[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
INTEGRATED PLANNING AND PERMITTING,
PART 2: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR EPA TO PROVIDE
COMMUNITIES WITH FLEXIBILITY TO MAKE
SMART INVESTMENTS IN WATER QUALITY
=======================================================================
(112-95)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 25, 2012
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
Available online at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/
committee.action?chamber=house&committee=transportation
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
JOHN L. MICA, Florida, Chairman
DON YOUNG, Alaska NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia
THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey Columbia
GARY G. MILLER, California JERROLD NADLER, New York
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois CORRINE BROWN, Florida
SAM GRAVES, Missouri BOB FILNER, California
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania
DUNCAN HUNTER, California RICK LARSEN, Washington
ANDY HARRIS, Maryland MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
ERIC A. ``RICK'' CRAWFORD, Arkansas TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine
FRANK C. GUINTA, New Hampshire RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
CHIP CRAVAACK, Minnesota MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota
BILLY LONG, Missouri HEATH SHULER, North Carolina
BOB GIBBS, Ohio STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania LAURA RICHARDSON, California
RICHARD L. HANNA, New York ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JEFFREY M. LANDRY, Louisiana DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
STEVE SOUTHERLAND II, Florida
JEFF DENHAM, California
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
CHARLES J. ``CHUCK'' FLEISCHMANN,
Tennessee
(ii)
Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment
BOB GIBBS, Ohio, Chairman
DON YOUNG, Alaska TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
GARY G. MILLER, California ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois Columbia
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan CORRINE BROWN, Florida
DUNCAN HUNTER, California BOB FILNER, California
ANDY HARRIS, Maryland EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
ERIC A. ``RICK'' CRAWFORD, Arkansas MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington, GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
Vice Chair JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania
CHIP CRAVAACK, Minnesota STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana LAURA RICHARDSON, California
JEFFREY M. LANDRY, Louisiana MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
JEFF DENHAM, California NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma (Ex Officio)
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
JOHN L. MICA, Florida (Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Subject Matter........................................ vii
TESTIMONY
Panel One
Hon. David J. Berger, Mayor, City of Lima, Ohio, testifying on
behalf of the U.S. Conference of Mayors........................ 19
Hon. Ralph Becker, Mayor, City of Salt Lake City, Utah,
testifying on behalf of the National League of Cities.......... 19
Todd Portune, Commissioner, Hamilton County, Ohio, Board of
Commissioners, testifying on behalf of the ``Perfect Storm''
Communities Coalition.......................................... 19
Walter L. Baker, P.E., Director, Division of Water Quality, Utah
Department of Environmental Quality, testifying on behalf of
the Association of Clean Water Administrators.................. 19
Carter H. Strickland, Jr., Commissioner, New York City Department
of Environmental Protection.................................... 19
George Hawkins, General Manager, District of Columbia Water and
Sewer Authority, testifying on behalf of the National
Association of Clean Water Agencies............................ 19
Alan Vicory, Jr., P.E., BCEE, Principal, Stantec Consulting
(formerly Executive Director, Ohio River Valley Water
Sanitation Commission), testifying on behalf of the Water
Environment Federation......................................... 19
Panel Two
Nancy K. Stoner, Acting Assistant Administrator, Office of Water,
United States Environmental Protection Agency.................. 49
Cynthia Giles, Assistant Administrator, Office of Enforcement and
Compliance Assurance, United States Environmental Protection
Agency......................................................... 49
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Hon. David J. Berger............................................. 60
Hon. Ralph Becker................................................ 81
Todd Portune..................................................... 88
Walter L. Baker, P.E............................................. 94
Carter H. Strickland, Jr......................................... 101
George Hawkins................................................... 105
Alan Vicory, Jr., P.E., BCEE..................................... 111
Nancy K. Stoner.................................................. 116
Cynthia Giles \1\................................................
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Hon. Timothy H. Bishop, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Water
Resources and Environment, request to submit a bipartisan
letter dated July 12, 2012, signed by 18 Representatives, and
sent to Hon. John L. Mica, Chairman, Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructure, asking that H.R. 3145 be
added to the next available full committee markup.............. 5
Hon. Bob Gibbs, Chairman, Subcommittee on Water Resources and
Environment, request to include testimony submitted on behalf
of Hon. Jim Ardis, Mayor, City of Peoria, Illinois, and Michael
F. Menke, President, Board of Trustees, Greater Peoria Sanitary
and Sewage Disposal District................................... 10
United States Environmental Protection Agency, response to
question from Hon. Donna F. Edwards, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Maryland............................ 131
ADDITION TO THE RECORD
Katherine Baer, Senior Director, Clean Water and Water Supply
Programs, American Rivers, letter to Hon. Gibbs and Hon.
Bishop, July 27, 2012.......................................... 134
----------
\1\ Cynthia Giles did not submit a written statement.
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INTEGRATED PLANNING AND PERMITTING, PART 2: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR EPA TO
PROVIDE COMMUNITIES WITH FLEXIBILITY TO MAKE SMART INVESTMENTS IN WATER
QUALITY
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2012
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Water Resources
and Environment,
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in
Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bob Gibbs
(Chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Gibbs. Good morning. The Subcommittee on Water
Resources and Environment of the Committee on T&I will come to
order. Welcome. Welcome guests. This is our part 2 hearing on
what we call integrated planning and permitting. I will open
with my opening comments.
Again, I would like to welcome everybody. This is an
opportunity for the EPA to provide communities with flexibility
to make smart investments in water quality. This is a followup
hearing to one we held back in December on EPA's proposed
integrated framework.
In last December's hearing, we heard from several witnesses
from State and local governments about how communities across
the Nation are facing increasingly regulatory enforcement and
financial pressures, not only to address sewer overflows and
other aging wastewater infrastructure issues, but also to deal
with numerous other burdensome regulatory issues that recently
have become national priorities. These include more stringent
and widespread regulation of stormwater discharges, nutrients
and other pollutants in public drinking water systems which
could lead to many communities having to install and operate,
at great expense, treatment, removal and prevention
technologies.
All of these initiatives are piling on additional layers of
regulatory requirements and economic burdens that our
communities are having to somehow deal with. A large portion of
these regulatory mandates are going unfunded by Federal and
State governments with the result that many municipalities have
made substantial increases in investments in wastewater and
public water infrastructure in recent years. Local communities
and ratepayers are now increasingly getting economically tapped
out.
In response to some of these issues, last year the EPA
proposed an integrated planning and permitting policy that was
intended to provide some flexibility in how communities managed
their regulatory and enforcement mandates under the Clean Water
Act.
At last December's hearing, we heard from witnesses about
the proposed policy and some of the concerns they had with it.
These include the continued central role of enforcement
mechanisms in the integrated planning process rather than
through the use of permits; inadequate consideration of
stringent municipal budgets and affordability, especially in
setting compliance timelines; and insufficient regulatory
flexibility to adapt to new or changed circumstances.
Some of the witnesses also urged EPA to be more proactive
and collaboratively assist communities through pilot
demonstration projects to develop flexible, practical and
affordable integrated plans.
I believe it is time for the national clean water strategy
to evolve from a one-size-fits-all mandate and enforcement
approach to an integrated strategy that recognizes the
individual public health needs and water quality benefits of
water and wastewater utilities and the resource limitations of
communities.
I am pleased to see that the EPA has finalized its
integrated regulatory planning and permitting framework, and I
hope that the EPA is strongly committed to implementing this
new policy. There seems to be some willingness on the part of
the Agency to make this a planning and permitting approach that
would largely take this out of the enforcement action realm.
However, I still have some concerns that some at the EPA
still may not be willing to limit the Agency's enforcement
efforts against municipalities. A continued emphasis on an
enforcement approach, including consent decrees, will undermine
the flexibility that the EPA is ostensibly seeking to provide
under this policy. Of course, it remains to be seen how this
initiative will turn out. The devil will be in the details on
how it is implemented.
I would like to hear from today's State and local
government witnesses about their thoughts on the EPA's now-
finalized policy and whether EPA has adequately addressed their
concerns. In addition, I want to hear from the EPA witnesses
about how specifically the Agency plans to address the
remaining concerns voiced by our State and local witnesses.
And I want to also hear from the EPA and the other
witnesses what statutory or other impediments, if any, stand in
the way of making this an effective initiative for both
communities and the regulators.
Hopefully this initiative will truly give our communities
the flexibility they need to prioritize their water quality
requirements and address the huge unfunded costs associated
with the growing number of mandates stemming from the EPA water
rules and enforcement actions.
Now at this time, I yield to my ranking member, Mr. Bishop,
for any remarks you may have.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding
this hearing, and I say thank you to the witnesses for being
here today.
As everyone in this hearing room knows all too well, one of
the fundamental goals of the Clean Water Act was and still is
to prevent the discharge of raw sewage and other pollutants
into the Nation's waters. Since the passage of the law almost
40 years ago, significant investment in infrastructure has led
to significant progress in achieving that goal. That, in turn,
has led to significant improvements in the quality of our
Nation's waters.
Much of that progress is threatened now by aging wastewater
infrastructure in need of repair and replacement and the ever-
growing challenges of stormwater runoff from streets, roofs and
other impermeable surfaces. Faced with the staggering costs
these upgrades will require and the difficult economic climate,
many communities are looking to the EPA and to the Congress for
assistance, both in terms of greater financial assistance to
make necessary infrastructure upgrades and repairs, and for the
flexibility to utilize comprehensive integrated planning to
prioritize these investments.
Both elements, increased Federal financial assistance and
the option of appropriate flexibility through integrated
planning, are essential to ensure continued progress in
addressing water quality concerns.
To that end, the EPA should be commended for the commitment
it has made to work with States, municipalities and other
stakeholders in developing its integrated municipal stormwater
and wastewater planning approach. This voluntary approach, let
me say that again, this volunteer approach, will allow
interested communities to develop and implement effective
integrated plans under the Clean Water Act to address storm and
wastewater management and to benefit from the economic
efficiencies that an integrated approach will provide while
still achieving their human health and water quality
objectives.
Yet, as the EPA has noted, the full benefits of the
integrated planning approach may not be realized for some time
as more and more communities come forward to develop
individualized approaches to address their unique needs.
In my view, allowing sufficient time for this approach to
be adopted on a case-by-case basis as communities come forward
makes perfect sense, because if the opposite were true, and
regulators were more interested in expediency than tailoring
appropriate responses to address local needs, EPA and the
States might be accused of forcing communities to accept a one-
size-fits-all approach. However, I expect that many
stakeholders will point to the finalization of the integrated
planning guidance as a turning point on how to effectively
address local water quality impairments in as short of a
timeframe as possible.
Increasing flexibility under the Clean Water Act in the
absence of increased infrastructure investment however, only
addresses half of the challenge facing local communities and
actually runs counter to the objectives of the EPA's integrated
planning framework.
With respect to increased and new forms of infrastructure
financing, communities are looking to Congress to step up to
the plate. Unfortunately, while this is the second hearing the
committee has held on the EPA's plan to promote integrated
planning, we have taken no action on renewing the Federal
financial commitment to wastewater infrastructure this
Congress. While bipartisan legislation, such as H.R. 3145, the
Water Quality Protection and Job Creation Act of 2011, has been
introduced, there has been no legislative action on this
comprehensive effort.
H.R. 3145 not only reaffirms our commitment to our
wastewater infrastructure systems, but it also establishes new
funding alternatives to achieve our long-term infrastructure
goals.
So while EPA has done its job in responding to the needs of
our States and local communities, this Congress and this
majority has not been as responsive and is ignoring an
opportunity to create jobs and improve water quality. I think
this is unfortunate, and I also think it is a disservice to our
constituents and to our districts.
Clean water infrastructure is not, nor should it be, a
partisan issue. Innovative infrastructure financing such as the
Loan Guarantee Program and Clean Water Trust Fund in my bill,
H.R. 3145, can leverage millions in more private financing to
address our huge backlog of water infrastructure needs and
create tens of thousands of new jobs. At the same time, we must
preserve the locally driven priority system developed under the
existing Clean Water State Revolving Fund, a model that has
served our communities, our States and our Nation well for the
last 25 years.
