protecting the
Nation's economic and environmental health, and those of this
Administration. The President's budget request for the
Environmental Protection Agency is the lowest ever requested by
this Administration, representing close to $400 million or a 5
percent reduction from last year's appropriated level.
This budget request also represents the lowest funding
level requested by this Administration for EPA's Superfund
Program, EPA's Brownfields Assessment and Cleanup Program, and
EPA's water and wastewater infrastructure grant programs,
programs that are essential for safeguarding human health and
protecting the environment.
As I stated at our last meeting, this budget is simply not
adequate to meet the Nation's needs. First, the budget takes a
penny wise, pound foolish approach to the economy, making
imprudent short term cuts to programs that have proven
essential for long term economic health. Most notable is the 22
percent reduction to the primary Federal program for investing
in wastewater infrastructure, the Clean Water State Revolving
Fund.
Mr. Chairman, the Congressional Budget Office, outside
groups and even EPA itself have each documented annual needs of
over $10 billion above current expenditures to meet future
wastewater infrastructure needs. Yet this budget would
eliminate almost $200 million in Federal grants to States for
revolving loan funds, as well as an additional $200 million in
Federal funding for high priority water and wastewater
projects.
These reductions are simply unacceptable. States and local
communities have warned that reduced funding for wastewater
infrastructure programs will make it more difficult to respond
to failing wastewater infrastructure and would likely force the
delay of essential upgrades to meet requirements of the Clean
Water Act and to improve water quality. In fact, we all know of
examples where local communities have been unable to fund
necessary projects due to the lack of available funds.
In addition, EPA has warned that without increased
investment in our Nation's wastewater infrastructure, we will
likely reverse the gains made in improving water quality over
the past 20 years. According to the agency, in less than a
generation, we could see a return to the days when rivers were
little more than open sewers.
Mr. Chairman, the Superfund Program fares no better in this
budget. Since this Administration came into office, the
President's budget has almost halved the annual number of
Superfund cleanups achieved by the previous Administration. In
just six years, EPA has slowed the pace of cleanup from the
average of 173 sites per year, to just over 40, leaving our
neighborhoods at risk while they await available cleanup
funding.
Unfortunately, the current budget request will do little to
accelerate the cleanup of these remaining toxic sites. In fact,
it will do the opposite because when faced with insufficient
funding to address contaminated sites, EPA will be forced to
further slow cleanups at current sites and may be forced to
limit the number of future sites that may enter the cleanup
program.
We will see a second slowdown of Superfund cleanups,
perhaps as early as next year, as agency officials have
indicated the need to internally shift funds from site
investigations and selection of appropriate remedies, toward
construction. While I am all for cleanups by shifting funds
from the investigations end of the pipeline towards
construction, the only result will be further delay in the
future cleanups as sites more slowly through the entire cleanup
process.
The budget also reinforces the troublesome finding of a
2004 EPA report that highlighted how limited funding for the
Superfund Program has hampered its ability to clean up toxic
waste sites. This report estimated that in fiscal year 2003
alone, the site specific shortfall for the Superfund was $174
million, forcing ongoing cleanups to be delayed, segmented into
pieces or scaled back, solely as a result of budgetary
shortfalls.
EPA responded that a major cause for this shortfall was
that the remaining sites were more complex and more costly.
However, most of these sites have been in the Superfund
pipeline for decades, so it comes as no surprise that
additional cleanup dollars were going to be necessary, and the
longer we wait the more will be needed.
Yet, for the last six years, EPA's Superfund budget has
been declining, failing even to keep up with the pace of
inflation. Fewer resources for more expensive sites can only
lead to slowdowns. If the President's request is enacted, this
would be the lowest amount available for cleanup in terms of
real spending power at any time since the late 1980s, again
forcing local communities to live with toxic waste sites.
This budget also proposes that all Federal spending for the
Superfund Program will be from general taxpayers and continues
the alarming trend of collecting fewer and fewer cost
recoveries from responsible parties. This is not how the
Superfund Program was intended to be when it was enacted. Gone
are the days when the Superfund was a polluter pays program.
I am also concerned at the failure to adequately fund other
important programs within the jurisdiction of this
Subcommittee. In particular, I am concerned that the budget
proposes to cut EPA's Section 319 Program despite recognition
that point sources of pollution are the single largest source
of impairment of the Nation's rivers, lakes and near coastal
waters.
At the same time, the budget proposes to eliminate the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coastal
Nonpoint Pollution Control Program, a program that has
demonstrated great potential in improving coastal water quality
and reducing the likelihood of unsafe beach conditions and
closures.
The budget requests the lowest level of funding ever for
the Brownfields site assessment and cleanup programs, while
asserting that the budget fully funds Brownfield cleanups. When
the President signed the Brownfield legislation in January of
2002, he said that the bill was good public policy, that it was
wise, and encourages growth, and fosters the environment. Under
this budget, those attributes seem no longer to be important to
the Administration.
Mr. Chairman, we cannot under-invest in our Nation's
infrastructure or its environment. We have an obligation to
future generations to provide a cleaner, safer and more secure
world for them to live.
I thank you for having this testimony. I look forward to
hearing out witnesses.
I yield.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much.
Does anyone wish to make a statement? Mr. Fortuno, do you
have a statement? Mr. Gilchrest?
Mr. Gilchrest. I just wanted to say hi to former staff, and
hope their lives are going well, and they are being treated
equitably. If you could focus all of your attention on the
Chesapeake Bay issues, we would appreciate it.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Duncan. Mr. Pascrell?
Mr. Pascrell. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and
Ranking Member Johnson for this opportunity, and welcome
Assistant Administrator Bodine and Mr. Grumbles, who have been
before us before, and Mr. Dunnigan and Mr. Baxter.
I want to start of by two questions, asking rhetorical
questions, of course, because I have a Homeland Security
meeting I have to go to. I would ask this of Mr. Grumbles very
quickly. You do not need to be a former Mayor to know that
municipalities need resources to do what we say they must do,
build the infrastructure. Whatever happened to Federal mandate,
Federal pay?
My second question to Administrator Bodine is, in 1995
taxpayers paid just 18 percent of the total Superfund Program.
In 2004, taxpayers paid 80 percent. Under the Clinton
Administration, we averaged 87 cleanups per year. Under this
Administration, we average 40 a year, and there are 113
Superfund sites in the State of New Jersey. What do you intend
to do about it?
So if it feels like we have all been to this same hearing
with the same budget problems each of the last six years, it is
because we have. I am hopeful that the laudable addition of
newly installed Assistant Administrator Bodine will help the
situation across town at the EPA, but with this Administration,
I am not holding my breath.
Let's get real here. The Administration budget offers a
mere $687 million for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund.
That is half of what the Congress had been appropriating up
until 2004. New Jersey municipalities at least know who to
blame when the long line to access the limited funds will keep
getting longer and property taxes get higher and higher.
The Federal Government has rightly mandated tough clean
water standards, but municipalities need the resources to build
infrastructure to meet those standards. The Administration
budget misses another chance to prove its commitment to our
Nation's clean water.
It is not on the front pages. You don't see it on any of
the talk shows. Nobody cares about it. It is a fact of reality.
If it wasn't for this Chairman and this Committee on both sides
of the aisle, it wouldn't even be discussed even here in the
Transportation Committee. It wouldn't even be a second thought.
So it wouldn't be on page 38; it would just not be there,
period. Let's not kid ourselves.
Cities want to be in compliance with EPA, and keep local
rivers clean by doing what is right for the environment and for
the future generations. But when you mix large capital
investments with severe budgetary constraints, many cities are
simply unable to do what they need to do to meet Federal
regulations.
What the Administration should do is take a page from this
Committee, which thanks the leadership which is at the
forefront of wastewater infrastructure issues. For five years,
this Committee has attempted to not only authorize, but to put
real money there so we can use it. We do not have a system of
checks and balances in this government. We have thrown fair
government to the wind. We do not have equal branches of
government. And this is a perfect example and a mirror up to
what this Administration is all about.
The Committee reported to reauthorize as reported out $1.5
billion for wet weather grant programs. This legislation can
actually give cities and towns the resources they desperately
need to clean up non-complying combined sewer systems, and
there is enough to go around in this Country, as you well know.
They will need all the help they can get as in the budget
blueprint the EPA Brownfields Program is slated to receive only
half of its authorized level. No question about it, two years,
they will zero it out. I don't know what else they intend to
zero out.
I have serious concerns about the budget. I wish the panel
lots of luck in defending the Administration request. I know
that is why you are here. But you know what? You are not just
messengers. You are smart. You are intelligent human beings. I
don't say that in a compromising way at all or a patronizing
way. You can't simply be the messenger when you know darn well
that this Administration is not doing what should be done. If
we mandate it, we have to help those municipalities out there.
You do not have to talk to the municipalities. You are down
here. We represent those municipalities back in our Districts.
You want to come up and hit every District where we have this
problem? You know you are not going to be able to do that. So
you have to fight for what we think should be in there, or go
back and just deliver the message. I think that compromises
your intelligence. I ask you, I beg of you, let's make this
year different from all the last five.
Should I be hopeful? I ask rhetorically, should I be
hopeful.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Mr. Pascrell.
Dr. Ehlers?
Mr. Ehlers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your
having this hearing. It is good to see our friends back, Mr.
Grumbles, Ms. Bodine. I can say that I knew you before you were
honorable.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Ehlers. It is a real pleasure to see you back. You were
both outstanding members of the Committee. We hated to lose
you, but we still have part of you through this process and
your new assignments.
A few comments. I associate myself with a number of the
comments of Mr. Gilchrest, except his comment about Chesapeake
Bay. Obviously, the Great Lakes have much more water and have
much greater need, and I hope that all of you will keep that in
mind.
Mr. Gilchrest. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Ehlers. No.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Ehlers. Sorry about that, Wayne.
I very much appreciate the Administration's request of
$49.6 million for the Legacy Act. That has been a real boost to
keeping the Great Lakes clean and cleaning up the sediment in
the rivers. I am sorry that Congress has not matched the
President's request. We will continue to work on that to make
sure that it does.