To that end, I ask unanimous consent to include in the
record a bipartisan letter that I and 17 of our colleagues sent
to Chairman Mica asking that H.R. 3145 be added to the next
available full committee markup.
Mr. Gibbs. So ordered.
[The letter follows:]
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Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This legislation has
the support of several of the witnesses here this morning
including the National League of Cities, the National
Association of Clean Water Agencies and the Water Environment
Federation, and for this support, I thank the witnesses.
I also note with some regret that we are having a full
committee markup tomorrow of several bills, three of which are
water-related bills, but Chairman Mica has not included H.R.
3145 on that list, and I do hope that at the next available
markup, he will respond to both what many of our colleagues
support, and what many of the stakeholders support.
So again, I applaud the EPA for doing its part to address
the challenges facing our States, and I urge this majority to
do the same. With that, I look forward to hearing from our
witnesses, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Gibbs. The gentlelady from the District.
Ms. Norton. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening
today's hearing on EPA's recently released integrated planning
framework to work with the States toward providing reasonable
flexibility and relief to jurisdictions like my own district,
the District of Columbia, that are facing multimillion-dollar
mandates to comply with Clean Water Act requirements.
One of our witnesses, representing the National Association
of Clean Water Agencies, is George Hawkins, general manager of
the DC Water and Sewer Authority. The District of Columbia is
currently investing in a $2.6 billion clean rivers project to
address combined sewer overflows in the Anacostia River, Rock
Creek and the Potomac River. The project was mandated by EPA
and the Department of Justice through a consent decree entered
into in 2005. DC Water is currently working with EPA to modify
the consent decree to allow for green infrastructure to be used
for a portion of the project.
Mr. Hawkins, who is a wonderfully innovative manager,
understands all the issues before us. He was formerly director
of the DC Department of Environment. He has not been content to
spend ratepayers' funds on 20th-century technology, but seeks
changes in the consent decree to enable DC Water to do a pilot
using 21st-century green technology that will substantially
reduce the cost of mandated upgrades.
In addition, DC Water is undergoing a nearly $1 billion
enhanced nitrogen removal capital program to further reduce the
amount of nutrients discharged into the Potomac River and
Chesapeake Bay watershed. This massive undertaking will allow
DC Water to comply with EPA's National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System permit.
Since these projects are mandated and enforced by EPA, the
District is forced to prioritize them over critical upgrades to
the drinking water and wastewater infrastructure in the city,
some of which was constructed during the Civil War. Recent
incidents involving broken water mains and sewer backups
highlight the need to maintain and improve the basic water
infrastructure that is critical to the health and public safety
of District of Columbia residents, Members of Congress, of the
Federal workforce, and visitors.
Current budgets allow DC Water to upgrade only 1 percent of
the infrastructure this year. Although the Federal Government
is a major user, the District of Columbia's small pool of
approximately 130,000 ratepayers has been asked to shoulder
most of the burden of these major capital investments. DC
residents are projected to see their average water and sewer
bill increase over $100 per month by the end of this decade,
and despite the efforts of this committee, no relief in the
form of Federal funding is in sight. As highlighted in a recent
Brookings Institution report, the large gap between the very
wealthy and the very poor in the District of Columbia makes
EPA's affordability criteria based on median household income
an inappropriate measure to gauge the impact of EPA-mandated
projects on local ratepayers.
I will be interested in learning from the EPA how it plans
to use the integrated planning framework to empower its
regional offices to consider not only the affordability of
these mandated projects, but also the public health and water
quality return on investment that they provide. I also hope to
hear that the framework will allow authorities like the DC
Water to reassess their existing consent decree and permit
requirements to provide flexibility to ensure the most
innovative measures such as green technology can be considered.
I thank you and the ranking member again for this very
important hearing, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gibbs. Representative Napolitano, do you have any
comments?
Ms. Napolitano. Yes, Mr. Chair, I do. Thank you very much.
We thank you, and Mr. Bishop, for holding this very important
hearing. To me it is very critical we invest in improving our
aging wastewater infrastructure systems and water treatment
because it is directly supporting a clean water supply.
As the ranking member of the Water and Power Subcommittee,
we have held many meetings and hearings on the health of the
great rivers and lakes in the United States. Our Nation depends
on our downstream sources to be clean enough for drinking, for
irrigation, and especially our economy. And as far as health
issues are concerned that is also a very great concern.
Investing in clean water infrastructure does create jobs.
$1 million invested in water projects creates 12 to 16 jobs in
southern California, according to the Economic Roundtable of
Los Angeles. The water industry creates more jobs in southern
California than the two leading industries in southern
California, which are entertainment and housing. There is
underemployment in the water industry, which indicates there is
a great opportunity for job growth.
I strongly support, very strongly support H.R. 3145, the
Water Quality Protection and Job Creation Act of 2011 and
congratulate both Ranking Members Bishop and Rahall for
introducing H.R. 3145. It provides $13.8 billion in the Clean
Water State Revolving Fund over the next 5 years, funding that
is desperately needed to address the wastewater treatment
issues facing our country.
I commend EPA. In California, they have been great partners
with the councils of government that I have relationships with,
and being able to look at how this affects the small cities
also. EPA's most recent clean water needs survey found that the
State needs $300 billion worth of wastewater system repairs
over the next 20 years.
This bill also incentivizes the use of green technologies
to reduce energy consumption. Water treatment plants have had
the capacity for solar, wind and biothermal energy production,
and we must invest in those opportunities and make that
information available to all that need it or have availability
to invest in their own upgrades. It will help solve our water
quality challenges, and I urge the committee to bring up H.R.
3145 to help our communities solve the clean water challenges
they face.
Providing a funding mechanism or assistance to some small
cities that will never be able to afford it is a great
opportunity for us to not only put people back to work, but to
be able to solve some of the issues that small communities face
in providing their residents with clean water, especially with
regards to providing jobs and spurring the economy.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you. I believe that concludes all the
opening remarks. I do have some written testimony. I ask
unanimous consent for written testimony submitted on behalf of
the Mayor of Peoria, Illinois, and the president of the board
of trustees of the Greater Peoria Sanitary and Sewage Disposal
District be included in the hearing record.
Is there any objection? There being no objection, so
ordered.
[The written testimony follows:]
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Mr. Gibbs. I also ask unanimous consent that the hearing
record be kept open for 30 days after this hearing in order to
accept other submissions of written testimony for the hearing
record.
Without objection, so ordered.
Today we have two panels. I welcome our first panel. I will
go quickly through it and introduce everybody quickly and then
we will come back to the mayor.
Our first panelist on panel one is Mayor David Berger, city
of Lima, Ohio. He is testifying on behalf of the U.S.
Conference of Mayors. We also have Mayor Ralph Becker, city of
Salt Lake City, Utah, testifying on behalf of the National
League of Cities; Mr. Todd Portune, commissioner of Hamilton
County, Ohio, Board of County Commissioners; Mr. Walt Baker,
director, Division of Water Quality, Utah Department of
Environmental Quality, testifying on behalf of the Association
of Clean Water Administrators; Mr. Carter Strickland, Jr.,
commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental
Protection; Mr. George Hawkins, the general manager of District
of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, testifying on behalf of
the National Association of Clean Water Agencies. And I think
we have another panelist. Go ahead.
Mr. Vicory. My name is Alan Vicory. I am a principal in the
firm Stantec Consulting and I am here representing the Water
Environment Federation, WEF.
Mr. Gibbs. OK. Glad to have you here.
Mr. Berger, the floor is yours, and I look forward to your
testimony.
TESTIMONY OF HON. DAVID J. BERGER, MAYOR, CITY OF LIMA, OHIO,
TESTIFYING ON BEHALF OF THE U.S. CONFERENCE OF MAYORS; HON.
RALPH BECKER, MAYOR, CITY OF SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, TESTIFYING
ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES; TODD PORTUNE,
COMMISSIONER, HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO, BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS,
TESTIFYING ON BEHALF OF THE ``PERFECT STORM'' COMMUNITIES
COALITION; WALTER L. BAKER, P.E., DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF WATER
QUALITY, UTAH DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY, TESTIFYING
ON BEHALF OF THE ASSOCIATION OF CLEAN WATER ADMINISTRATORS;
CARTER H. STRICKLAND, JR., COMMISSIONER, NEW YORK CITY
DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION; GEORGE HAWKINS, GENERAL
MANAGER, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA WATER AND SEWER AUTHORITY,
TESTIFYING ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CLEAN WATER
AGENCIES; AND ALAN VICORY, JR., P.E., BCEE, PRINCIPAL, STANTEC
CONSULTING (FORMERLY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OHIO RIVER VALLEY
WATER SANITATION COMMISSION), TESTIFYING ON BEHALF OF THE WATER
ENVIRONMENT FEDERATION
Mr. Berger. Good morning. My thanks to Chairman Gibbs and
this committee for inviting me. I am Dave Berger, and I serve
as the mayor of the city of Lima. Though I am a life-long
Democrat, my office is nonpartisan, and I have worked with
elected officials of all stripes throughout my 23 years in
office. It is in that same spirit that I am here today
testifying on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Lima is
currently engaged in negotiations with EPA over a long-term
control plan for sewer overflows, so I have personal experience
there as well.
As a member of the Mayors Water Council, I have
participated in the over 2 years of discussions that led to
EPA's integrated planning memorandum. We began those
discussions in 2009, because cities were continuing to face
threats of EPA enforcement and demands that cities adopt plans
with astronomical costs far outside our financial abilities.
After our discussions, EPA unveiled integrated planning to
address sewer overflow and stormwater issues in a coordinated
way. EPA acknowledges that its framework does not address all
of the issues brought to them by the mayors and have told us
that they are constrained by the Clean Water Act, in
particular, from providing some of those flexibilities.
First, I want to thank EPA for their engagement and for
issuing the framework. The Conference recognizes that EPA put
forward a major good faith effort to respond positively to our
request for flexibility, and my written testimony highlights
the positive aspects of the framework. But I would like to call
your attention in particular to four positive aspects of the
framework.
First, it recognizes the need for flexibility and embraces
both green infrastructure and adaptive management. Second, it
recognizes that cities have limited resources and uses priority
setting to provide partial relief. It recognizes that there
will be disproportionate burdens on low-income households and
allows consideration of those burdens. And finally, it
acknowledges that in some cases integrated plans can be
implemented in permits.
However, the framework does not go far enough. The only
substantive relief clearly provided by the framework is
scheduling. It allows cities to prioritize cost-effective
actions, but low-priority, low-benefit actions appear still to
be mandated at a later date. The framework limits the use of
permits for implementation with the result that, in most cases,
EPA will continue to use enforcement tools that treat cities as
criminals. The framework does not provide for consideration of
safe drinking water regulations when setting priorities. And
finally, and most importantly, the fundamental problem of
affordability of controls is not addressed.
On the affordability issue, let me tell you how this works
in my community. Lima is a proud community of modest financial
means. We have shrunk from roughly 52,000 to 38,000 as more
affluent households have moved to the suburbs. Our annual
household median income is $26,943--$26,943. Nearly one-third
of Lima's citizens live under the poverty threshold.
Additionally, our demographic profile includes aging baby
boomers that comprise a substantial and growing class of fixed
income seniors. Our low-, moderate-, and fixed-income
households are particularly vulnerable to increasing costs of
basic services.
Implementation of the proposed CSO/SSO long-term control
plan will raise the average annual sewer bill alone in Lima to
$872. While this increase may have little impact on our high-
income households, its impact on our poor households will be
devastating. Some 47 percent of the households would experience
rates above 4 percent of their income. Almost 26 percent of
households would experience rate increases to their annual
sewer bills between 2 and 3 percent of their household income.
If you add water and sewer costs together, the lowest
income household category would be required to spend over 10
percent of their income for water and sewer services alone.
Indeed, 73 percent of the households in Lima would be paying
over 2 percent of their income for water and sewer, 73 percent.
These citizens need substantive relief that the current
framework does not provide. According to EPA, the Clean Water
Act ties their hands from providing more substantive relief.
So we need Congress to act. The financial resources of our
citizens, my citizens, resident businesses and cities are
limited, so the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act
must be crafted in a way that explicitly acknowledges and
addresses the reality of those limited local resources.
The Conference has five points to make about this. Congress
must impose a cost cap on Federal clean and safe drinking water
mandates.
Congress should provide Federal assistance at levels much
greater than the current State Revolving Loan Fund programs,
and that assistance should be in the form of grants, not loans.
Loans, frankly, don't help us much.
It must provide a shield for cities from third-party
lawsuits for cities that are working toward long-term
compliance under a permit.
Congress should direct EPA to halt enforcement campaigns
against local governments in favor of EPA programs for
integrated planning, watershed planning and water quality
permitting.
Congress must also act to prohibit EPA from exacting fines
and penalties against local governments that are engaged in
good faith efforts and are investing capital to comply with
water and wastewater regulations under permits.
Cities are not criminals or enterprises that are tempted to
pollute more to make more profit and we should not be treated
as such. Cities are stewards of the public trust, a
responsibility that we share with the State and Federal
Governments, and should be accorded the respect of a shared
stewardship of our environment.
We need Congress to provide relief. We need Congress to
provide oversight and to remember that EPA has its authority
because of the way the Clean Water Act was written and enacted
by Congress. We need Congress to act.
Thank you for the opportunity to address you.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you.
Mayor Becker, the floor is yours. Welcome.
Mr. Becker. Good morning, Chairman Gibbs, Ranking Member
Bishop and members of the subcommittee. I am Ralph Becker. I am
the mayor of Salt Lake City, and I am here today on behalf of
the National League of Cities, the oldest and largest
organization representing cities and towns across America. I
also serve on the U.S. Conference of Mayors Board of Directors.
Salt Lake City is unusual in that from our valley at about
4,200 feet and where the Great Salt Lake is, we see our peaks
over 11,000 feet immediately next to us. And so from our
watershed that is supplying our waters to our ultimate
discharge in the Terminal Lake, we have the full spectrum of
water supply and dealing with wastewater and stormwater.
I appreciate the opportunity to share our perspective on
the important role of clean water infrastructure investment in
our communities and how the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency and Congress can partner more effectively with our local
governments to make smart investments to protect water quality.
On this, the 40th anniversary that we are approaching of the
Clean Water Act and the enormous benefits that we have all
received in our country from that Act, it is time for this
Congress to take a fresh look at how we can achieve those goals
better.
We congratulate and applaud EPA's integrated stormwater-
wastewater planning framework published on June 5th of this
year. The framework recognizes awareness of struggles by
municipalities in meeting requirements and the conflicts that
arise when weighing environmental impacts. Storm and wastewater
issues are interdependent and intrinsically tied to
environmental considerations.
We are in support of the current framework's benefits, but
as was mentioned by Mayor Berger, we feel strongly that
affordability, flexibility and use of permitting in place of
consent decrees, better solutions will be found.
Speaking towards affordability, water rate and tax
increases on residents to fund regulatory mandates should be
reasonably affordable. Affordability needs to be assessed based
on impacts to the lowest community economic level, and the
integrated planning framework that provides communities with
compliance schedules with options to prioritize funding for
projects with greater positive impacts are certainly very
valuable. This approach allows a community to produce a viable
plan from several options to afford the greatest environmental
benefit.
To flexibility, a flexible approach to integrated planning
would allow communities to prioritize needs and consider in its
entirety the financial commitments that we make. We recommend
the ability to extend the permit cycles to longer timeframes to
align with realistic and achievable goals of water quality
improvements. We believe that an integrated framework, now
limited to consideration of storm and wastewater, should
include pending drinking water treatment requirements under the
Safe Drinking Water Act. For Salt Lake City and many cities,
all of these systems are integrated and tied to a much broader
set of environmental considerations.
As has been mentioned and I mentioned, the implementation
of an integrated planning framework can most effectively and
efficiently be achieved through the permit planning process
rather than consent decrees.
Moving forward, addressing the policy changes is just one
part of the equation in addressing our Nation's water-related
challenges. Lack of water quality infrastructure threatens
local and regional economies, the environment, and public
health and safety. Like other communities, 70 percent of Salt
Lake City's water infrastructure is beyond expected design life
and in need of substantial funding. We have made tremendous
commitments for well over a century to that end.
We call on your support for new funding mechanisms. Even as
local governments fund 95 to 98 percent of all water and
wastewater infrastructure investment, needs in our communities
continue to grow. The most recent clean water shed needs survey
estimated that the 20-year investment needed to upgrade
wastewater and stormwater infrastructure to meet the goals of
the Clean Water Act to be over $298 billion, with an additional
survey focused on drinking water infrastructure estimating
needs over a 20-year span in excess of $334 billion. Local
governments need a reliable long-term source of substantial
capital to close the gap between current expenditures and
anticipated needs.
The U.S. marked the 20th century with breakthrough in
investment in water infrastructure that lifted us to prominence
for the past 100 years. We ask that you lead and serve by
addressing these needs so we can move forward together and lead
the world into the next century.
As we approach the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act,
local governments remain committed to meeting the water
infrastructure needs and water quality protection standards in
our communities. We hope that the Federal Government remains
committed to being a full partner in this important endeavor.
Because the Nation's cities are working to improve our aging
infrastructure, meet Federal regulatory requirements, create
and retain jobs and foster a climate of economic growth in our
communities, a partnership with the Federal Government is
essential.
We look forward to working with you on a long-term solution
to our Nation's water infrastructure needs and with EPA to
ensure that this integrated planning framework approach can
help communities meet water quality protection standards in an
affordable and flexible manner.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of
America's cities and towns. I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you.
Mr. Portune, the floor is yours. Welcome.
Mr. Portune. Good morning, Chairman Gibbs, Ranking Member
Bishop and members of the subcommittee. My name is Todd
Portune, and I am testifying here today on behalf of the
citizens of Hamilton County and the citizens of the communities
that make up what we have called the ``Perfect Storm''
Communities Coalition, so named because we are communities
dealing with the perfect storm of high unemployment, high home
foreclosure rates, stagnant economic growth and an exodus of
business and industry, while being mandated to meet expensive
CSO and SSO wet weather consent decrees and stormwater
regulations.
Our coalition very much appreciates the subcommittee
holding this second oversight hearing. It is certainly evidence
of and supports the fact of the need for congressional action
and oversight over EPA and the integrated planning process that
EPA has put forward through their final integrated planning and
permitting policy framework.
We are grateful for the steps forward that EPA has taken,
but believe that it falls far short of what is necessary. We
believe that EPA must find a regulatory approach consistent
within the Clean Water Act and existing regulations that would
provide communities like mine and of our coalition the
flexibility we need to meet these challenges in a more
affordable and cost-effective manner, and we hope that the
Agency's final framework with your oversight and with
congressional action will help us accomplish this goal.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and members of the committee,
we were very encouraged at the first oversight hearing when
there was interaction between Chairman Gibbs and Ms. Nancy
Stoner, Acting Administrator for the EPA Office of Water, about
whether EPA was open to using a pilot community project, and in
particular, the 15- to 20-pilot communities in implementing the
framework that was proposed by our coalition.
Ms. Stoner answered in response to your question, ``Yes,
that is what I was talking about in terms of those who have
already done a lot of thinking and planning. We are hoping
those could be initial pilots for us, and others could learn
from their successes.''
She went on to say, ``Our strategies that we are working on
now would identify how we would like to work with communities
through pilot projects and other means as well.''
Finally, Mr. Chairman you asked if EPA would have something
moving forward by spring, to which she replied, yes.
Now, clearly, there is a step forward with the framework
that has been presented. But with respect to showcase
communities, while EPA will say that they have a showcase
community aspect of this, the truth of the matter is that it is
not a true demonstration program or showcase community process.
Contrary to that, it is continuing the long-time practice of
negotiating judicial decrees and leaving individual communities
to figure it out by themselves.
Under EPA's integrated policy and the most recent green
infrastructure fact sheets, all of the financial burden and
legal risk involved in developing an alternative framework
remains on local communities. Communities are given the choice
of pursuing alternative approaches without direct financial,
technical or related support from EPA.
If a local community has access to money and expertise and
they get it right, EPA will embrace them. If, however, they get
it wrong, EPA and the DOJ will leave them subject to continued
enforcement to figure it out a second time. And this system of
forced local experiments without Federal funding is wasteful
and inequitable. We know there is a better way, a way that does
not ignore the mandates of the Clean Water Act, but does not
continue the command and control regulatory system that is
inconsistent with the financial realities of America's cities,
towns and counties.
Our coalition has repeatedly requested that EPA establish
between 15 and 20 demonstration partnerships in each of the
next 5 years in communities across the Nation currently facing
expensive mandated wet-weather improvements. We want to see
these partnerships transparently highlighted to show the
Congress and other communities how EPA and local communities
can work together to implement flexible, practical, affordable
wet-weather solutions. And by working with pilot communities,
EPA could demonstrate how the use of new innovative approaches
can result in the same or better water quality results for
smaller investment of local taxpayer dollars.
Under our proposal, the coalition's proposal, EPA would be
leading the process, working in partnership with local
communities, lending EPA's own significant body of resources
and expertise to the effort. The end product will be the
development of the foundational data and results that then can
be replicated across the Nation with confidence of outcome and
result. Anything less continues the current, unacceptable
process of fragmented, uncoordinated and differing approaches
and outcomes. There is a better approach, and that is for a
national policy to be implemented, and the coalition's process
is the way.
I would like to address the affordability question as well,
Mr. Chairman. In my own community, we have cut our county
budget by over 35 percent since 2007. Because of the recession,
we have been forced to reduce our budget for all operations of
the county, corrections, courts, law enforcement, public works
projects of road, highway and bridge repairs; auditor,
recorder, treasurer, coroner, all the other facets of county
government have been cut by over $100 million in 5 years,
eliminating over 1,500 jobs in the process. We can neither
borrow money nor print money to balance our budget. We can only
spend what we have, and consequentially, we have had to make
due with less, with no end in sight.
Yet in the midst of this horror story, CSO and SSO mandated
driven sewer district spending continues to increase. Since the
recession began, our bipartisan county commission has been
forced to increase sewer rates by over 50 percent. Our sewer
district, now facing hundreds of millions of dollars of consent
decree mandated spending, projects another 18 percent in rate
increases over the next 2 years.
Since 2004, when our decree was approved by the Federal
court, sewer rates have been increased 9 consecutive years
cumulatively by more than 130 percent. Few, if any, people have
their incomes increase by 10 percent a year or double every
decade.
We are spending for the entire 2012 budget for all of
Hamilton County $207 million, but our sewer district budget is
$380 million; $202 million in consent decree driven capital
projects and $180 million in operations, $90 million of which
is payment on debt service. We have spent over $400 million in
consent decree mandated work so far. We have another $1.1
billion in 2006 dollars in phase one spending with a phase two
consent decree program estimated to cost another $2 billion or
more.
There is no balance in this, Mr. Chairman. There is no
fairness. And my constituents rightfully ask why are they
paying more for sewer repairs each year than I raise from all
of the revenue sources for all other county operations. How do
I justify raising sewer rates to unaffordable levels at the
very same time I cannot provide for police patrols, am closing
down jails, cannot fix my roads and bridges, have endured 50
percent cuts in human service delivery at the same time that I
have a 40-percent increase in demand for human services. Help.
We are all in favor of clean water, but there must be balance
to the process.
The current EPA regulatory policies and enforcement-led
approaches through consent decree simply directs local
communities to pay for massive, expensive, and in some
instances, outdated concrete and steel approaches. There has
got to be a better way.
Hamilton County, Ohio, and the Perfect Storm Coalition
looks forward to continuing to work with you, Mr. Chairman,
with members of the subcommittee, and with EPA in developing
and ensuring the implementation of innovative flexible
approaches in meeting wet weather challenges, including the
creation of needed demonstration communities that will showcase
EPA's commitment to cost-effective, alternative approaches to
expensive water quality challenges faced by communities like
mine and those of our coalition.