Also as you know, the entire Great Lakes Program went
through a major national collaborative project last year and
came to good conclusions which they announced on December 12.
It is clear that there is not enough funding in this present
funding climate to really launch the program the way it should
be launched, but I am working on legislation to get a start on
that.
I hope that will be ready within the matter of a couple of
weeks, and I will then be discussing it with you, Mr. Chairman,
and with the staff because this is a crucial issue. As I said,
it is going to take time, but it time for the Everglades. It
took time for the Chesapeake Bay. But it is the sort of thing
that you have to begin addressing and do as much as you can as
soon as you can.
The other factor I mentioned, it really strikes me that
water is an incredible friend, but also an incredible enemy at
time. I think the focus of this Committee has to be to continue
to try to make sure that water remains a friend, and by that I
mean that it is accessible, it is pure, and that we will have a
sufficient supply for every part of our Nation.
Also, we have to make sure that we contain the enemy in the
water, whether it is hurricanes, floods, and any other activity
that creates major problems for our people. I think that has to
be the emphasis of all that we do here, whether it is done
through our legislation, through the Corps, through helping
others, but we always have to keep in mind our effort should be
concentrated toward helping the friendly aspects of water and
mitigating the unfriendly aspects of water.
With just one last comment, when I talked a minute ago
about the friendlier parts, I mentioned the purity of water. I
find it ironic in this Country where, as Mr. Pascrell has said,
we don't seem to have enough money at either the local or the
Federal or the State level, to deal with some of the problems
of water. And yet we are spending billions of dollars every
year on bottled water in this Nation.
I never, when I grew up, I never would have believed that
this would ever happen. We knew it was that way in Europe. It
was that way in parts of Asia, most of Asia. And we never, we
have always been proud of the pure water in this Country.
Today, even in the Congress of the United States, we are given
bottled water because the city water does not meet the quality
standards that we should have. So I think that is something
that we all have to address.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Dr. Ehlers. Certainly, one of
several bills that were passed by this Committee in recent
years was your Great Lakes Legacy Act, and that was very
important legislation. No one has done more for the Great Lakes
than you, and not enough people in this Country realize the
importance of the Great Lakes to this entire Nation and what a
tremendous asset it is.
I told somebody recently I think that probably one of the
things that my grandfather would have been the most amazed at
is how much people are paying for and spending on bottled water
in this Country today. You are right on that, too.
Mr. Bishop?
Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me thank you and
Ranking Member Johnson for holding this hearing.
Let me say at the outset that I am very concerned by the
budget proposals that we are now considering. These proposals
sacrifice the long term health of our environment and the
protection of our coastal communities for short term and
insignificant reductions in the deficit.
I am troubled by the Administration's continuing retreat
from the protection of our environmental resources under the
pretense of expanding economic growth. As someone who
represents over 300 miles of coastline and numerous communities
that depend on tourism and an immaculate local environment for
their economic well being, I fail to see the correlation
between weakening environmental protections and decimating our
shoreline and growing the economy.
This budget contains deep and disturbing cuts to efforts to
protect our environment. Despite the urgent environmental needs
of our air, water and land at risk, the EPA suffers some of the
most drastic cuts proposed by the Administration. Many of these
proposed cuts will directly affect my constituents on Long
Island. The Administration's budget specifically targets the
Long Island Sound Restoration Funding by drastically slashing
this worthwhile program.
In addition, it is perplexing that the President
reauthorized this program in December with an authorization of
$40 million, and yet the budget now sees fit to propose funding
cuts for the Long Island Sound Study yet again.
The budget also proposes funding cuts for the National
Estuary Program, a proven Federal initiative. My District is
home to two estuaries that rely on this funding to maintain
their pristine environmental qualities.
I look forward to discussing these issues further as we
hear the testimony from our panelists.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Mr. Bishop. And also we passed two
bills that you helped usher through, the National Estuary
Program and particularly the Long Island Sound legislation. We
appreciate that very much.
Ms. Norton, I believe, is next.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I welcome today's witnesses. I am not sure I welcome the
budget they have come to talk about.
I want to begin by saying I was not here to hear what Wayne
Gilchrest said about the Chesapeake Bay, but I just want to go
on record as seconding whatever he said about the Chesapeake
Bay.
Mr. Duncan. He said we should spend the entire budget on
the Chesapeake Bay.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Norton. Could I strike that?
But Wayne understands that water does not stop at the
border. The Chesapeake Bay, of course, is one of the great
wonders of the United States, truly. I am concerned that among
the waters that flow into ultimately the Chesapeake Bay are
filthy Anacostia River waters from which storm water overflow
from the capital of the United States, downtown Washington and
the entire Federal presence flows.
So thank you very much for your sewage, colleagues, but
this is something that we simply have to get done since most of
this storm water overflow comes from the fact that the system
was built by the Corps of Engineers at a time when you mixed or
allowed in rainstorm the mixture of sewage with more sanitary
water, and thus it flows into the streets, it flows wherever it
can find, but much of it comes from here. About one-third of it
comes from the Federal presence.
It is urgently needed. This Committee has been helpful. I
noted that, I see Mr. Grumbles is here. He and I have gotten to
know one another. I note that the Chesapeake Bay got into your
testimony, and I am pleased to see that, but Mr. Grumbles'
presence reminds me of the huge lead in water scare we had here
in all of all places the Nation's Capital just three or four
years ago.
When Dr. Ehlers talked about bottled water, we know exactly
what you are talking about because when people who drank the
water who were pregnant, when children who drank the water
learn of the possibility and indeed the fact that lead pipes
had seeped into the water, you know that you are in trouble,
and that what was being used here in the District to clear such
impurities was not state of the art.
As a result of that, along with a number of other Members,
I filed a bill, refiled it this year, to truly update the Clean
Water Act. We are living off of an old Act. Our own water
treatment facility here has made some changes. For that matter,
EPA has made some changes. The EPA was nothing short of
embarrassed to have the capital of the United States in the
national and international press with a lead water problem. For
us, it was more than embarrassment. It was a true and terrible
scare. We believe we have come some distance, but it has
nothing to do with anything in this budget.
I think the only thing that will matter is a much closer
look at the Clean Water Act. The water fountains that your
children use at school are undoubtedly like the water fountains
we found in Maryland and in the District of Columbia. They have
old pipes. Nobody looks to see whether those pipes are leeching
lead. And those are children, those are the vulnerable people.
Those of us who are sitting on this end of the roster have
brains so thick and in place that lead would probably not
penetrate at this point. But if you are a child, a young person
with a supple brain and those brains are supple for a good
number of years of their lives, certainly for the first dozen
years or so, you simply do not need to be exposed to lead in
the water when you go to school.
What has happened of course to the confidence in the
government's ability to provide this very basic necessity is
that we have spawned an industry that sells water. We don't
know what in the world that water is about. We don't know what
its purity is. We assume.
Isn't this pathetic? We assume that it must be better than
the water that comes through our spigots. There is something
very wrong with that. It is a loss of confidence in the ability
of the government to in fact do one of the most basic things
you do in even a society that does not claim to be advanced.
Mr. Chairman, I am certain, given the success of the water
industry, the loss of confidence in the people of the United
States, that their governments can provide clean water. I am
certain that somebody soon is going to be bottling clean air.
Watch for it, my friends.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much.
Mrs. Kelly is next, but if you don't mind, Congressman
Ehlers wants 30 seconds of your time. He wanted to make one
more comment before you started.
Mrs. Kelly. Mr. Chairman, I have no opening statement. I am
anxious to go to the question and answer portion of this.
Mr. Duncan. Okay.
Mrs. Kelly. So you may use my time however you would like.
Mr. Duncan. Okay, sure. We will go to Vern, Congressman
Ehlers.
Mr. Ehlers. Thank you very much. I will try to keep it
short anyway.
I got so carried away in my diatribe about bottled water, I
neglected to mention something very important about NOAA. It is
a plea to my colleagues to help me in an effort to maintain the
integrity of their budget and their appropriations this year.
For some reason, the NOAA budget has become a target for
larceny in the past several years in the appropriations
process, probably because they feel that, those who take the
money for other purposes may feel that there is not enough
support for NOAA's programs.
I would just encourage all of us to work diligently to make
sure that the appropriations intended for NOAA in fact end up
in NOAA research and operations, and that we do not have so
much diverted to other causes and other purposes in the next
few years.
Thank you.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much.
Mr. Baird?
Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just very briefly, I want to thank the panelists, and
enjoyed meeting with Mr. Dunnigan the other day. We discussed
at the time the importance of research that is often neglected
on harmful algae blames, which Mr. Ehlers and I have worked on
very much before. I want to reiterate the importance of that,
particularly for our shellfish industry and for public safety.
And also my longstanding interest, again with Dr. Ehlers, on
the issue of invasive species. So we wish to work with you on
that.
Also, of course, the important permitting issues that many
of your agencies are involved with, to the extent that we can
work collaboratively to expedite those processes while still
protecting the environment, we can I think do things more
efficiently and economically.
I yield back. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much.
We have a very distinguished panel today. The Honorable
Benjamin H. Grumbles is Assistant Administrator for Water at
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He is from here in
Washington. The Honorable Susan Parker Bodine is Assistant
Administrator, Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response of
the EPA, also from here. We have Mr. John H. Dunnigan who is
the Assistant Administrator of the National Ocean Service of
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also from
Washington. And then we have one of my 700,000 bosses, Mr. Bill
Baxter, a long time friend of mine, who is Chairman of the
Tennessee Valley Authority.
Mr. Baxter, it is an honor to have you here. You are
fortunate, when Chairman Boehlert, the six years he chaired
this Subcommittee, and he was from upstate New York, almost
every year he would use this hearing to complain about what he
thought was an unfair advantage TVA gave people from our
region. Of course, I didn't think it was an unfair advantage at
all. At any rate, we are glad to have you here.
Your full statements will be placed in the record. We are
supposed to limit you to five minutes. I always give the
witnesses six minutes, but as a courtesy to the other
witnesses, if you see me start to wave this, that means your
six minutes is up and so I want you to try to bring it to a
close.