I thank you for the opportunity and look forward to
answering the committee's questions.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you.
Mr. Baker, welcome. The floor is yours.
Mr. Baker. Good morning, Chairman Gibbs, Ranking Member
Bishop, and members of the subcommittee. My name is Walt Baker.
I am the director of the Utah Division of Water Quality and
currently serve as the president of the Association of Clean
Water Administrators on whose behalf I offer testimony today.
ACWA is the national nonpartisan professional organization
representing State, interstate and territorial water quality
officials charged with implementing the Clean Water Act, and in
particular, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System
permitting program.
I am pleased to come before the committee today to again
present testimony on the integrated planning initiative. I
offer abbreviated remarks drawn from my longer written
testimony which has been submitted for the record.
I reiterate the Association's support for sequencing Clean
Water Act requirements to allow municipalities to address first
those projects that have the greatest impact on water quality.
Such sequencing is not a new concept. However, a wider embrace
of sequencing is important in these times of economic hardship.
Moreover, EPA's willingness to develop this initiative sends a
powerful, clear and welcome message to municipalities, but we
need to do more.
Following the release of the draft framework in January of
this year, ACWA members participated in five EPA-hosted
stakeholder workshops, submitted written comments on the draft
and held calls with EPA to further discuss the draft document.
EPA has been very receptive to State comments and questions.
At the workshop, several elements of integrated planning
were clarified. Integrated planning does not remove the
obligation to comply with the Clean Water Act nor the
consequences of not complying with the Clean Water Act. Clear,
candid and open communication with communities is critical to
ensure there is a full exploration of the options and
flexibilities within the Clean Water Act so that the parties
understand what is doable and what is not doable.
If communities are looking for amnesty from Clean Water Act
provisions through this initiative, they are likely to be
disappointed. But some uncertainty remains. Third-party
lawsuits loom if States and EPA through integrated planning are
considered to be deviating from their obligations to enforce
the law. It is clear that States will take the primary role in
reviewing and approving a municipality's integrated plans.
EPA's involvement in approving or vetoing the plans is less
clear.
I would like to offer the following additional thoughts on
EPA's final integrated planning framework and initiative as a
whole. One, we urge EPA to further develop guidance on
financial assessment and affordability as cost will play a
central role in the prioritization effort.
Two, we are pleased to see an adaptive management component
in the final framework. Flexibility will be key to
implementation.
Three, drinking water and groundwater elements should find
a place within the integrated planning framework.
Four, confusion seems to exist in some EPA regions as to
the ability of compliance schedules within NPDES permits to
exceed 3 years, let alone the 5-year life of the permit. This
issue needs to be resolved by EPA headquarters.
Overall, States have largely been supportive throughout the
development of EPA's integrated planning framework and remain
supportive of the general concept of allowing municipalities to
sequence Clean Water Act requirements in ways most appropriate
for the specific entity. However, some of our concerns will not
be put to rest until we see actual case studies progress.
We encourage EPA to consider developing guiding principles
based on early examples to assist others.
Utah lost one of its native sons last week in the passing
of noted author, educator, businessman, and motivational
speaker Stephen R. Covey who wrote, ``The main thing is to keep
the main thing the main thing.'' Our main thing must be to
protect our precious and irreplaceable water resources. ACWA
believes it is possible to do so with an eye to well thought-
out approaches, mutually agreeable priorities, fiscal
responsibility and reasonable timeframes.
I would like to conclude by noting that the success of
integrated planning hinges on the continued transparency,
communication and collaboration among all involved parties
throughout the plan development and implementation process. We
look forward to continuing our work with EPA as this initiative
proceeds.
Thank you for this opportunity to share ACWA's thoughts on
this, and I will take any questions later.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you.
Mr. Strickland, welcome. The floor is yours.
Mr. Strickland. Thank you, and good morning, Chairman
Gibbs, Ranking Member Bishop, members of the subcommittee. I am
Carter Strickland, commissioner of the New York City Department
of Environmental Protection, or as we are known in New York
City, DEP. On behalf of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, thank you for
the opportunity to testify on the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency's final integrated planning framework, which I might say
at the outset is a very welcome development. We were involved
in providing testimony and development of this integrated
planning framework, and we do note that the EPA has amended it
to some degree.
We appreciate several clarifications. One involves the role
of the States. It is very important to us. For example, our
water quality data shows that our biggest challenge, like a lot
of other cities, is combined sewer overflows. We recently, in
mid-March of this year, entered into a consent order with our
State, our primary regulator, by which we are committing an
additional $1.9 billion in traditional grant infrastructure and
$2.4 billion in green infrastructure.
We think this is the right way to go. We think it is in
accordance with some planning efforts that we did initially.
And we are obligated under both orders and SPDES permits to
undertake a variety of measures with regard to both CSOs,
including the development of long-term control plans over the
next 5 years, 11 separate ones, and such measures as the
cleaning of our 136 miles of interceptors, which we just
completed after a 2-year effort.
Clearly, for the framework to succeed it needs to recognize
and where appropriate, defer to State authorities which are
often the primary regulators. I will note that we believe that
long-term control plans are, in fact, integrated plans and can
become them, and new requirements should be held in abeyance
until those plans are developed.
We also appreciate the framework's explicit reference to in
the final version and encouragement of the use of planning for
sustainability and other related documents and guidance put out
by the EPA. These documents provide suggestions for
programmatic areas and approaches that also match community
goals while appropriately recognizing that the details of these
programs cannot be known in advance or dictated from any
central authority, but rather, must be developed by the
operating entity.
DEP supports the planning approach that would help
municipalities prioritize infrastructure investments in order
to maximize water quality benefits and encourage the use of
innovative and sustainable approaches such as green
infrastructure. That, after all, is the approach of not only
the long-term control plans, but planning documents such as New
York City's PlaNYC, or comprehensive sustainability plan.
A number of our comments and recommendations on the draft
framework have been addressed and are consistent with the final
framework, but since the level of detail in the framework has
not changed dramatically since the draft version, our initial
questions regarding the specifics of how integrated planning
would be implemented remain unanswered and we think it is
certainly a matter that the subcommittee should continue to
monitor.
For example and first, I will note that the final framework
for the integrated plan includes a discussion of financial
capability and refers to the EPA's 1997 guidance document.
However, New York City DEP has concluded our own affordability
assessment and we have come to realize that the criteria
outlined in the guidance documents do not provide the complete
story with respect to affordability concerns of both the Agency
and our ratepayers.
For example, we found that the use of median household
income as an affordability indicator has several limitations
for a city like New York City where household incomes are not
distributed around the median. That means that we have a lot of
wealthy people and we have a lot of poor people. Approximately
20 percent using Federal measures of our population is living
below the Federal poverty level, which is very low.
Furthermore, the New York City Center For Economic
Opportunity has noted some of the deficiencies with current
measures of poverty and developed an alternative poverty
threshold measure based on methodology from the National
Academy of Sciences. Based on this new threshold, a higher
percentage of New York City residents are living in poverty
than the Federal poverty rate portrays. Our study estimates 25
percent of New York City households, that is 755,000
households, over 1.6 million people, have wastewater and sewer
costs that are 2 percent or more of their household income.
These rates vary across the city. In the Bronx, for
example, 40 percent of households have a household income for
which 2 percent or more is dedicated to water or wastewater
costs. With projected future rate increases, the burden on this
vulnerable population will increase, and we believe this is a
significant environmental justice issue for this subcommittee
to consider.
Therefore our study recommends that residential
affordability should consider income distribution, poverty,
unemployment and other economic burdens, such as the high cost
of living in New York City and other urban areas, all of which
inform the environmental justice issues that the Federal
Government is rightly concerned about.
And affordability must consider the cumulative impact of
long-term debt, which means that utilities have rising debt
service that will cause rates to increase for the foreseeable
future. For example, this year, New York City DEP will spend 42
percent of our operating budget, that is $1.6 billion, on debt
service alone. We have $26 billion in outstanding debt. That
debt service has increased 176 percent between fiscal year
2002, it starts for us in July, and fiscal year 2011. Each
community is unique, obviously, so the framework should provide
an opportunity to bring all relevant financial indicators and
information to the table.
EPA has clarified that the integrated planning framework is
limited to wastewater and stormwater. Many folks have mentioned
that should include the Safe Drinking Water Act obligations. We
believe that is the case. Over the last 10 years, we have spent
$20 billion total on capital costs, pretty evenly split between
water and wastewater costs. All of that, so $10 billion each.
We don't want to exclude $10 billion from consideration that we
spent on water services. That goes into our rate and that is
paid by our ratepayers.
In addition, the framework seeks to balance various
mandates without recognizing the value of investment in
nonmandated infrastructure. These are the replacement costs of
our aging infrastructure that many folks have mentioned. New
Yorkers want and deserve nonmandated, but still critical
investments in programs to build storm sewers, replace storm
and sanitary lines, replace mandated equipment according to a
prudent, asset management review. And I think if you did a
survey of the folks at this table and utilities across the
country, the number one issue would be urban flooding, for
which we spend a lot of money. Completing the full buildout of
the storm and sanitary sewer system is an important priority
for our city and others.
Finally, the EPA's and Department of Justice's enforcement
actions must be consistent with this framework, especially its
consideration of State orders and permits, as well as the
general principle that the details of programs will be left to
operating agencies. Unfortunately, over the past few years the
EPA and DOJ have been bypassing the permit process and
regulating by consent order with provisions that have a
stifling level of detail. The Federal Government is not in the
business of operating utilities, not yet anyway, and
municipalities need the ability to make operational decisions
based on engineering judgments.
In closing, we see integrated planning as a way for EPA,
State regulators and municipalities to sit down and prioritize
various water quality efforts so that there will be less top-
down decisionmaking, more collaboration and consensus among
government agencies, for which we consider ourselves a member.
This would vest discretion in local governments to invest
scarce dollars in those projects that meet critical needs and
achieve the greatest public health benefits. The EPA's
framework is a good start, but it is far from sufficient to
realize this vision.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Hawkins. Welcome. The floor is yours.
Mr. Hawkins. Good morning, Chairman Gibbs, Ranking Member
Bishop. My name is George Hawkins. I am the general manager of
the DC Water and Sewer Authority, or DC Water as we know it,
and the chair of the Money Matters Task Force for the National
Association of Clean Water Agencies.
I am delighted to be here today to discuss EPA's integrated
and municipal stormwater and wastewater planning approach
framework. It is a very good step forward. I also want to
mention, I am grateful for the comments of Congresswoman
Norton, my Congresswoman. I thought it was both eloquent and
substantive, and many of my points will track many of the
points that you made.
I also want to offer my greetings to Congresswoman Edwards.
Part of the flow from your district actually comes through to
our facility at Blue Plains. You have been a strong supporter
over time, and I am grateful for that as well.
My points are going to be in five, a handful of points,
number one to provide context, very consistent with what you
just heard from my friend, Carter Strickland.
In the last 2 weeks we have had three floods in the
Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, DC. This is a
neighborhood just south of the McMillan Reservoir just west of
here, three significant floods in 2 weeks.
I have been out to the citizens, I have walked the streets.
We have mobilized all of our resources. The fundamental problem
is the trunk sewer that serves that entire neighborhood goes
entirely the length of Florida Avenue all the way down to the
Anacostia, was implemented and constructed by the Federal
Government at the turn of the century, as well as all the lines
that feed into it. They simply are not big enough to contain
the flow that is going into the system which is handling both
stormwater and wastewater.
The hydraulic pressure of all of the flow and the kinds of
storms we have had is so great, it is popping off the manholes
shooting them into the air so that we have to bolt them down,
or else they will shoot and can hurt someone and shooting water
3 to 4 feet in the air coming out of the system, flooding into
basements. If we bolt the manholes on top of those pipes, the
hydraulic pressure in the pipe, that flow has to go somewhere,
and it causes sewage backups to go back up the pipes to
businesses and residences.
Now I have stood in front of the citizens, they are angry
about this for understandable reasons. We have a solution to
this problem, and it costs $600 million. You cannot replace one
little piece of the sewer line anywhere, because it would
connect to the next line, which would be too narrow. It is like
trying to expand traffic on the beltway by doing a 200-yard
addition to the road, then it would hit the next choke point
and be backed up.