To be honest with you, I think of all the times that Ben
Grumbles has been here, I don't think he has ever taken the
full five minutes even.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Duncan. So I don't know. We will see what happens
today.
Mr. Grumbles?
TESTIMONY OF BENJAMIN H. GRUMBLES, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR
WATER, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; SUSAN PARKER
BODINE, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF SOLID WASTE AND
EMERGENCY RESPONSE, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; JOHN
H. DUNNIGAN, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL OCEAN SERVICE,
NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE; BILL BAXTER, CHAIRMAN, TENNESSEE VALLEY
AUTHORITY
Mr. Grumbles. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is truly an honor
to appear before the Committee. I just look at the membership
of the Committee and see the leaders on environmental issues,
particularly in great waters, sensitive ecosystems like the
Great Lakes, the Chesapeake Bay, the Anacostia, but also the
whole effort. So it is an honor to be back.
It is even more of an honor to be able to appear with
Susan. That is just a tremendous opportunity for EPA to have
her working at EPA with us.
It is an honor to be here to discuss the President's fiscal
year 2007 budget request for EPA, and specifically for the
National Water Program. The President charged the Administrator
with the job of accelerating environmental protection, while
maintaining our Country's economic competitiveness. We believe
the 2007 budget request provides the tools and the resources to
do so. In the amount of time I have in the opening statement, I
want to emphasize two words, and the two words are
sustainability and stewardship.
Sustainability of infrastructure is a key theme and a focus
of the agency. I know and we are taking note and we understand
the views of those who criticize the investments in the
President's budget in the State revolving fund. We feel that
the $688 million request is on track with the commitment to
provide a self-sustaining, fully revolving level of $3.4
billion after 2011, and that that seed money, those investments
in the State revolving fund must be coupled with an aggressive
approach to implement four pillars of sustainability.
Those four pillars are improved management, looking at it
from a demand side, working cooperatively with utilities and
cities across the Country to use asset management, capacity
development, environmental management systems, technologies, to
reduce the costs, reduce the demand on infrastructure and
improve the management.
The other pillars of sustainability that we are committed
to and want to work with you on include full cost pricing and
also water efficiency, and then the last pillar being
watershed-based approaches. We think that is where we can make
the progress.
Through all of those pillars, the key tools are technology
and innovation and collaboration. So we agree. We recognize
that one of the greatest challenges is making progress,
maintaining economic competitiveness, but making progress on
the water infrastructure challenge.
We want to work with Members of Congress, with citizens,
with the private sector, to find innovative financing tools to
supplement the four pillars of sustainability.
Mr. Chairman, on the issue of watersheds and core clean
water programs, the President's budget includes $192 million
for EPA's core clean water regulatory program. This provides
the tools and the science for setting water quality standards,
for monitoring, for progress and coordination with our partners
on the clean water challenge.
Also included is $194 million for nonpoint source
pollution, which we recognize is one of the greatest
challenges. We believe that EPA's budget, in coordination with
USDA farm bill programs and other programs, can continue to
make significant progress. We will make more progress if we
focus on innovative tools such as water quality trading, to
have more cost effective in environmentally results-oriented
approaches.
The budget request also includes $222 million in grants to
States and tribes, our partners in carrying out the Clean Water
Act, to help them administer their important responsibilities.
For wetlands program, we are requesting a total of $38 million.
That includes $17 million for State Capacity Development
Grants. We think it is important for States to have the tools
to protect these precious resources.
On the Great Lakes, I want to acknowledge the leadership of
the Subcommittee, including in particular Congressman Ehlers.
That is a highlight of the budget. It is a high priority of the
Administrator. It is a priority of the President, and $70
million is included in the budget, and nearly $50 million for
implementation of the Great Lakes Legacy Act, cleaning up those
contaminated sediments.
The Chesapeake Bay Program includes approximately $26
million. That is a very important program. It is a national
treasure, and we are very excited about improving and
accelerating the progress with our partners in the Chesapeake
Bay.
There are two last things I want to mention, Mr. Chairman.
One of those is water security. That is truly one of the
priorities for the National Water Program, and $53 million is
included for water security-related efforts, including $38
million for the Water Sentinel Program.
The last thing I want to mention is the promise and
progress that we can achieve through Good Samaritan legislation
and administrative efforts. Now is the time to move forward in
a bipartisan way and enact Good Samaritan legislation. The
Administration and the EPA are committed to working with you
and with the States on Good Samaritan efforts. We are also
working administratively to develop a toolbox of tools to
provide assistance.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for the
opportunity to testify. I would be happy to answer questions at
the appropriate time.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much, Administrator Grumbles.
Actually, our next hearing at the end of this month will be
concerned with the Good Samaritan legislation to which you have
referred.
Ms. Bodine?
Ms. Bodine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the
Committee.
As most of you realize, this is my first hearing as
Assistant Administrator of the Office of Solid Waste and
Emergency Response. I am delighted that this opportunity is
happening in front of the Water Resources and Environment
Subcommittee. I am very happy to be here today to discuss the
President's budget with you with respect to the programs that
fall under the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response.
The President's budget provides the necessary funds for EPA
to carry out our missions effectively and efficiently.
Administrator Johnson has reminded us that we are not only
stewards of the environment, but we are also stewards of the
taxpayer dollars. This budget allows us to achieve both of
those goals.
I do want to mention that the Administrator is very heavily
focused on results, environmental results, and maximizing the
return on our investments, and has initiated some very good
tracking measures to make sure that that is the case. So we are
all focused on spending our dollars as efficiently as possible
and making sure that we are getting the results for that
investment.
For the Superfund Program, the President's budget request
is $1.259 billion. That represents increased funding from last
year. The increased funding is targeted towards both
enforcement and for homeland security. There is a $9 million
increase in enforcement, and that is important because it does
ensure that Superfund cleanups are performed by parties that
are responsible for the waste.
To date, the Superfund program has obtained commitments
from PRPs to pay over $24 billion worth of cleanup, as well as
cost recovery efforts. So I want to remind you of that just for
context, that the contribution to date has been $24 billion.
On the increase in homeland security, overall it is a $12
million increase, but $9.5 million of that is to establish a
network of labs. I want to spend a few minutes talking about
this because it is extremely important. It was requested last
year as well. It was not funded. I think that we did perhaps a
poor job of explaining the need to establish a lab network.
This is critical to our response efforts in the event of
any terrorist attacks. As you might expect, EPA has extremely
good and well established networks of labs to deal with
chemical substances, chemical releases. We do not have that
same network established for both radiological and biological
substances. The purpose of the $9.5 million is to set up the
networks of labs that we know can work with EPA, understand our
protocols, and are able to deal with our databases so that
should an event happen, we would be ready.
I would hope that this year Congress would see fit to fund
that. About $2 million of that funding request also is for the
National Decontamination Team's special equipment. Again, it is
the same issue. It is readiness. We all hope that nothing
happens, that there would not be any attack, but should there
be, there is specialized equipment for the National
Decontamination Team that we do not have right now, and we do
need to purchase it. So I am spending time stressing that
because it has not been funded.
The Superfund request allows us to continue the pace of
cleanup. As of January, there were 970 construction
completions. Cleanup construction is underway for over 90
percent of the sites on the NPL. The goal for construction
cleanup this year is 40 sites.
I do want to spend another minute talking about the efforts
that we are taking in the Superfund Program to increase
efficiencies, and also to use our money as best we can. For
example, if a contract is closed out and there is still money
left in it, we are very aggressively de-obligating funds so
that we can then take that money and use it at other sites. We
are conducting a workload analysis to make sure that the
workload is appropriately distributed across the regions and
across the various functions.
We are benchmarking performance because again we are trying
to get the most effectiveness out of our people. We are asking
the regions to share best practices and we are working with all
of the regions on remedy selection, whether it is contaminated
sediments or groundwater. Of course, we also have the Remedy
Review Board. We have expanded the use of that to make sure
that we have our best technical experts in the agency looking
at high cost remedies.
On Brownfields, we are maintaining steady funding for the
Brownfields program. The request is what Congress has provided
for the last couple of years. In the past, the President has
requested about $200 million for Brownfields, and Congress has
not provided it. So what this year's request reflects is a
recognition that Congress has not been willing to fund at the
$200 million level, and instead proposes steady funding.
Finally, with my last 29 seconds, I want to talk very
briefly about the Katrina response. I appreciate the support of
the Subcommittee with EPA's Katrina efforts. I want to let you
know that there have been 1,100 EPA employees, not just from
the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, but Office of
Water, all across the agency, all across the regions,
volunteers that have gone down there, away from their homes,
away from their families, and done rotations. They have done a
terrific job.
I am very proud of the job they have done. I am very proud
of how EPA has responded to this emergency. We have the lead
for ESF-10, which is oil and hazardous materials. We have
support functions under ESF-3. The Corps has the lead for that,
and that is the function under which the debris removal is
taking place.
I know that, Mr. Chairman, you have been down there. Other
Members of the Committee have been down there and seen just the
tremendous effort. I just want to convey to you, first, thanks
for the support, as well as my pride in the contribution that
EPA has made.
Thank you.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much, Administrator Bodine. Good
job. The first testimony is always the hardest.
I mentioned bills that Mr. Ehlers and Mr. Bishop had worked
on and shepherded through this Committee, but I remember the
major Brownfields legislation that we passed that you were the
lead person on, among many other bills that I can mention. I
thought of that as you were testifying very briefly about the
Brownfields situation.
Mr. Dunnigan?
Mr. Dunnigan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ms. Johnson, Members
of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to be here this
afternoon. My name is Jack Dunnigan. I work for NOAA. This is
also my first time for an opportunity to be before this
Committee.
I must tell you that I have been in my current position as
the Assistant Administrator for Oceans and Coastal Services for
all of six weeks. I have been learning an awful lot about what
it is that NOAA does in these areas, and in particular how much
of the importance of what we do is represented by matters that
are of intimate importance to the Members of this Committee on
the transportation and navigation services side of what we do.
We are basically in a position in our part of NOAA to be
able to see where conservation and stewardship programs and our
navigation programs have to work together, because they are
really two sides of the same coin once you realize that it is
all about the water.
We began to realize that even more so, I think, in response
to the storms that hit the Gulf of Mexico over last summer.
NOAA was very hard in working to move forward and help respond
to those storms. We were flying over the Gulf of Mexico the day
after Hurricane Katrina left so that we could be taking over
9,000 different photos that would be available to emergency
response planners.
We had navigation and response teams. We have six of those
around the Country. Four of them were pre-positioned and ready
to be deployed so that we could help the Coast Guard and the
Corps of Engineers to identify areas of water that needed to be
reopened so that we could begin commercial transportation along
those waters as soon as possible.
We had two of our large ocean-going research vessels
redeployed, the Thomas Jefferson, which is from the Chesapeake
Bay area, and the Nancy Foster, which works out of South
Carolina, to do missions for navigation and environmental
surveys.
So in many numbers of ways, what we saw as a result of
those storms last year was how all of NOAA could come together.
We in the National Ocean Service really were a place where all
of that had an opportunity to happen. We are certainly very
proud of the efforts that our staff was able to make. We are
very proud of the collaborations that we were able to have with
our sister Federal agencies and working with State and local
governments as well.
There are a couple of parts of the President's request that
we think are particularly important for the Committee that we
would like to point out. One of them has to do with what we saw
happen in the Hurricane Katrina context last year. That relates
to response and restoration. The President's budget is seeking
a total of $16.5 million for this program, which is an increase
of about $3 million over what was enacted last year.
This is a critical program because it is the place where we
can provide the scientific support to agencies that have the
primary response capabilities when oil spills or hazardous
material spills or large environmental hazards happen. This is
a part of our budget that has been gradually decreasing and
whittling away over the last couple of years. The President's
request would restore that funding to where this program was in
2003.
We think these are essential activities. There is about
$1.5 million of those dollars that we lost in the 2006 budget.
What we are afraid of is that if this continues, our ability to
support our sister Federal agencies in difficult times is going
to be gradually eroded. That is not a good thing. It is not a
good thing for our collaborative efforts. It is not a good
thing for the people who are affected.
We also have a number of navigation programs that are
critically important. The President's budget is seeking $10.5
million to finish out surveys according to a plan that was
looked at a couple of years ago that identified parts of our
coastline that have not been surveyed, or parts where the
surveys are just very old. Over half of the chart marks that
you will see on NOAA charts are 40 to 50 years old or longer,
and taken by somebody dropping a lead line in the water.
You have to ask yourself how accurate, given today's modern
technology, do we think those are? And what has happened to the
bottom? How has it changed in those four or five decades since
those surveys were taken? So we have identified a plan to
survey by 2017 an additional 43,000 square nautical miles in
the United States. This $10 million that the President has
asked for will allow us to survey an additional 500 square
nautical miles this year. In our base budget, we will be able
to do about 2,500 square nautical miles. This 500 will keep us
on a track to be able to complete the project that we have by
2017.
The President has asked for funding that would allow us to
move towards completion of the suite of electronic navigation
charts. The Coast Guard is going to require by 2010 that all
commercial navigation use NOAA's electronic charts. If they are
going to be able to do that, we have to be able to get the
charting done. The amount of money that is in the President's
budget this year will keep us on track towards having that
finished by the year 2010. It would allow us to do an extra 70
charts this year in addition to what we would try to do through
our base funding.
I think that these are examples. We are in a part of the
President's budget where there are a lot of opportunities that
the Administration has identified that are critical to the
environmental stewardship and to the commerce of the United
States, that deserve to have some funding. Mr. Ehlers mentioned
it earlier in his opening statement about parts of our budget
that have suffered in some budget issues lately. The President
is asking to have that funding restored. We would certainly ask
for the opportunity to do that.
Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure on my part to be able to
introduce myself to the Committee. I have had a chance to meet
with some of your staff. We look forward to continuing
collaborations and being able to support you as you move
forward with the important work that you have.
Thank you.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much, Mr. Dunnigan. Very fine
testimony. Both you and Administrator Bodine mentioned the
Katrina damage. I had the privilege of leading an 11-Member
delegation down there about three weeks after that happened.
The devastation was just unbelievable. You could not really
appreciate it as much seeing it on a TV screen as in person.
Unfortunately, apparently much of that damage is still down
there and will be for awhile.
Thank you very much for the work you have done on it.
Mr. Dunnigan. Thank you.
Mr. Duncan. Chairman Baxter?
Mr. Baxter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Madam Ranking
Member and Members of the Committee. My name is Bill Baxter. I
am the Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority. On behalf of
the board of directors and the employees of TVA, I want to tell
you, thank you for this opportunity to be here today. It is an
honor.
Excuse my voice. I am a basketball fan and I have been
screaming during March Madness here.
Mr. Duncan. Unfortunately he is a Duke fan, and not a
Tennessee fan.
Mr. Baxter. Well, Duke and Tennessee, for law school, and
both are doing well. They may meet this year.
Director Harris and I look forward to welcoming six new
members of the TVA board that have been now confirmed by the
United States Senate just this last week. Having these new
board members in place will complete TVA's transition to a
modern part time board structure that Congress laid out in late
2004. The new board will consider long term policy, budgets and
rates, and hire a CEO to manage the day to day business of TVA.
With the new board, TVA will continue its mission of
service to 8.6 million consumers in the seven State region in
three key areas: providing affordable reliable power; serving
as a steward of the region's natural resources; and supporting
economic development.
As you know, TVA is 100 percent self-financing. There are
no congressional appropriations that we seek. However, Congress
appropriately has oversight responsibility for TVA in many
capacities, and we are very happy to report to this Committee
today.
TVA generates power from a diverse mix of coal, nuclear,
hydro, natural gas, and renewable sources, and in 2005 TVA's
power system had its best performance in its 72 year history.
TVA met back to back peak demands during the summer and had its
sixth year of 99.999 percent transmission reliability.
We are also on schedule and on budget to bring online the
Nation's first nuclear reactor in the 21st century. In May of
2007, Browns Ferry Unit One will add 1,280 new megawatts of
safe, low cost, zero emissions generating capacity to our
fleet.
As steward of the valley's natural resources, we are
continuing to improve the way we manage the Tennessee River,
which is the backbone of the valley and at the heart of TVA's
mission. Managing this river system, which is the fifth largest
in the United States, requires a careful balance of many
diversified stakeholders' needs.
We are also working hard to ensure the valley's air will be
cleaner for our children and grandchildren. Our air quality
today in the Tennessee Valley is the best it has been in
decades. When we complete our current clean air commitments,
TVA and its ratepayers will have invested $5.7 billion in one
of the most aggressive clean air programs in the Country.
In economic development last year, TVA partnered with
public officials in local communities to help attract or retain
57,000 jobs and leverage almost $3.6 billion in new capital
investment. In addition to technical assistance and low
interest loans, we are now also providing communities with
tools to attract specific industries.
In order to continue to excel in meeting our mission for
the valley, we are committed to a disciplined approach to
improving our financial performance. TVA must reduce its total
financial obligations which include both statutory debt and
alternative financing. I am pleased to report that since the
end of 1996, TVA has cuts its total financial obligations by
$2.1 billion and our strategic plan, which we have submitted to
OMB, calls for by 2016 further reducing our debt by $7.8
billion.
We believe we can meet this goal if we constrain our
internal costs, and we recover the increased costs of fuel and
purchase power that we have all seen recently. These costs are
increasing dramatically for utilities all across the Nation and
we are doing our best to mitigate them. We are working closely
with our customers on long term solutions and we are cutting
our own costs to offset some of these increases.
Unfortunately, we must pass along some of these increases
to our customers and we are endeavoring to keep those to a
minimum. As you know, as I said earlier, TVA is entirely self-
financing. In preparing our fiscal year 2007 budget, we are
projecting revenue of around $9 billion. About $1 billion will
be spent on capital projects supporting improved transmission
reliability, cleaner air, and the restart of the first nuclear
power plant in America.
Since fiscal year 2000, TVA has funded its stewardship
activity solely out of power revenues, rather than out of
appropriations. In fiscal year 2007, TVA will spend $84 million
on water and land stewardship activity. Beginning with our
annual report for fiscal year 2006, TVA will file financial
reports with the SEC. In fiscal year 2007, we will begin
complying with portions of Sarbanes-Oxley as well.
TVA is transitioning now to a new management structure that
I believe will help TVA lead itself into the future. It is also
important to note what is not changing at TVA, and that is our
dedication to our mission of service to the valley and to
continuing to improve our financial strength.
We will continue to work with the Congress and the
Administration and with all of our stakeholders to ensure that
we achieve these goals.
I want to thank you again for the opportunity to be here
and I look forward to answering any questions that you might
have.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you. Ms. Johnson and I have questions,
but I think we will go first to members, and first to Mr.
Gilchrest.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I have three questions, actually four since TVA is here, I
am going to ask you, you can be thinking about this. This will
be the fourth question. BP and Shell have both said that fossil
fuel is not in their future. I would like to know at TVA, what
is in your future.
Forgive me if I say Jack or Sue or Ben. I do not mean, you
know, you are all honorable. If I get caught up in a moment and
I say Jack, but anyway, Jack, you referred to Katrina. I think
everybody, including this Committee, did extraordinary work to
heal the souls of people who lost their lives and lost their
homes and got separated and things like that.
I think what we saw in Katrina, though, was human activity
was grossly incompatible with nature's design in that region,
and when you had that huge hurricane, we had this enhanced
destruction. The first question is, when you look at all these
programs in NOAA, in EPA, do you look at the fundamentals of
the physics of the system upon which you are trying to repair
or clean up or restore, which is basically geology and
hydrology of a particular region?
Now, the fundamentals of an ecological system are the
geology and the hydrology of that system. So when you take a
look at, which is what my next question will be, a prosthesis
to correct or eliminate some of the degradation, do you look at
that prosthesis, which whatever it might be, a sewage treatment
plant or a berm or a barrier or a levee or whatever, do you
look at the ecological system upon which that will be working?