We have to replace the whole system. It is that kind of
replacement that is fundamental to the public health, welfare
and every job in the District, but is not mandated, and it is
what every system in this country, most of which were built
when we urbanized America, at least in the Midwest and the east
coast at the same time this bill is coming due nationwide. But
that is the context. What our customers want is the system to
work. That is what delivers every job in every house.
Second, in comparison to that is the mandates we face.
Congresswoman Norton had summarized them, I will just be brief,
one is a $2.6 billion project to build mammoth underground
tunnels larger than Metro tunnels, which all of you have been
on, in a gigantic system underground that would take much of
this flow and transport it down to Blue Plains. We are deep
into building that project now. It is the largest public
project in Washington, DC, since Metro underneath our feet.
A second billion-dollar project to Blue Plains would
enhance nutrient removal. The District is the only jurisdiction
in the entire Chesapeake Bay that met the 2000-2010 goals for
Chesapeake Bay reductions, but that has been because of
expenditures made at Blue Plains, which is a regional
expenditure, which is why the support from both Maryland and
Virginia is important. That is a billion-dollar project.
Those two projects alone is $3.6 billion of expenditures
that are mandated. That does not talk about the MS-4, the
separate storm sewer obligations that are coming, TMDL
requirements and perhaps, although this is a challenge of what
is going to be the requirement for every one of those sewer
lines that go directly to the river, not to our plant, which
needs to be done.
Third is the reality of decreasing returns at the scale.
The way the Clean Water Act is set up, to me one of the most
successful progressive statutes in the history of government,
nonetheless, has run into the reality of decreasing returns.
The law is about eliminating pollutants, the National Pollutant
Discharge Elimination System is how the permit system is
identified.
However, eliminating means that as you eliminate and you
get to the margin, your costs become logarithmic and start
firing up the scale for that next incremental improvement. It
costs $15 to remove a pound of nutrient when we began at Blue
Plains. Today it costs us $476 per pound of nutrient to
eliminate nutrients at Blue Plains, and reducing much less for
the costs.
So we spent $1 billion to get one-tenth of the protection
of what we had spent $100 million to do in the past, and that
is only going to get more expensive at the margin.
Fourth point is affordability. We are doubling the
percentage of the low-income residents of the District who are
unable to pay their bills or stressed by paying their bills due
to the costs. Now the median household income disguises that
reality, because as we all know, Washington, DC, is a city of
two income levels: one that is quite high and one that is quite
low.
If you take the median income to evaluate the cost of
something, you are going to understate what that cost is to
someone of significant means, and overstate the ability of our
low-income residents to pay the same costs. When EPA evaluated
the per capita costs of capital improvements in the country,
the District of Columbia came up with the highest per capita
costs.
We have a very large region. It is important to remember we
have 130,000 connections in the District. It is not a big city
itself, and it is those connections that are paying these
gigantic costs.
Affordability, I do personally every public outreach
meeting in the city that we do on our retail rates. I went to
every ward in the city this spring describing the rates that we
propose for 2013, which will equal a 50-percent rate increase
in the 4 years I have been connected to DC Water as general
manager.
In two of those meetings, we had to have law enforcement
called because our citizens were angry. They are angry for two
reasons: One is they are angry about the cost, the simple
escalation, even if it seems that it is a good value relative
to other costs, well, it costs less than a cell phone bill, it
costs less than a power bill.
When you have a budget that has been set over time and you
have designated a portion of that budget to a cost, and that
one is increasing far faster than inflation, it doesn't matter
what it costs compared to other things, you have your budget
when you are on a fixed income, and that budget is being
exceeded by too many of our residents.
The other challenge our residents tell us is what about
those water mains. What about the challenges of the day-to-day
delivery, and part of our challenge is our funding first goes
to mandates, and second, to the operational needs.
I want to point out as a point of fact, in Washington, DC,
if you take every capital dollar spent in the District for
District work, school, fire, police, every building, road and
bridges, $1 in $3, one of every three capital dollars, is spent
on DC Water projects. That is the scale of what the system is
delivering.
In that context, my last thoughts is about the integrated
plan. It is a very important step forward. We are negotiating
in the District, as the Congresswoman mentioned, the potential
opening of our consent decree to allow for green
infrastructure. There is no question with the leadership of
Cynthia Giles and Nancy Stoner, and the Regional Administrator
Shawn Garvin for region 3, we have seen a sea change in the
negotiations we are undertaking with the Agency in order to
open that consent decree.
This is a good change, integrated planning is good,
although I echo many of the comments you have already heard and
don't need to repeat them, our ratepayers, many of you, get a
bill that has water and sewer costs on it, not divided out. So
the full range of costs is what our ratepayers face.
But three very specific points: Number one, in order to
negotiate the opening of our consent decree, I have already
spent $2 million in the preparation and the analysis and the
background work necessary to get to the negotiating table. That
is a very difficult dollar figure to cover, and I will be in
trouble with my board if we don't actually succeed.
But there are many jurisdictions that do not have the
capability even to get to the negotiating table because of the
level of research and analysis that is necessary to evaluate
and compare, and to assess all these various programs and
requirements and put them in a risk-based system. That is a
detail-intensive and research-intensive effort.
So one issue I think is very significant and I know funding
is extremely very difficult, is pilot funding for those
jurisdictions, particularly with financial limitations, to
avail themselves of the ability to even get to the negotiating
table.
Second is the benefit of permits. Permits last for 5 years,
consent decrees go for 20 to 25 years. There is no question
that the consent decree enables a longer period of time, but
these are in a context that it is a far more rigid negotiation
because it is within a violation and an enforcement context.
Expanding the use of permitting compliance schedules beyond
a 3- or 5-year span to match what you could do in an
enforcement context would enable far more flexibility in this
concept, and third is to go back to affordability. The
affordability challenge to the people who are footing the bill
is very significant, and we think that the 2 percent is--I am
not even sure where it comes from, but I am not sure it is
relevant in assessing the affordability of these kinds of
changes.
I do want to emphasize that the integrated planning
framework is a very strong step in the right direction, and we
have seen a much better negotiating climate with EPA today, but
it is expensive and time consuming in order to get to the
table, and I think many communities need assistance on that
score. Thank you very much.
Mr. Gibbs. I can tell you are on the frontlines, your
passion.
Mr. Vicory, welcome and the floor is yours.
Mr. Vicory. Thank you very much. Good morning, Chairman
Gibbs, and subcommittee members.
George Hawkins is always a hard act to follow, obviously,
and I am pleased actually in my comments to fundamentally
reiterate a lot of the testimony that you have heard here this
morning. Actually, my function within WEF is I am currently
vice chairman of the Government Affairs Committee, and I need
to note that this past January, I wrapped up a 24-year career
as executive director and chief engineer of the Ohio River
Valley Water Sanitation Commission, ORSANCO, an interstate
compact agency to abate interstate water pollution in the Ohio
Valley.
But on behalf of WEF's 36,000 individual professionals
working in water quality, we are certainly pleased to be here
this morning. The local governments, and I think in your
opening comments, and I think you have acknowledged this, have
made tremendous investments to improve water quality and
achieve Clean Water Act compliance over the last 40 years, and
there has been remarkable success.
This is about an essential public service that is
fundamental, as we all know, to public health and maintaining
our quality of life, but we are all struggling in this economy,
and as such, it is imperative that local governments invest
their limited resources wisely to achieve the most significant
environmental and public health benefits.
And that is what this framework, we believe, seems to speak
to, and we are very supportive of it. We have been engaged with
EPA throughout the development of the framework, and we
considered it a much-needed first step to provide greater
flexibility to local governments to balance the need for
investments in asset management and aging infrastructure with
other water-related requirements at a pace that is sustainable
and affordable. Again, themes you have heard already this
morning.
Common sense works. This seems to be common sense. Planning
this locally driven, flexible and voluntary is, we believe, the
way to go, and an approach that encourages innovation, such as
green infrastructure, obviously is really where the future
needs to be.
But as we have heard in several testimonies this morning,
we have a policy, we really don't have implementation, and
there are a lot of questions about that.
WEF offers six main thought points, if you will, on
implementation. Regarding adaptive management flexible longer-
term schedules, we did recommend, WEF recommended that adaptive
management principles be incorporated in the framework. We have
that. We need to assure that it is actually implemented, and
that is implemented through allowing permits, and to the extent
we have enforcement of those on the books to be reopened. If
circumstances or technologies change to provide the opportunity
to identify, evaluate and select new projects, incorporate
innovative solutions and make changes to ongoing projects and
implementation schedules.
Technology is moving like I have never seen it in my
lifetime, so we need to find ways to get these emerging
technologies out on the street to the benefit of all of us.
Supporting States and making the integrated planning process
available to all is an important thing. There are obstacles
within EPA's policy. The Agency needs to zero in on those and
address them to free up this new approach that we are all
supporting here this morning.
We need to assure that utilities are not turned away that
want to pursue this. George spoke quite well to the resources
he has to deal with things. A lot of communities do not have
the resources they have. And, really, this speaks to the idea
of some level of reasonable funding to prompt and stimulate, if
you will, the implementation of these approaches and to
demonstrate that the principles here indeed work, and then I
think you will see a lot more communities jumping forward, if
you will, and wanting to go with the integrated planning
approach.
We have heard a lot also about enforcement versus
permitting. We are very clear, I believe, as an association, a
federation, that regulators need to use their discretion to
utilize a nonjudicial implementation approach. Permits provide
the flexibility. We can write over the permit renewal process,
long-term plans in those permits and, again, enforcement really
needs to be the last resort.
Imposition of fines and penalties, if we cannot eliminate
them, we need to minimize them. The reality is that enforcement
creates a counterproductive stigma at a time when local
governments need public support to raise the rates in order to
do what they need to do.
And the importance, I think, spoken by the Mayor of Lima,
that local governments need to be treated as partners, almost
as clients, if you will, versus polluters, if you will, or
even, as I have heard early this morning, criminals.
We would agree the permit does not--excuse me, the
integrated planning process does not go far enough to address
the affordability issue facing local governments. We certainly
want to confirm that thought. And the need to consider, for EPA
to consider other economic indicators other than the 2 percent
median household income. I think you have heard here this
morning that that analysis approach really is not truly the
right economic analysis approach for lower income communities.
You know, at the end of the day, this is about moving an
environmental needle. Water quality improvements must be the
gauge of success, not necessarily a reduction of flow volume,
this is about are we achieving environmental improvements, are
we moving that needle, and that is really the cost-benefit
approach that we need to pursue, and I think that the
integrated planning process really begins finally to speak to
that, to allow communities to have that flexibility.
Innovation, and there is a lot of talk about innovation,
innovation also is risk. And when you take innovation and risk,
some efforts will be successful, some will be spectacularly
successful, and some will probably not be successful. But not
supporting innovation, I think, is probably a least desirable
outcome than supporting innovation and creating the progress
that innovation provides and we need to be open, if you will,
to try and experiment and understand that if something didn't
quite work, then let's not necessarily move to an enforcement
mode, because enforcement mode basically shuts down all the
opportunities that we have before us.
WEF stands ready to work with our members, to help support
the implementation of this framework. We will pursue
educational and opportunities, including considering the needs
of small and medium-sized communities who may benefit from the
integrated planning process. So my conclusion, as we embark, as
we all embark on the next 40 years of the Clean Water Act, let
us strive to use this framework as a springboard for
collaboration and partnership to find the best, most innovative
and cost-effective solutions to achieve water quality
improvement without saddling our communities with unnecessary
debt and imposing a financial burden that is unsustainable.
I look at this as an amazing opportunity to literally shift
our paradigm in how we do things. This is an opportunity that I
hope we cannot--we all cannot, we just cannot afford, in my
view, for their to really fail and not be successful. We
commend EPA for listening to local governments, and we look
forward to working with all stakeholders on the implementation
to realize our shared goals of protecting human health and
improving water quality.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify, and
some of us are wearing this little button here that has a very
simple saying, a campaign sponsored by WEF, and it says
``Water's Worth It,'' water is worth it.