The first question.
The second question, the State of Maryland has come up with
something called a flush fee. I know that the Federal
Government certainly cannot do everything for all the sewage
treatment plants and all the revolving loan funds. So Maryland
has really stepped up to the plate and generated about $60
million, $70 million, $80 million a year by charging every
homeowner $30 a year, which is pretty good.
The question, though, is, the technology that we use to
eliminate the problems of sewage and things like that, is that
the whole answer to degraded waters? Technology is a
prosthesis. It is rarely as good as a natural design. So are we
developing, and this is not a Federal question, though, because
it is all local land use issues, but do you think we are
developing our open space faster than we have the technology to
restore our waters? That is the second question.
The third question is, since we want to have maximum
returns on our investment, Secretary Johnson has said that at
EPA, do we look at a big picture of how to? I mean, I have
lines and lines of stuff that I wanted EPA and NOAA here for
restoration of the Chesapeake Bay and things like that, just
lines and lines of stuff that we resubmit every single year.
It seems to me in certain regions of the Country that open
space is a better filtration system for air deposition or other
forms of pollution to clean bodies of water. It is possible to
re-look at this system of funding in all these various things,
and then say for the first five years we are going to, and
there are a lot of willing sellers, purchase acres and acres of
easement, development rights in certain areas, so these areas
can have this natural process at work, and in my region, most
of that are wetlands.
So I guess, do you look at the ecological structure before
you put in a particular structure? Do you think we are
developing faster than we have the technology to stay up with
it, and the maximum effective use of the dollars? I do not know
if we have time for all these answers, but those are my
questions.
Mr. Duncan. Let me say this. We are about to get to a
number of votes in just a few minutes, so I would ask that you
make your responses very, very short, so we can get to some
other members here.
Mr. Gilchrest. They can call them on the phone, Jimmy.
Okay?
Mr. Duncan. Go ahead, Mr. Grumbles.
Mr. Grumbles. The Administrator of EPA and the head of NOAA
entered into a memorandum of agreement a little over a year ago
to work together towards sustainable development in coastal
areas to better instill principles to provide not Federal
regulations or mandates, but technical assistance and planning
for local officials to take into account the resiliency and the
stressors in the coastal environment.
You mentioned geology and hydrology and technology. There
is also sociology, and recognizing a lot of it is local land
use planning. I think the agency, our perspective and the Water
Program's perspective, is to provide technical assistance and
planning assistance to make those decisions, and recognizing
that buffers, barriers, coastal barrier islands can be
extremely helpful and protect not just the environment, but
people, too, in the instance of hurricanes and storms.
Mr. Duncan. Mr. Dunnigan?
Mr. Dunnigan. Yes, thank you, Congressman.
I think I would second what Mr. Grumbles said. You see
this, of course, in the collaboration between NOAA and EPA
working in the Chesapeake Bay, where we focus on trying to make
tools that are available. If we take it back to your question
of Hurricane Katrina, in the weeks immediately following, part
of what we did was to put technical experts on-scene to begin
working with local governments, our experts who understood the
geology and the physical properties, to help that community
begin to re-vision what their future could and ought to look
like and how we could help do it.
But as you said, these are decisions that need to be made
by the people that live there. What we can do is to help
provide the technical expertise for them to do that.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chesapeake, an environmental biography by John Winterston,
it is a great read. You guys would love it.
Mr. Duncan. All right.
Mr. Bishop?
Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know we are getting
called for votes, so I will go quickly.
Mr. Grumbles, it is nice to see you again. I have
essentially the same set of questions that I had last year. The
funding for the Long Island Sound Study is going in the wrong
direction. In fiscal year 2005, we spent $6.8 million on the
Long Island Sound Study. In fiscal year 2006, we provided $2.8
million. The President's budget request for fiscal year 2007 is
$467,000.
I guess I have an observation and a question. My
observation is that within months of signing a bill that
authorizes up to $40 million for the Long Island Sound Study
Project, how could we get to a request that is $467,000?
I guess my other question, not to be flip, but what does
the Administration know about the Long Island Sound that the
rest of us who live near it don't?
Mr. Grumbles. Congressman, I know your intense interest and
passion in making progress on the Long Island Sound. We
certainly recognize the importance of accelerating progress on
Long Island Sound. A couple of things, one is the funding
request is, as you noted, approximately the same as previous
years, and that is to provide funding for the study, for the
office activities, recognizing that it is not attempting to
fund implementation of the comprehensive conservation and
management plan. There are other tools and resources that we
all must use to help facilitate that.
The agency has been working very closely over the last year
and a half with the Army Corps on an intensely important effort
on the dredge material management plan for the Long Island
Sound. I know that we all recognize the need to improve the
tools and accelerate market based approaches through trading.
The water quality trading efforts in the Long Island Sound, we
are very excited about.
We want to provide the technical assistance and help the
States continue the reduce nutrient loadings into Long Island
Sound, recognizing that the Federal funding may not be
increasing. It is going to take a partnership of State and
local and nongovernmental efforts to make progress in the Long
Island Sound.
Mr. Bishop. I thank you for that. I guess my response would
be that you spoke before about the department having two
guiding principles. One was sustainability and the other was
stewardship. I would just suggest that stewardship is still
very much required for Long Island Sound and it does have to be
a multi-governmental effort. The Federal Government, in my
view, needs to continue to be an active player in providing the
stewardship for the Sound.
If I may have one more question, Mr. Chairman? I think this
is for Ms. Bodine. I want to ask about the Superfund. The
Administration has once again not recommended to the Congress
that the Superfund tax be reinstated. It also continues to
forego cost recoveries from responsible parties. So my question
is, does the Administration believe in the principle of the
polluter pays? And if it does, why is it not requesting that we
reinstate the tax? And if it doesn't, why doesn't it?
Ms. Bodine. The Superfund statute does have parties
responsible for pollution pay for cleanups, and that is through
the liability provisions. As I noted earlier, the President's
budget actually increases the funding for enforcement efforts,
and that we have a cumulative level of effort from PRPs of $24
billion. In fact just in fiscal year 2005, it was $1.1 billion
of commitments and cost recoveries.
On your question relating to why aren't we doing more cost
recovery, well, we certainly are. It is better to have the
PRPs, the responsible parties, pay for the cleanup up front, so
then it is not the taxpayer dollars being spent. Second, where
EPA has spent money, what we have been doing is recovering
those costs and putting them into special accounts so that we
can then use those funds to conduct more cleanup.
So if you are suggesting that cost recoveries are going
down because you are not seeing that amount deposited to the
Trust Fund, I would say no, that is not the indicator. Cost
recoveries are very strong, but we are able to spend that money
to do more cleanups at the site. Again, that is PRP money.
On the taxes, if you looked historically, there has never
been a relationship between the amount of funding that is in
the Trust Fund and the level of appropriations for the
Superfund Program. The Superfund Trust Fund is an on budget
trust fund. I know this Committee understands trust funds very
well. There are no firewalls. It is part of the unified budget.
It is subject to discretionary spending caps. So the
appropriations annually have been relatively steady throughout
the years, and have borne no relationship to the level of
funding in the Trust Fund.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much.
We have run into a problem that I hoped we could have
avoided, but we have six votes, which means we are going to
have to go into a very lengthy break. I apologize. Before I do
this break, I do want to go to Chairman Baxter first of all. I
did not give you a chance to respond to Mr. Gilchrest's
question about fossil fuel. Secondly, and more importantly to
the people of our region, let me just ask you this. Last fall,
the TVA had a rate adjustment, a rate increase. You mentioned
some of these increases that TVA is facing. Natural gas prices
have exploded. Almost all of our energy costs have been
shooting way up.
Do you think that TVA is going to have to have another rate
increase anytime soon? What do you see in the near foreseeable
future, as best you can?
Mr. Baxter. As soon as the new board gets with us, which we
hope will just be in a few weeks, we will go to work on our
2007 budget. That will be a part of that, what are our revenue
projected requirements and how do we fund those.
We have been discussing now for nearly a year with our
distributors, rather than doing base rate increases, which
should be attuned to what our underlying cost of doing business
is at TVA, that we need to consider doing what most other
utilities in our region do, which is have a fuel clause
adjuster, which is an automatic formula that passes through
those costs up and down. We are now tracking that with our
distributors to see how that would work and that mechanism
would work. We have gotten very favorable response to that.
So you could very well see that as part of the 2007 budget,
where the actual base rate for electricity from TVA would go
down, and there would be placed a fuel clause adjuster that
would go up and down automatically with those fuel costs, and
be audited by our distributor customers.
Mr. Duncan. As much as possible, you know, our economy
overall is very good, primarily because our area has become one
of the most popular retirement areas in the Country. We have a
lot of upper income moving from other parts of the Country.
But that does mean that there is still a pretty wide gap
between the people moving in and we still have a lot of lower
income people in that region. I hope that the new board will
keep in mind that there are a lot of people who still have
great difficulty in paying for their utility needs, and I think
we always need to try to keep that in mind.
We are going to have to break at this time. We will come
back as soon as we can, but it is going to be a little while,
and I apologize to you. Mrs. Kelly and some others want to ask
some questions, so we cannot just put them in writing, I don't
think.
Ms. Johnson?
Ms. Johnson. Mr. Chairman, I don't think I am going to be
able to come back after this series of six votes, but I would
like to submit some questions and wonder if I might request
they be responded to in a couple of weeks.
Mr. Duncan. All right.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much.
[Recess.]
Mr. Duncan. We will go ahead and start back. Let me
apologize. I chaired the Aviation Subcommittee for six years,
and now I am in my sixth year of chairing this Subcommittee.
This is my 18th year here overall. I have never had a
Subcommittee or Committee meeting interrupted by that many
votes all at once, although we did have an Aviation hearing one
time in which we had the presidents of all the major airlines,
and Congressman Jose Serrano from New York got mad and called
24 votes in a row, but we called off the whole hearing. We did
not really get started on it. So I remember that.
I do apologize for making all of you wait. I would have
been satisfied to submit these questions to you in writing, but
Mrs. Kelly has some questions that she wants to ask. Until she
gets back, I am going to start going over some things.
Mr. Grumbles, as you could tell from my statement, I am
particularly interested in the funding of the SRF Program. You
talked about the $688 million, and said that that would produce
$3.4 billion in total funds, and that you thought that was
enough. The $688 million is $200 million below the enacted
level last year, and I am sure you realize that.
Also, I think we had $4.9 billion in total funding,
approximately $5 billion in total funding. Do you see that gap
between the $5 billion and the $3.4 billion that you are
talking about? Do you see that as a problem? If not, why not?
Because we get all these groups, that tell us that we have the
Water Infrastructure Network, and so many other groups and
analysts and experts who tell us that the needs are out there;
that over half of our water infrastructure is over 50 years
old; that much of it is over 100 years old. And they have even
come up with a figure, a size $400 billion over the next 20
years. What do you say about all that?
Mr. Grumbles. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the
question, and I have a couple of points to make. One is that
EPA recognizes that there is a large gap between the estimated
needs and the estimated revenues over the next 20 years. We are
saying from a Federal perspective, for the Clean Water SRF,
that there needs to be a continued Federal commitment of seed
money, and in 2004 the Administration agreed to a plan, laid
out a plan that said, okay now, if you have an investment over
a number of years through 2011, the cumulative amount, $6.8
billion, coupled with some key assumptions and with the pillars
of sustainability, which also means full cost pricing and local
ratepayer support, we think we can make significant progress in
eliminating that gap.
Now, one of the key points that we need to make and agree
with Members of Congress and others is that it requires a
shared effort. The history of the water infrastructure programs
and funding across the Country has been by and large that 90
percent of the revenues and investments going into
infrastructure have been at the local or State level. We do not
expect that to change dramatically over time.
What we are seeking to embrace is a much more aggressive
approach for leveraging those funds that are going into the
Clean Water SRF, plus additional concepts like full cost
pricing and doing more with less. The leveraging, the $3.4
billion, I appreciate the question because it is often easy to
either miscommunicate it or confuse it. That level is what we
would project at the level that the fund would be revolving at
in 2015 through 2040 on an annual basis without Federal funds
going in.
The dollars you mentioned, the $5 billion or the nearly $4
billion amount, what that currently reflects is the Federal
funds plus the State returns. It is not really a self-
sustaining revolving level. So when we say the $3.4 billion,
that is the goal we are shooting for after Federal funding into
the SRF would stop by 2011.
Mr. Duncan. All right.
On another issue, you know that I have had particularly one
community in my District, Marysville, Tennessee, my second
largest county that has had real concerns or problems about the
blending issue. I wonder, and there have been communities all
over the Nation that have been confused or concerned about that
and potential costs. In fact, I have been told about possibly
extremely high costs that could potentially be there. Where
does the EPA stand on that now? Have you got that all
straightened out so that people will stop bothering us about
that?
Mr. Grumbles. Well, we are trying our hardest, Mr.
Chairman. We proposed a peak flow policy, a blending policy
that we are very excited about because it represents progress
on that difficult issue, where in the past you had very
strongly held opposing views. We are going through the comments
on that policy and we hope to finalize it soon.
What we are striving for is an approach that provides some
greater consistency across the Country in the different
regions.
Mr. Duncan. Right.
Mr. Grumbles. But also recognizes that meeting the Clean
Water Act requirements at the end of the pipe through
technology and through the right process is important. I can
tell you, Mr. Chairman, on the issue of sustainability, we also
have an important component and that is affordability. The
utilities across the Country are asking us to take a new look,
a fresh look at the affordability policies on clean water
infrastructure financing with respect to sewer overflows and
long term control plans. We are committed to reviewing that
because we recognize that that is one of the issues that comes
across your desk very frequently, and we have to deal with that
as well.
Mr. Duncan. Well, that has been I think the main concern.
It is a legitimate concern because all these people that run
these water districts and these water utilities around the
Country, they want our water to be as clean and safe as
possible. In fact, I am sure they have a lot more concern about
it than just the average person out there, so they want to do
everything they can. But they also know that it is difficult to
come up with the money for some of these things.
Let me ask you one last question. Everybody today is
throwing out security, talking about security on this and that.
Do we have any problem at all, or should we be concerned about
the security at our water facilities around the Country?
Mr. Grumbles. Mr. Chairman, one of the priorities in the
Administration's budget, and certainly the priority of the
agency's operating programs over the last several years has
been to work towards instilling a sense of water security,
institutionalizing it more within the context of the clean
water programs and the drinking water programs.
We do have more work to do. We have made progress. The
utilities and States, drinking water and wastewater agencies
are taking it very seriously, but we do have a lot of work to
do. The Water Sentinel Program that is requested in the
President's budget, the $38 million for that, is trying to
emphasize in a comprehensive, coordinated monitoring and
surveillance approach, particularly for the drinking water
systems across the Country, using five different data streams
for routine as well as triggered monitoring of contaminants of
concern, physical surveillance using public health data and
records, to really keep an eye, a wider eye and a more attuned
ear to potential problems, particularly in distribution
systems.
So we do have more work to do on the water security front.
Mr. Duncan. I said I was not going to ask you any more
questions, but you used to work for our friend, Chairman
Boehlert. You heard me mention that he used to enjoy making
anti-TVA comments. Were you the one responsible for coming up
with those comments or questions?
[Laughter.]
Mr. Grumbles. I think Susan can answer that question.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Duncan. All right.
Assistant Administrator Bodine, the staff that you left me
with, which is a very good staff, they tell me that it is very
difficult to try to determine exactly how Superfund money is
spent, and that half of it, or over half of it is not being
spent on actual cleanup work. I remember, of course even that
is much better. I remember reading a lengthy article about the
Superfund years ago, and that article said that 85 percent of
the money at that time was being spent on bureaucratic
administrative costs, and particularly the cost of the
litigation, paperwork and so forth.
Now, since you have been over there, what have you found
out about this? Have you been able to get a handle on that? Do
you think that that still is a problem? If it is, what do you
propose to do to improve the management of Superfund resources?
Ms. Bodine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
That is an issue that I have studied for a long time. I
would say that there are still challenges within the Superfund
Program in terms of dealing with the most efficient, effective
way of using its resources. There have been a number of
studies. The Administrator had commissioned when he was Deputy
Administrator a study called the 120 Day Study, that had a
number of recommendations for efficiencies, some of which I
cited in my testimony, ideas like benchmarking; ideas like
expanding the oversight of remedies that are coming through to
save costs; concepts like perhaps reexamining our workforce
allocation to make sure that our resources are distributed in
the most effective way.
The response, the follow-up activities to those
recommendations, are underway and are under my oversight. They
are now my responsibility, and I take that very seriously. That
is something that we are going to continue to be working on for
a long time, to try to make sure that we are spending the
resources effectively. It is not a six month project, but over
the next three years I hope that we then will be reporting back
to you that we have succeeded in making the program as
efficient as possible. But I will concede to you that there is
still work to be done.
Mr. Duncan. How is the Supreme Court's decision in the
Cooper Industries case impacting the spending on the Superfund
and Brownfields? Is it having an effect?
Ms. Bodine. Well, that case had to do with the ability of
one private party to recover costs from another private party,
so it has not impacted EPA's activities, but we do hear
anecdotally, and I don't have data on this, but anecdotally we
are told that it could have a potential problem of making
people reluctant to step forward to clean up voluntarily if
they then cannot recover their costs because someone else is
responsible, but I don't have data on that. That is anecdotal.
Mr. Duncan. Roughly, what percentage of the Superfund
Program is paid for by private parties or from private funds?
Do you know, from the settlements of lawsuits and those types?
Ms. Bodine. I do not have an exact number. I would say that
for example at the end of last year, in fiscal year 2005, the
responsible parties did make payments and commitments to do
future work that totaled $1.1 billion. That was a high number.
That was a good year. But the responsible party commitments
have been at a fairly good pace. The appropriated funds were,
again, roughly about $1.25 billion.
Mr. Duncan. You heard, I can't remember whether it was Mr.
Bishop or Mr. Pascrell mention that either in the last year or
the average number of Superfund sites cleaned up during the
Clinton years was 87 or something or 86 or 87, and now you are
proposing to clean up 40 Superfund sites. But you also mention
that, if I heard you correctly, that over 90 percent of the
sites on the national priorities list, the NPL, have been
cleaned up. Is that correct? Or work was being done?
Ms. Bodine. Correct. I said that cleanup was underway at
over 90 percent. Either cleanup was completed or underway at 90
percent of the sites.
The phenomenon we have right now is in the early days of
the program, there were few completions simply because of the
effect of getting the program up and running and moving sites
through the process. In the 1990s, there certainly were a
number of sites that were ready for completion at that time,
and Congress was also very concerned about completions, and
therefore there was a policy within EPA of completing as many
sites as possible.
If you look at the statistics on EPA's out of pocket costs
with respect to those sites, what the agency was paying to get
those construction completions, the statistics that I have were
from 1993 to 2000, but you have 659 sites completed from 1993
to 2001, so 659 sites had construction completed during those
years. But 511 had EPA costs of less than $5 million. In fact,
262 of those, also included in the 511, had EPA costs of less
than $1 million, and in fact 63 sites had no remedial action at
all.
So what you see was very rapid construction and completion
of sites that really were not requiring a significant
investment. If you look at the sites that we have remaining,
for example out of a universe of 581 sites that are not yet
construction complete, 128 of those are Federal facilities,
which are huge sites, many operable units, and 106 of those, in
addition to the Federal facilities, are what we call mega-
sites, where the costs are over $50 million, and 124 of those
are sites that are new to the program. They have been on the
NPL for less than five years.
So I guess in response, what we are seeing is a management
of the program of less expensive site completions. What we have
left are more expensive sites, and that is what I am now
responsible for managing those sites. What I would like to do
is manage those sites on the basis of risk, and deal with these
to address the risks that are presented.