Thank you for your time.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you, thank you for all the testimony. It
has been great and very formative.
I will start off the questions with just a couple of
thoughts. It seems like there is a common theme. One is you
need flexibility, affordability issue, issue versus enforcement
versus permitting, the consent decrees. You could go on, but
integrated plans, and the exclusion, it seems like I am hearing
that it should be all-inclusive, not, you know, groundwater,
drinking water.
And I guess my first question, I will just throw it out to
the panel, we talk about the affordability since that seems to
be the major concern, the 2 percent. Do you see the EPA
addressing each project, or, you know, if it is wastewater,
combined sewer, whatever, it is separate silos instead of--it
seems like if you have an integrated plan you have to got to
have it all together, so that would affect the affordability, I
think, formula.
Does anybody want to expound on that, where you see the
EPA, the folks, how they address that versus trying to do it
integrated? Does anybody want to take a stab at it?
Mr. Berger. Mr. Chairman, certainly the process, up till
now, has been very much a siloed approach, and I think the
hope, the promise of integrated planning has been that that
would be cured by an overall look at the total costs of
compliance and the priority setting within that.
I would argue at the same time that unless there is a
budget cap, you are not really setting priorities. What you are
doing is merely scheduling. Priorities get set when you can
decide what it is you can fund and what you cannot.
My community, we have gone from 530 employees to 350. I no
longer have a secretary, and I no longer have a chief of staff.
That is setting priorities, because we have decided to fund
police officers and firemen. The same thing needs to happen, it
seems to me, within integrated planning. It can't just be a
matter of all the obligations simply being lined up on a
schedule and lower priorities still have to be addressed. There
truly has to be a containment of costs.
Once you have established a cost cap, once you have been
able to define what it is that can be afforded with local,
limited resources, then priority setting has a meaning.
I also want to, I guess, contrast what is, I think, the
progressive taxation methodology that all of us in local
governments in Ohio, where we have an income tax or States or
Federal Governments, essentially is based upon an ability to
pay.
When we set rates, however, that has nothing to do with the
ability to pay. A rich person pays the same amount for a drink
of water as a poor person does. A rich person flushes the
toilet, and the service and service user fee that is charged
for that service is the same as a poor household.
So when these costs associated with the mandates are levied
across the board, the fact is, is that our rate base and rules
that govern our ability to set those rates, in fact, impose
enormous devastating charges on the poor.
Mr. Gibbs. OK.
Mr. Berger. It also becomes an enormous problem for
economic development as well.
Mr. Portune. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gibbs. Yes. Go ahead.
Mr. Portune. I would like to echo the Mayor's comments and
interject an additional thought with respect to the
affordability question. But clearly, what is missing is balance
in the discussion, that the 2 percent, the affordability issue,
all of us in urban issues struggle with that greatly because we
all are losing the middle class, the middle class is going by
the wayside and we have the very rich and the very poor.
And the 2 percent median income approach does not take into
consideration the undue burden that is placed on a growing
majority of our residents in urban communities, number one.
Number two, there has got to be a way to interject
prioritization into this. I referenced it as an issue of
balance, where is the balance? When my budget has gone down for
all county services by over 30 percent in the last 5 years
because of declining revenues, when I am laying off 1,500
individuals, when we have cut human services by 50 percent with
a 40-percent increase in demand, but yet, we have to raise
rates to do everything in terms of Clean Water Act compliance
from the number one priority to the least priority, when I am
spending $200 million total on all county operations, and $380
million on my sewer-related obligations, there is no balance.
And there has got to be some balance interjected into the
equation.
The third issue, quickly, and that is that the median
income issue, the 2 percent, is also driving third-party
lawsuits because there is a focus on that as driving what
communities can or can't do without regard to the legitimate
reality of affordability. And so as long as that is in the
equation it, the unintended consequence is that it is serving
as fuel on the fire of third-party lawsuits.
Mr. Gibbs. My time is up. I just want a quick follow up on
this. When you go over the 2 percent threshold, does the EPA
back off on the, you know, on the enforcement or going after
you, or are you saying that also opens up a third-party lawsuit
issue? Can you expound a little bit?
Mr. Portune. In our case, in Hamilton County, we had an
approved consent decree in 2004. And then we were sued by the
Sierra Club.
And part what we were sued over was the question that we
weren't doing enough quickly enough, and the affordability
issue was front and center, part of their argument of why they
intervened in our federally approved consent decree. That then
resulted in a revised consent decree.
But it was stressing and focusing on the 2 percent and
whether we were meeting that across the board without regard to
how many individuals in the city of Cincinnati, for example,
lived in poverty, how many people were going over that in terms
of annual income as opposed to a median income, it was a major
determiner in the challenges that were lodged against our
consent decree by that third party.
Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Bishop. Thank you.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr.
Chairman, I will frame the issue in a particular way, I am
going to frame it in a way that I think is very similar.
It seems to me that we have a huge problem and we have two
principal solutions, not the only solution, but two principal
solutions. And one is to adopt a process or a framework that
emphasizes integrated planning, that emphasizes flexibility,
that emphasizes prioritization. And I think there is near
unanimity among the panel, not perhaps total unanimity, that
the EPA guidelines set forth in the memorandum of June 5
represents a very good step in the right direction.
I don't think any reasonable person would argue that this
is all we need to do or that the framework is perfect, but that
it does represent a good first step and that we now have, in
the framework or the process is now 5 weeks old or 6 weeks old,
we now have, I think, the opportunity to see it put in place,
see how it evolves and, you know, it is incumbent on this
committee and incumbent on the EPA and incumbent on all of the
stakeholders to assess whether or not it is having its intended
outcomes, and then we all need to be prepared, I think, to
respond in appropriate ways, if it is working, and certainly if
it isn't working.
A second piece is the financing, and I think that there is,
again, unanimity among the panel that the financing piece of it
is crucial, and that the framework piece can only take us so
far.
Now, the framework piece represents a new approach. We also
need a new approach to financing, and I--you know, I talked in
my opening statement about our bill, H.R. 3145. And I will
note, I know that there is a lot of Ohio guys out here, and I
will note that my principal Republican cosponsor is Congressman
LaTourette of Ohio. This is a bipartisan bill that I really
think has some promise.
Again, is it the only answer? No, it does not. But it does
have some real promise. And so I am hopeful in hopeful that in
the same way that the EPA has undertaken a new approach, that
the Congress will now undertake a new approach and exercise a
suite of options that such is what my bill provides. But, Mr.
Berger, you raised the issue of funding and particularly the
issue of more grant funding.
I think it is instructive that we just look at the last
couple of years of where this Congress has gone. Fiscal year
2009 we enacted $4.7 billion in funding for the SRF, $4.7
billion; fiscal year 2010 it dropped to $2.1 billion; fiscal
year 2011 it dropped to $1.5 billion; fiscal year 2012 it
dropped to $1.4 billion; and the House Appropriations Committee
passed the appropriations bill for the Interior and the
Environment, and it drops that number to $690 million.
So we are going in the wrong direction here, and we are
exacerbating a problem that all of you on the ground are trying
to resolve. And so as we go forward with the, I mean, the
mantra here is cut spending, the mantra here is we can't afford
it, the mantra here is that we can't possibly increase revenue.
That drop, from $4.7 billion to $690 million, that is the
manifestation of those mantras. And so at some point, we are
going to need voices of reason to say we have got some real
problems in this country, and we are going to have to start to
address them.
Now with that, I will get off my soap box and I want to ask
Mr. Hawkins, NACWA put out a press release back in '09 in which
it sort of, it spoke positively about a GAO report that
suggested that a Clean Water Trust Fund was something that we
should be doing, and it put out some potential means of
funding, a Clean Water Trust Fund. And in the NACWA press
release it said that fees potentially, underline the word
``potentially,'' could be placed on such things as bottled
beverages, flushable products, pesticides, agricultural
chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
Would you, representing NACWA, not so much the city of
Washington, DC, would you comment on the relative desirability
or the lack thereof of those potential funding sources?
Mr. Hawkins. Sure, and I will get to you, on the comment
you made on funding, I think there is a bridge between the two
points you made, when you asked the question of how integrated
planning can help with EPA working in silos, I have been an EPA
enforcement lawyer and have ran a State agency.
Remember that this policy only comes into to play when the
municipality or the authority comes forward. So it doesn't mean
EPA is issuing anything differently unless a municipality is
prepared to do the background work to come forward with the
integrated plan.
And what I can tell you is all that we are seeking to do
with DC Water is to open up one of them, which is the long-term
control plan for combined sewers, and that is what has cost us
$2 million in prep work to be able to prepare the information
and the analysis needed.
The cost, just to get to the table to see whether the
integrated--you start comparing a combined sewer overflow
challenge to a sanitary sewer overflow issue, to an MS-4,
comparing the health risk to them and the engineering costs, it
is an enormously complex matrix that I am glad EPA has opened
the door to. But separate from the big one, we like H.R. 3145,
I applaud the proposal, but there is somewhere in between that
most places aren't even going to be able to get to the table on
integrated planning because of the costs--just to get there,
and do the analysis.
On your second question on costs, on particular products,
it is like a toll that if you use the road, you pay the cost to
help update the road. As you know, in the city, we have a 5-
cent cost on every plastic bag that has been used, a very
similar concept. We raise that money and use it to reduce
nonpoint source pollution along the Anacostia.
What we found is that plastic bag use has dropped
precipitously, because people are making different choices. It
is a classic economic principle. Put the cost on that item
which you are handling in the process, you have internalized
that cost, classic economics, then the cost is borne in the
product to the consumer. Likely the consumer will use less of
it because they will start making different decisions, and you
had a revenue stream in order to help pay for the cleaning of
that product when it is used.
So I personally favor it. I would have to go back and
connect with NACWA to make sure that our thinking hasn't
changed, but that the concept of intaking the cost of handling
a waste stream and putting it inside the cost to the consumer,
both will drive better consumer choices and raise revenue to be
able to clean up those issues when they come to our facility.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you very much. My time has expired, Mr.
Speaker.
Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Berger. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, a comment. The U.S.
Conference of Mayors adopted in 2011 unanimously, Resolution
43, which pertains to CSO and SSO policy, and it was a very
simple kind of assertion. Either provide 50 percent of the
funding in the form of grants for our obligations at the local
level or give us relief. Loans don't help us. Loans are debt
that have to be paid back.
I can borrow all kinds of money at incredible rates right
now, but I can't pay for it.
So SRF and all of those authorizations, they aren't yet
appropriations, don't help us if it is just a debt to be paid
by the rest of my community forever.
Either it is relief or cash. That is what we need, and
thus, it is a pretty simple choice. If these are unfunded
mandates, and what you are hearing from local communities and
from districts all across the country is we can't do it, we
don't have printing presses like the Federal Government, the
local pocketbook is very finite.
So if the Congress has passed these as mandates and orders
for us to execute, then you must join us to pay for it. If the
cash isn't there, or the political will isn't there, then
relief must come, and it has to come soon.
Mr. Gibbs. Yes. I think we all understand that, and I think
right now we are trying to maybe figure out some relief by
having the integrated permit process and maybe helping the cost
side to streamline some things, so but you are right, we have
huge infrastructure issues that we are facing here and we are
trying to address that, so I appreciate your comments. Mr.
Duncan.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a very
important hearing, and I was present for the earlier hearing
when we heard from the mayor of Omaha, and we heard from
Indianapolis, as Mayor Berger said, we have heard from cities
and counties all over the country saying they can't afford
this, and that was a very eloquent, articulate plea you just
made, Mayor Berger.
And it seems to me this process is being controlled or
governed by people who I am sure don't think of themselves as
extremists or fanatics, but they are sure not being reasonable,
and they are going to end up hurting a lot of poor and lower
income and working people in the process.
Commissioner Portune said that his area is losing the
middle class. Three of my dad's sisters moved to Cincinnati
when they were young from Tennessee. I probably had as many
relatives in Ohio at one point as I had in Tennessee.