Mr. Duncan. Well, that is a good explanation.
Let me ask you this. I mentioned that you did some good
work on our Brownfields legislation a few years ago. Where do
we stand on those grants? Do you feel like there has been some
real progress made, good work done? There has been a decrease
in the requested funding for the grants program for
Brownfields. That does not necessarily mean that the overall
spending on Brownfields, though, is going down. Where do we
stand on all that? What can you tell us?
Ms. Bodine. Well, first the request is in line with what
the Brownfields appropriations have been. The request
represents steady funding for the Brownfields Program. With
this request, we would expect that with the Federal dollars, we
would be providing grants to assess 1,000 Brownfields sites and
that we would be providing 60 cleanup grants.
The goal then is that those dollars, and that is the
Federal investment, would then leverage at least $900 million
in cleanup or redevelopment funding, as well as 5,000 jobs. So
the beauty of the Brownfields Program is that the relative
Federal contribution is small, but then you end up leveraging a
tremendous amount of private cleanup and redevelopment dollars,
which then do translate into jobs, which is the goal of the
revitalization.
Mr. Duncan. And as I understand it, there were about 6,000
Brownfields sites identified. Can you tell us how many of those
have been redeveloped or put back into productive use?
Ms. Bodine. Six thousand as a universe?
Mr. Duncan. What I have from the staff says that since
1995, more than 6,000 Brownfields sites have been assessed. It
tells that over 2,100 properties have been made ready for
reuse. That is what I was referring to. I did not have it right
at hand when I mentioned that. I just wondered. Is that similar
to the information you see?
Ms. Bodine. I have the total numbers. I do not have the
breakdown, but I can certainly get that to you in terms of how
many properties. We track, or our grantees do, and we are
tracking what the State voluntary cleanup programs are
accomplishing as well. I do have a statistic that just shows
the growth of the effort in this area, and that is that before
2000, apparently State voluntary cleanup programs had worked on
about 5,000 sites, but between 2000 and the present, that
number has gone up to 50,000.
Now, that does not mean they all required cleanup, but part
of making things available for use is in many cases doing a
site assessment to say that the properties are acceptable. Now,
that does not mean Federal dollars were spent on that 50,000
either. But it means that there has been tremendous support and
expansion of Brownfields efforts in recent years that I think
everyone should be proud of.
Mr. Duncan. Well, I have a couple more questions, but I was
going on and on because I had gotten word that Mrs. Kelly was
not able to come back, and now she is here. So I am going to
turn it over at this time to Congresswoman Kelly.
Mrs. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have some very serious concerns I would like to raise
with Ms. Bodine. I have serious concerns about TCE. It is a
toxic chemical that has been associated with many, many health
risks, including birth defects and cancer. The Hopewell
Precision Superfund site is in my congressional District. It is
contaminated with TCE. On numerous times, I have raised the TCE
issue with EPA officials, and I feel that the EPA has actually
been very responsive on the ground at the Hopewell Precision
site, and they have been very helpful to the families living
there. But the EPA here in Washington has not demonstrated that
kind of urgency with regard to TCE issues.
The EPA issued a TCE health risk assessment in 2001. That
risk assessment determined that TCE is far more toxic than they
previously thought. Yet instead of acting immediately, three
years later in 2004, that report was referred simply to the
National Academy of Sciences for more review.
So here we are nearly five years later and we still do not
have a clear national standard for addressing the TCE
contamination. My constituents and I really feel that the EPA
is not focusing on the health risks that are associated with
the TCE problem. I really have been pushing hard to get some
kind of a designation and some information on it.
Along with several of my House colleagues, we have really
asked for a protective interim approach to the TCE problem.
Apparently that assessment still has not been finished from the
National Academy of Sciences.
So I wonder if you could tell me, why won't the EPA issue
an interim standard on TCE while we are waiting for the
National Academy of Sciences to do this re-review?
Ms. Bodine. Thank you, Congresswoman.
Steve Johnson, the Administrator of EPA, is a scientist. If
you know his background, you know that he was a career employee
and came out of the Office of Pesticides and Toxic Substances.
He is very strongly committed to using sound science, the best
available science to address environmental problems.
In the 2001 draft risk assessment, there were questions as
to the adequacy of the science. He felt that it was appropriate
to get the best available science, and that is why he has
referred that to the National Academy of Sciences. That does
not mean that work is not underway and not ongoing at sites
that have TCE vapor intrusion issues.
As you know, Region II is out there assessing sites and
doing remedial actions, removal actions, and dealing with the
TCE issues. They are using the draft guidance from 2001, as
well as New York State. They are working with the New York
State Department of Health to set their levels. Essentially,
that would be the screening levels.
If you have the vapor intrusion problem, the remedy often
is similar to what you would do with radon, which is
ventilation. For example at your Hopewell site, the systems
have been installed in at least 37 homes. There is activity. So
I guess what I am trying to convey to you is while we are
getting the best available science on the site's level that is
recommended, we are still moving forward with the science that
we have today, which is the existing guidance plus the State
levels.
Mrs. Kelly. But there is still no interim standard. While
you are waiting for the National Academy of Sciences to come up
with a scientific background, there ought to be something that
is a standard, because we know that this is toxic. You know,
and the EPA knows, everybody knows that this is toxic. We need
a standard and we need to do something.
I would think it would be pretty easy for you, since you
already have a lot of information. This has been going on since
2001. I would think it would be pretty easy for you to come up
with some kind of an interim standard until we get an absolute
standard that comes from the National Academy of Sciences.
The EPA on ground in New York has been very helpful. I do
not want to cast any aspersions on their work. They have been
helpful and they have helped with ventilation in this kind of a
thing. The problem is we have this plume moving, and the
constituents that I represent are very concerned that this is
moving on down and we simply do not know.
You have to break a certain number on a piece of paper
before anyone will come in and help you remediate. In the
meantime, how do you know it is not toxic up to that number?
That is the problem.
So I am trying to find out whether or not you would be
willing to look at doing some kind of an interim standard,
because nothing is really black and white. There are usually
levels of gray. If we are moving into a gray area on the TCE in
these wells, and that gray area is something that might involve
being a toxic level for children because children's toxic
levels are lower than adults, maybe there is something that we
should put in as a standard right now to take a look at it.
Also, I wanted to ask you about the status of the re-review
over at the NAS. When are they going to release those results?
We are hopeful that we can get them sooner rather than later
because they have had it for awhile. I know it takes time to do
the studies, but I really am hopeful about two things. I would
like an answer to that first question.
But also if you would, give me some kind of, take a look,
just take a look and see if we can't get some kind of an
interim standard, because I am concerned that the standard will
come out and it will be lower than what it currently is. And
then we will have people on wells with a standard that they
were told was fine, a level that they were told was fine, and
it is not fine.
Ms. Bodine. There isn't a standard right now that the
agency can stand behind and say that it is based on best
available science, which is why the regions are using, as I
said, they are using the draft guidance as well as working with
States on establishing the levels. Region II is going out and
assessing properties and they are addressing the properties in
a very proactive way.
So work is not halted while we are getting a standard that
we can stand behind, because right now there is not one that we
can stand behind and say this is the national guidance; this is
the level.
Mrs. Kelly. And you are unwilling to give us an interim
standard or some kind of, just give us like two numbers. These
are the worry areas, from this to this. If you give us some
kind of levels, at least the people that I represent will have
a cohesive understanding about when they should start to worry.
Ms. Bodine. Then I need to go back and talk to Region II,
because my understanding is they are not standing back and
waiting for the NAS study to come back. They are establishing
their levels based on their best professional judgment, which
includes using the draft guidance as well as the State
Department of Health levels.
The NAS report, it is a two stage report. The first stage
will be out in May, 2006, but that was really essentially the
existing body of knowledge, and they estimate that the peer
review on a final assessment would be completed in 2007, which
means that the number would be completed in 2008. So what we
are doing is getting a peer review by the NAS on TCEs.
Mrs. Kelly. You are telling me that these people in the
area have to wait until 2008 for something that started in
2001? When you are talking about health risk, waiting for seven
years to find something out. I am not holding you personally
responsible. Please understand that. What I am trying to do is
hopefully get you to put some pressure on this situation so we
can get a response to help these people.
The District I represent isn't the only one that is
contaminated with TCE. We have got to have something to tell
our people. Especially women and children are very, very
concerned. Our bodies are smaller, our children. Who knows what
is going to happen if you get pregnant or if you are drinking
this water? How is that going to affect your child? We do not
know.
Now, you are saying we have to wait until 2008. That is
really unacceptable.
Ms. Bodine. But remember, the EPA is not waiting and is
being proactive and is going out and working in your
communities on these sites.
Mrs. Kelly. On the present level, but the question you
raised yourself is that you were not sure that that science
established that level was correct. That is why in 2004 the
request went from your agency to the NAS. And the NAS is, if
anything, just dragging its feet apparently, because they got
it four years ago.
I only know from my own personal experience as a bench
chemist in a manufacturing situation and as a medical
researcher for Harvard University that unless something is
requested and it is requested right away, it does not get done.
It gets done partially and then gets pushed off until somebody
else gets it. Things get put in front of it.
I would suggest that the people in this area who are
battling this problem and this plume is moving down and it is
moving down into some very serious areas that we need to
understand better, that force us to need to understand better
what this level is.
Please understand, I am very grateful for what the EPA has
done to help the people there, but they have to wait until they
have a certain level. They are told, oh, you have TCE, but you
are not at the level where we are really concerned, so we are
going to let you drink this and bathe in it and cook in it
until you get the level that suddenly says, oops, emergency,
and then EPA comes in and helps.
I am asking for something that is more flexible than that.
I am asking for something that works a little bit more easily
to help these people protect themselves if we find out that the
level of TCE is not a level that is currently established, but
one that is in fact lower. Because that was the original
finding, that the current level was established at a level that
in fact was more, the TCE is more toxic than we thought.
So that is the nature of my concern, because it is more
toxic than we thought, I want to make sure that we get
something.