But I read a lot of this testimony, and the Mayor of Peoria
submitted this in writing, he said, EPA is still asking the
citizens of Peoria to spend to the limits of affordability,
even if spending more money will not result in meaningful water
quality improvements. As noted above, the EPA wants Peoria to
eliminate as many CSOs as it can afford to eliminate, even
though the additional CSOs eliminated by going from the city's
$90 million plan to EPA's suggested plan that we estimate will
cost almost $500 million, will not result in any meaningful
water quality improvements because water quality standards
would be met fully under the city's plan.
If Peoria has to spend more than five times as much as they
can afford and they were planning to spend, then the citizens'
rates are going to have to go up by five times. And a lot of
people can't afford that, and a lot of cities can't afford it.
I heard Mayor Berger talk about the people he has already laid
off going from, what, 530 to 350--what was it?
Mr. Berger. 350.
Mr. Duncan. I am sure that was a painful thing for you to
will center to lay off all those people. And just last week in
Tennessee, the Chattanooga, the big Chattanooga newspaper, the
Times Free Press had this story, it starts off, ``The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of
Justice are expected to file a consent decree Tuesday ordering
Chattanooga to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on repairs
to the city's sewer system,'' and this is in spite of, they had
already spent $100 million a few years earlier.
The city of Knoxville, where I am from, had spent mega
millions through the 1990s and the early 2000s on our system
there. Then in 2005, we had to enter into a $530 million
consent decree, and I am told that the Conference of Mayors, I
am told that the EPA is foot dragging about the total cost
estimate, but that the Conference of Mayors says this is going
to cost hundreds of billions to cities all across this country
that there is something like 100 or over 100 cities under
consent decrees at this time.
And I heard Mr. Hawkins talk about, he says in his
testimony, the regulations continue to expand, so too have
enforcement actions, and he says, costing individual
communities billions of dollars often to meet a single CWA
requirement. Recently, municipal clean water agencies were also
hit with a stringent reinterpretation of the Clean Air Act,
which, if not overturned, will force enormous costs on
communities, and this is all coming at a time when the cities
are in trouble anyway economically, because of the economy and
because of various other factors.
And, yet, everybody on this panel, and everybody on the
earlier panel, when we had this hearing a few months ago,
everybody wants clean water. They want it to be as clean as
possible. But we have to have a little--we need to have a
little balance and common sense in here. And we can't, we can't
please, we can never please the fanatics and the radicals and
the extremists. But we have got to try to have a little
moderation and a little reasonableness in regard to these
requirements, or we are going to really hurt cities and
counties all over this country.
And, as I have said at the start, we are especially going
to hurt a lot of poor and lower income and working people.
Maybe some of these officials who are cramming all this stuff
down, as maybe with their higher incomes, they can afford this
and it won't hurt them, but it is sure going to hurt a lot of
people across this country if we don't get a little moderation
and balance in what we are attempting to do.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you. Ms. Eleanor Holmes Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, again, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hawkins, I
have to thank you again for making sewers exciting enough to
draw the general interest of the public.
And I must say, I found your summary and your vivid
explanation important, and you come, of course, from the
District of Columbia. But in many ways, what you describe is
emblematic of what is facing, as my good friend on the other
side says, small towns and big cities like DC alike.
Now, you know, when they call the cops on you, when you
announce a 50-percent increase, I know you feel you are caught
between a rock and a hard place. You mentioned the diminishing
returns on investment for nutrient removal, and you made us
understand why.
On the other hand, look where you are located. You are
located not only in the Nation's Capital, but in the region of
the iconic Chesapeake Bay. And part of that mandate has to do
with improving the Bay's water quality. You said, I think you
said that the District was the only part of the Bay region that
met its goals, the Chesapeake Bay goals. Is that true?
Mr. Hawkins. That is correct, essentially because the only
major contributor to nutrients to the Chesapeake Bay from the
District is Blue Plains, and Blue Plains met its goal. So there
are other facilities that have met their goals, but for whole
States that have lots of sources of pollutants, they have not
as a total.
Ms. Norton. I see. I see. Now, what we are dealing with
here is essentially are competing priorities, and the public
wants both, and the public never wants the kinds of costs you
are getting now.
Do you see any way to continue along the road you are going
without placing an increasingly oppressive burden on
ratepayers? And if you envision that the burden that you have
encountered, you say in only 4 years, a 50-percent increase, do
you envision that kind of increase in the future, and if you
envision anything like it, I would like you to suggest what
EPA, consistent with its priority as well, and, remember, I
have set this question up in light of competing priorities,
what EPA can do.
I understand, for example, that for districts like ours,
which have a consent decree, they have increased, I don't know
if they have done this for the District of Columbia, they are
either considering or have decreased the number of years that a
jurisdiction have. Would that have an effect if it is increased
from 20 to 25 years. Has that happened?
What else could happen when you know that the Congress is
not about to come to the rescue, your taxpayers can't afford to
come to the rescue, and yet there are priorities having to do
with clean water and with your rivers and streams.
Given the way that you are locked in, and the way the EPA
may feel it is locked in by some of these consent decrees, what
do you suggest could be done to at least bring, lower the rate
of increase, of these increases?
Mr. Hawkins. It is certainly the question of the day. There
is no doubt we have done at DC Water a 20-year projection of
budgets and rates. Obviously we could only project that part
into the future with the requirements that we can envision
today, and the history of the system is that there are many new
requirements that come in over time.
Ms. Norton. But is that based on your consent decree, 20-
year time limit?
Mr. Hawkins. No, we just did this because we wanted to have
a financial picture for the enterprise. We do 10 years every
year, a 10-year rolling financial plan. We extended it out 20
years just because I wanted to see a picture, and we see
significant rate increases every single year for 20 years, not
always double digit, but close to double digit that will yield
far in advance of inflation so your initial part of your
question is do we see these increases as far as we can plan
into the future, we see increases faster than the rate of
inflation.
Ms. Norton. OK, if that is unsustainable, given the
constraints on all concerned, should we increase the number of
years to comply, we know what that will do, of course, to
nutrients on the Chesapeake Bay and the rest of it, but
something has got to give. And what kinds of relief do you see
as practical?
Mr. Hawkins. I think there are three kinds of relief. One
is, the extension as you said, EPA and Department of Justice
has been forthcoming. There is Atlanta, and Seattle, and
Philadelphia, there have been new approaches taken to these
solutions. One of the challenges is opening up existing consent
decrees, where flexibility has been most possible is where
there isn't yet a consent decree in place yet, so you
negotiated adaptive management from the beginning. It seems far
harder for communities that stepped up sooner and more quickly
to reopen those decisions and incorporate modified compliance
schedules, but I think that part of the equation is a longer
period of time to conduct the work so that financial components
can be extended on the pocketbook.
A second question is how you get equity on the sources of
pollutants. You are correct that we are reducing the nutrients
at Blue Plains. The challenge is that over time, the percentage
of nutrients going into the Chesapeake Bay from the big urban
wastewater treatment plants has declined dramatically because
we have been successful. We know that if we----
Ms. Norton. And somehow that ought to be rewarded.
Mr. Hawkins. And the way it is rewarded, and we are proud
of it, and we have stepped forward and every community at this
table has done a lot to protect the waters of the system. But
what we know if we decrease nutrients from Blue Plains to zero,
the Chesapeake Bay wouldn't be remarkably cleaned up because we
are no longer the major source.
The major sources are the nonpoint source, the runoff from
other sources way out in the hinterlands of the Chesapeake Bay.
So I think one of the challenges that we faced is that the
Clean Water Act wasn't fundamentally written with those sources
in mind.
I grew up in Ohio, in Cleveland. I visited the Cuyahoga
River in 1969 and looked at it in the year where it burned for
a week, so I know the problem that we were trying to resolve. I
wrote a letter to President Nixon that year saying that, as did
everyone in my class, that we had to clean up that problem. It
should not stand.
The law was written to solve pollutants from point sources,
whether industry or municipal treatment facilities. It is very
unclear, and EPA is struggling with it, but to get parallel
reductions from what are now the prevailing sources of
pollutants for nutrients into the water bodies is a much more
difficult challenge. And if you look at where the money is
being spent, it is being spent disproportionately on urban
populations or those that send waste to a treatment facility,
rather than those that flow directly to the river.
Ms. Norton. But you feel mandated to continue to invest in
the technology that goes after smaller and smaller increments?
Mr. Hawkins. We are absolutely mandated to do that. We will
meet those requirements. The hard core reality of every system
at this table is that we meet the mandates where we don't spend
the money on that trunk line on Florida Avenue, which causes
the flooding in our city, which is what the citizens really are
desperate----
Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, could just ask one more question.
I would like to know if you wanted to do a pilot on green
technology, you are now spending billions of dollars on these
huge tunnels that is 20th-century technology. We understand why
it is being used, tests that it is approved. Do you believe
that green technology would significantly lower the increases
you are encountering and have you any evidence to support that
notion?
Mr. Hawkins. I am not yet convinced. The reason we are
seeking to open our consent decree to do a pilot in the
District is we are not certain about what the costs are likely
to be. We are not saying to any of the stakeholders that we are
likely to save a lot of money if we use low-impact development,
because it is quite expensive to be doing a dispersed low-
impact system that is broad enough to contain that much
stormwater. We do think, however, that the multiple benefits
that come from the expenditure, when you are doing work that
affects the surface of the city, the city streets, the air
quality, the stormwater retention that otherwise causes the
direct flooding, the jobs, the long-term jobs, you cannot
outsource jobs that have to be maintained for a city street.
The job creation in the city, the multiple benefits that
come from a low-impact development far exceed those of the
tunnel. We are not certain yet that it actually will save
money. That is why we want to do the pilot to get in hand
measurable costs that we can then model to a full-scale
implementation.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much.
Mr. Gibbs. Mrs. Napolitano.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very interesting
conversations. I also come from a small city, past mayor, so I
understand some of the local frustrations. And I also sat on a
sanitation board that dealt with the water recycling and the
landfills and the utilization of new technology to be able to
cut the costs down of the delivery of service to the
ratepayers.
Mr. Becker, in the West, we do have a unique set of water
challenges, and recent reports have shown our water supply is
diminishing while the demand is increasing. Population
continues to increase, at least in California.
How will you, as Mayor of Salt Lake City, are reintegrating
reuse and recycling into your city's water planning efforts?
Mr. Becker. Thank you. Increasingly in our city and in our
region we are tapping every conceivable means that we can to
use water efficiently.
Mrs. Napolitano. How? Specifics.
Mr. Becker. We are doing a whole variety of things. Part of
it is institutional. Part of it is us coordinating our water,
part of it using our groundwater supply. But we know there are
limits there. As we are seeing climate change, we are having to
adapt in our watersheds to our water supply system.
We are increasingly--we have changed our rate structure. We
have gone to a declining block, we have gone to an inverted
block system where the more water you use now, the more water
you pay for. We have reduced our water use in the last 5 years
by more than 20 percent in Salt Lake City just by changing our
rate structure, by educating our community, and by offering
incentives for people to change their landscaping and their
water use and irrigation habits as well.
So we find that we can do a lot to improve, certainly, our
water systems. But as has been mentioned here, this is a
problem that we face really for all of us.
Mrs. Napolitano. Especially Western States.
Mr. Becker. Certainly in the Western States, where as you
know we are the second most arid State, we rely so heavily on
using our water well, and we are intent on continuing to do
that and improve our efficiencies. But we really need
congressional action as well. This just can't happen by us
working locally and trying to work with our EPA.
Mrs. Napolitano. And your water smart investments.
Mr. Becker. I am sorry.
Mrs. Napolitano. And your water smart investments?
Mr. Becker. Continually. Whether it is in simple things
like metering, whether it is in our irrigation systems within
our city, for our parks, we are continually investing and
making major investments on water issues.
Mrs. Napolitano. One of the things you mentioned to us is
climate change, and that was a big bugaboo word around here. It
is happening, and I think many States are beginning to wonder
how they are going to be able to deal with the next cycle of
drought. And then, of course, rains and floods and all that
will other good stuff.