Ms. Bodine. Let me go back and talk to Region II about how
they are doing the screening and get back to you then.
Mrs. Kelly. I really would appreciate that.
I do want to say to both you and Mr. Grumbles, it is a
great pleasure to see you sitting here in this Committee with
the word ``honorable'' in front of your names. I have to say
that working with both of you, you deserve to have that
``honorable'' designation. You have done a great deal of good
work here and it is a pleasure to continue to work with you.
I want to add one thing, though, to Mr. Grumbles, and that
is the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. I Know that our
Chairman has amply discussed this with you, but the fact that
this is a loan program which gets paid back. It is not grants.
It is not going to cost the way that a grant program does. I
find the President's budget request simply unacceptable. I
think that our Chairman feels the same way, and I hope that
that will go back.
I appreciate both of you. I appreciate all of you being
here, and I really appreciate, Mr. Chairman, your forbearance
in allowing me to have this discussion. Thank you very much.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much, Mrs. Kelly. You are an
outstanding member of this Subcommittee and I know your great
interest and concern on these matters.
Let me ask just two or three more questions, then we will
bring this to a close.
Mr. Dunnigan, the Resources Committee says that we spend a
little over $8 billion a year on all ocean-related activities
in this Country, and that is far more than any other country.
Yet there has been a presidential commission that has
recommended that we try to greatly increase that spending. Are
we doing a good job on our ocean-related activities at this
time? And if we need a big increase, what would it be spent on?
Where are we falling short, if we are?
Mr. Dunnigan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The United States is in a position where we are able to
recognize the important role that the oceans and that our
coasts play in the fabric of the life of America, as well as
our economic productivity. So among the countries of the world,
we are able to step forward.
The U.S. Ocean Commission report highlighted a number of
areas that needed further attention. The President looked at
that very carefully and has directed the Federal agencies to
move forward where we can within existing resources to be able
to try to address those, to do our job better, to collaborate
better internally, and with States and with our sister
agencies.
The problem you have here is really a question of a broad
suite of national priorities, and where can this fit in. We are
never going to be able to have obviously all of the resources
that we all might like to have to do this job, but the issue
really is one that has to be a matter of balancing and making
difficult choices, as the Congress has to do, about where we
are going to be able to make the investments and use the
resources most wisely.
Mr. Duncan. All right.
Mr. Baxter, a more localized question; you touched on a
couple of these things, but how much has the Browns Ferry plant
been costing TVA on a yearly basis? And how much difference is
that going to make when you get that started up here is it in
2007?
Mr. Baxter. Yes, sir. May of 2007, and I am proud to report
to you we are on schedule and on budget. It is a $1.8 billion
project over five years. So that has not been an even spend all
the way through, but most recently $400 million a year has been
the rate of spend. In 2007, that will go down since it will be
a partial year.
Then when we turn that on in May of 2007, instead of
spending money every year, we will actually begin to enjoy some
revenue from the sale of that low cost zero emissions power.
Mr. Duncan. Do you know about how much?
Mr. Baxter. That will be a swing of I would say anywhere
from $600 million to $700 million a year from the spend side,
but now to a revenue side.
Mr. Duncan. I understand that now you are buying 12 percent
to 15 percent of your power from private companies like Duke
Power and others. Is that correct?
Mr. Baxter. We have to buy in the hottest summer days in
that range, and over an annual period of time approximately 7.5
percent of our power was purchased last fiscal year because we
are not generating enough with our own base load, and that is
what Browns Ferry One will help us do, and will alleviate the
need to purchase so much on the marketplace.
Mr. Duncan. All right. You mentioned TVA's air pollution
cleanup activities. The New Republic magazine three or four
years ago had a big article about how our air and water are
both much cleaner than they were 25 or 30 years ago. We have
made great progress in both those areas. Do we need to do more?
Yes, but we have made great progress.
The bar has been raised in our area. They have changed the
standard from a one hour .08 level, to an eight hour .12
requirement, or vice versa, on the .12 to the .08, but they
have gone from a one hour standard to an eight hour testing
period.
What that means, is that sometimes people have the
impression that our air is getting less clean in the valley
instead of cleaner. Tell me a little bit about what you are
doing, and a little bit more about what you are doing through
TVA?
Mr. Baxter. You make an excellent observation. In fact, our
own Senator Baker was one of the authors of the Clean Air Act
back in the 1970s. The Clean Air Act has been a tremendous
success. It set a bar for all of us that we had to achieve on
reducing emissions of various identified pollutants, and we
identified areas of the Country and communities that were out
of compliance with those standards.
Over a period of time and after the expenditure of
literally billions of dollars in this Country, we achieved
compliance in most all of those areas. Then as a result, 10 or
12 years later, we tightened those standards and said, okay,
now we want to take it down even further. And that would throw
communities back into noncompliance and they would have to go
to work again.
This has happened, we are in about the fourth iteration of
that now most recently. Of course, it becomes incrementally
more expensive to achieve another percent of cleanliness in the
year as you get closer and closer to 100 percent.
TVA when we complete our $5.7 billion program at the end of
this decade, we will have achieved 80 percent to 85 percent
reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which are the
two main pollutants that come out of our plants. Then we will
get co-benefits with the reduction of mercury in that same
neighborhood.
So we are making tremendous progress. Like you, I grew up
in East Tennessee. I can remember being young and going to
church in a white shirt and seeing coal dust on your shirt when
you came back home. That does not happen anymore. My four
children, I guarantee you today, are breathing cleaner air than
I ever breathed growing up in East Tennessee and I am proud of
that.
Mr. Duncan. I want to thank you. You are doing a lot of
good work in that area and so many other areas.
Finally, Mr. Grumbles, I read a few years ago a column by
former Governor DuPont. He said that you could put every family
of four in the State of Texas and give them three acres of land
each and leave the whole rest of the Country totally empty. And
yet, people look at map of the whole United States on one page
in a book and they just cannot comprehend how huge this Country
is.
I guess the other side is that people say they want land
around them, but they really don't. They want to be near the
malls and the restaurants and the movie theaters. What I am
getting at is this. The Federal Government owns or controls a
little over 30 percent of the land. The State and local
governments and quasi-governmental agencies have another
roughly 20 percent. So you have about half the land in some
type of public ownership now. And then we keep putting more and
more restrictions on the land that remains in private hands.
Governments all over are needing or demanding more money,
yet we keep shrinking the tax base. I hear from homebuilders
and developers at times that they are having some real
difficulties with these storm water discharge regulations and
sometimes they are fined and so forth, and that some of these
requirements are duplicative of State and local requirements.
In many, many areas, there is so little land less to develop
that we are crowding more and more people into smaller and
smaller areas. We are having to go to townhouses rather than
homes. We are having to go to homes on postage stamp size lots.
Home ownership has always been a really important part of
the American dream. We do not want to limit that just to the
wealthy. In this area, you see that, in a lot of places. Even
in the area I live in, six miles from the Capitol here in
Alexandria, you see homes are just out of sight.
What are you doing in that regard? Are you trying to work
with these developers and homebuilders in some ways to make
housing more affordable? I think that is really an important
challenge in this Country. When I see homes out here in
Alexandria and other places around here that are asking $1
million and $2 million for now, in my area, it is just crazy.
Apparently from what I read, that is happening in many places
around the Country.
Mr. Grumbles. Mr. Chairman, while EPA recognizes that in
some watersheds and across the Country one of the greatest
challenges to water quality can be the pollutants and sediments
in storm water. We need to do more work on the effectiveness
and efficiency and equitable nature of the storm water
regulatory program as it is implemented through the Federal
Clean Water Act.
There are a couple of things we are doing that I would
mention. One of them is, as we work with States and localities
implementing the storm water permitting program under the Clean
Water Act, both Phase I and Phase II, which gets at the smaller
communities and the construction sites across the Country, we
recognize that we have to do a better job taking a results
oriented focus that is based on science and includes
feasibility.
Results oriented so that we do not get hung up on the
costly process of going through detailed permitting programs,
but focus on general and flexible permits that have the results
approach of meeting Clean Water Act requirements.
The key is working at the local basis through our regions
and most importantly through the States, who really implement
the clean water programs. The homebuilders in particular, Mr.
Chairman, have raised the concern. Environmental groups have
raised concerns as well about implementation of the Storm Water
Program. So we are sorting through and working through those
concerns.
With the homebuilders, one of the key complaints they have
is the potential for duplication. So we are committed to
working with the States on the management practices so that
there are not multiples, you know, that a developer has to get
a permit that is the same as the permit that the city just got.
There needs to be greater jurisdiction-wide coordination.
We will work on that. I would be happy to report back to
you and to Congresswoman Johnson on the progress on that front.
Mr. Duncan. Well, I just don't believe that most
homebuilders and developers are criminals. I believe 99.99
percent of them want to do the right thing. I don't want to see
any department or energy of the Federal Government with this
gotcha type attitude where they pride themselves on how many
people they catch doing something wrong. But, they pride
themselves on working with these people to help them do the
right thing in the most cost effective way possible. Because if
we do not, then you are going to see home ownership just go.
The really important point goal here is to make sure that home
ownership doesn't just become an impossible dream for most
young couples around the Country.
It is not just in this area. This is happening in many,
many, many places all over this Country. So is it is a concern
of mine, and I think there is a balance that we can achieve
there, and I hope that we will work on that.
Mr. Grumbles. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to say, I cannot
speak for the enforcement office, but they also have a
compliance assurance office, and they are working, they are
exploring pilot projects with developers to assure compliance
with the Clean Water Act in a way that does not focus on
penalizing, but more on complying with reasonable requirements.
So they are working on that. I appreciate the message. We will
report back to you and your colleagues on that.
Mr. Duncan. All right. As usual, first of all, let me thank
you again for your patience, and I apologize to you for the
delay caused by those votes. As usual, the staff may wish to
submit some questions to supplement your testimony, and your
response to questions for the record of the hearing. I believe
Ms. Johnson was going to submit some questions as well.
Thank you very much. That will conclude this hearing.
[Whereupon, at 5:12 p.m. the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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