What about groundwater, your aquifers? What is the status
and have you worked with USGS? And how are things being the
able to store it, because as the drought continues, the heat
that is going through the United States is evaporating a lot of
the surface water. Have you looked at, are you looking at being
able to identify your aquifers and what the status is and be
able to recharge?
Mr. Becker. We have. Thank you. Groundwater is essential
for us, we have a very good sense of our groundwater system in
our valley, coming out of our mountains and our recharge areas,
and protecting those recharge areas is essential, making sure
we don't tap too much of our groundwater is essential too,
because the Great Salt Lake will start to move towards and
interfere with the water we can use for potable water.
So we know how much water we have. We are tapping it
extensively, but if we overtap it, we are going to face dire
consequences in terms of the water supply.
Mrs. Napolitano. Overdrafting is a problem, isn't it?
Mr. Baker, same question but the broader statewide
perspective, and can you discuss how in the area west in the
State of Utah you are dealing with decreased water availability
and increasing demand, and how will integrated planning help
your efforts in Utah?
Mr. Baker. Well, I think one thing we need to do is
integrate this wet weather discussion that we are having for
the NPDES permits, with groundwater, which is not a federally
permitted authority, and with drinking water.
When I get back to my office tomorrow I will have sitting
on my desk the first integrated plan to be submitted by a
community in Utah. It is not a wastewater treatment plant
issue, it is not a wet weather issue, but it is a water quality
issue resulting from water that is coming out of a mine that is
heavily laden with metals, and those metals are causing
problems, according to the TMDL we did. This really becomes a
water quality issue, so we need to have a broader perspective
of this. It is not wet weather, it is not wastewater treatment
plants, it is not just combined sewer, but it is water quality.
Mrs. Napolitano. Which mine might that be, sir?
Mr. Baker. Pardon me.
Mrs. Napolitano. Which mine might that be?
Mr. Baker. Well, it is outside of Park City, and so we are
going to need to figure out how to deal with this. And just to
answer another question that Congresswoman Norton had, well,
how do we do this?
One thing, we struggle with nutrients in Utah and we don't
struggle with wet weather. Mayor Becker mentioned Utah is the
second driest State in the country. Wet weather is a blessing,
not a curse. But this nutrient issue is ubiquitous across the
country. What we are planning on doing with our nutrient issue,
and this will help, I think, address some of the cost issues,
is we are not going to go full throttle from the very
beginning.
We are going to do an incremental approach and have an
adaptive management approach that will allow us to gauge the
success and benefits of nutrient removal in a cost-effective
way. The Jordan River bisects Mayor Becker's city, runs the
lengths of the city. Most of the wastewater generated in the
State of Utah flows down that river and ultimately into the
Great Salt Lake.
For a little over a dollar a month per user, we will be
able to eliminate two-thirds of the phosphorus loading that
goes into that river and ultimately to the Great Salt Lake that
is causing problems. And then we will take a step back and see
if that is good enough, or if we need to go to the next step.
So this adaptive management approach I think is going to be
a key element in making integrated planning successful, and
without breaking the bank.
Mrs. Napolitano. One of the questions that was answered by
Mr. Hawkins deals with the source, the prevailing source. We
found in California that a lot of this comes from industry,
from agriculture, that is contaminating some of our water.
California gets three sources of water, southern California.
Northern California provides us with the Bay Delta, which right
now is a big issue in California. And then one is the Colorado
River and the other is groundwater. And somehow we are trying
to wean ourselves off of imported water by doing more
recycling, conservation, education and desalination.
Now, any of those areas we need to be able to get
assistance, because as you have pointed out, many of the cities
are too small to be able to know how to navigate all the
paperwork that is necessary and be able to be successful
without hiring attorneys, consultants and things that they
cannot afford. So somehow we need to be able to understand that
for the smaller communities. However, the larger communities
also have a problem. So somehow we need to be able to take all
of this into consideration.
However, I have not heard anybody say anything about what
about our Native Americans? What about their water, which
sometimes they truck it in to be able to provide drinking water
for the reservations. Those are issues that sometimes we don't
talk about, and I think we need to be able to concern ourselves
with all Americans, not just those that fall in the communities
that are incorporated but all the unincorporated and tribal
areas.
With that, Mr. Chair, I yield back and I hope to be able to
get some answers later on. Thank you.
Mr. Gibbs. Representative Edwards, do you have any
questions?
Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all
of our witnesses.
I have just a couple of questions. I think there is no
question we all know all across the country that we have huge
infrastructure needs, we have no money, and we are running the
risk--I live in Maryland, and maybe I can drink some clean
water there, but I could go someplace else and it not be clean.
And I don't think that any of us want to be in that place. We
have all traveled to countries where you can drink water in one
city, but you better make sure to take your bottled water in
another city. That is not the United States and we don't want
that.
The problem, at least one of the challenges, is how do you
finance all of the infrastructure? When you start telling
customers that we have infrastructure that dates back to the
beginning of the last century, and we have got to change that
and it is going to cost billions of dollars, and at the end of
the day, they know at least some of that, most of it, probably
all of it, is going to have to come out of their pockets, no
one wants to do that.
The same thing happens, we just had a major storm here in
the metropolitan area, and we know that we have deep needs for
electrical infrastructure, and nobody wants to pay for that
because it costs a lot of money. The Federal Government, I
think, has to be a real partner there, but that is still
taxpayer money.
We heard from a couple of our witnesses, and I can
understand this, that at a local level, because of those huge
financial constraints, that it also means that some of our
small cities, and I have about 20-some of them, little
municipalities that also have infrastructure needs, and they
can't afford it.
So I wonder if any of you can talk about the integrated
permitting process as a way to facilitate consideration of
innovative financial approaches to financing the
infrastructure. I would note that in a recent analysis of green
water infrastructure in Philadelphia, it actually showed that a
stormwater fee that was combined with a credit for managing
water onsite could yield about $400 million in private
investment opportunity.
So, if you have some ideas about it, I would appreciate
your sharing them with the committee.
Mr. Becker. Mr. Chairman, if I may, members of the
committee and Congresswoman Edwards, there is a real practical
solution that can help us get there within the integrated
planning process.
Our coalition has proposed a 15- to 20-community pilot
demonstration project approach on an annual basis for the next
5 years within the context of the integrated planning
framework, where EPA is leading the process.
The showcase community approach that exists today places
all of the financial burden of developing new ideas, of seeing
if the alternative approaches work, in determining whether
creative approaches to this solution, financial, capital,
infrastructure, green infrastructure, green build, otherwise
will work. The burden is still all on the local communities to
take the risk, financially and otherwise. And if what we choose
doesn't work, not only are we out the money, but we are still
facing mandates and we are still facing enforcement and the
like.
We need EPA to lead on this process. We want EPA to lead.
And I will admit that there has been a sea change in the
approach in our own interaction with the EPA and the like. But
EPA's approach to showcase communities is still saying let's
look at the examples where local communities have found
something that has worked, and let's showcase that. Well, you
still have to have enough money and enough resources and access
to expertise and time to be able to make that work, and the
majority of the communities, and the last count I heard was
there were 781 communities nationwide that are facing this
issue at one level or another, the vast majority don't have the
ability to do that.
We need EPA to lead in partnering with us, to bring their
expertise to the table, to help show local communities what the
answers are, or to allow us to explore alternatives without
risk of loss or further risk of enforcement for having chosen
the wrong approach if it turns out that it doesn't work. We
need to develop these alternatives over the next 5 years to
make them work.
Ms. Edwards. I appreciate that. Let me just reclaim my time
because I would like to hear a response from Mr. Hawkins and
your view about what it is that we could do to use some
innovation.
Mr. Hawkins. On the financing side, we do, in fact, in the
District, have an impervious area charge like Philadelphia. One
of the other things we have done in the District is create a
sustainable energy utility, which is something you could also
perhaps do on the water side, which it does need an upfront
investment to capitalize the utility. Then you make
investments, particularly on the drinking water side, where
then you can save money on reduced consumption. The saved money
pays back the utility to help fund the next project. And if the
private sector brings in half, so you do sharing, then the
dollars that you put into the utility, the sustainable utility,
whether it is water or energy, can be sustained and grow.
The impervious area charge is the largest and fastest
growing--not the largest, but the fastest growing part of our
bill by far, because it is exclusively covering the $2.6
billion project. We haven't created it yet like Philadelphia,
but creating an incentive that if you do more to manage
stormwater on your property, you pay less of an impervious
charge. That is another way where there is an incentive for
someone to reduce their bill by doing something that actually
reduces the stormwater and can cleanse it at the same time. So
both of those are innovative approaches that do work.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you. I want to thank the first panel. It
was excellent testimony. I want to move on to the second panel,
because I think that is where we really need to have some
focus. Hopefully we will be done before votes at 1 o'clock.
Thank you again for taking your time to come and give this very
important testimony.
At this time our second panelists can come up to the table.
Welcome to the committee. First off I want to thank you for
being here for the past 2 hours and listening to the first
testimony, because hopefully it was beneficial to you in your
role and your responsibilities as you administer the Clean
Water Act.
Our second panel, we have Ms. Nancy Stoner. She is the
acting assistant administrator for the Office of Water for the
United States Environmental Protection Agency, and Ms. Cynthia
Giles, the assistant administrator for the Office of
Enforcement and Compliance of the United States EPA.
TESTIMONY OF NANCY K. STONER, ACTING ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR,
OFFICE OF WATER, UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY;
AND CYNTHIA GILES, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF
ENFORCEMENT AND COMPLIANCE ASSURANCE, UNITED STATES
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Mr. Gibbs. Welcome, Ms. Stoner. The floor is yours.
Ms. Stoner. Thank you, Chairman Gibbs, Ranking Member
Bishop and members of the subcommittee, for the opportunity to
appear before you today, along with Assistant Administrator
Giles to discuss the U.S. EPA's efforts to achieve better water
quality improvements through integrated municipal stormwater
and wastewater planning and innovative approaches for meeting
our infrastructure challenges.
We were pleased to hear from the other witnesses at today's
hearing, and look forward to moving forward with the integrated
water quality planning approach as a way to offer
municipalities an opportunity to meet Clean Water Act
requirements in a more effective manner and in a way that
achieves the highest priority goals more quickly.
The EPA, States, and municipalities have often focused on
each Clean Water Act requirement individually for protecting
water quality. This approach may have the unintended
consequences of constraining a municipality from implementing
the most cost-effective solutions in a sequence that addresses
the most serious water quality issues first. Since last fall,
we have been working to clarify the integrated planning
approach by developing a framework document to help explain how
the Agency will work with State and local governments.
On June 5 of 2012, after holding a series of public
workshops around the country to gain input on the approach, we
signed a memorandum to EPA regions that transmitted the final
framework. The framework outlines the principles we will follow
in implementing the integrated approach and provides further
guidance on developing and implementing effective integrated
plans under the approach.
It also outlines new flexibility to pursue innovative cost-
saving solutions, like green infrastructure, that will help
communities develop plans that prioritize their investments in
stormwater and wastewater infrastructure.
Let me briefly talk about what the integrated planning
approach is and is not. The integrated approach is optional,
not mandatory. Any community satisfied with its current
approach to water and wastewater requirements can continue that
approach.
The integrated approach does not entail lowering existing
Clean Water Act standards. Rather, the approach will take
advantage of the flexibilities in existing EPA regulations,
policies and guidance to allow municipalities to sequence
implementation of their Clean Water Act obligations to protect
water quality and public health at a reduced cost.
The integrated approach relies on Clean Water Act permits
as critical tools for protecting water quality and achieving
Clean Water Act compliance. Permits can include the use of
multiyear compliance schedules and can incorporate innovative
solutions that best achieve public health and environmental
goals while meeting the needs of the community. They also can
be flexible and include the adaptive management approaches that
several advocated for today.
Integrated plans can be tailored to the needs of the
community, and can include innovative techniques. EPA's
existing regulations and policies provide flexibility for the
EPA and States to design solutions that meet community needs.
These solutions can include innovative tools such as green
infrastructure techniques and asset management approaches, that
is actually what George Hawkins was talking about, asset
management approaches, that provide a better basis for
decisionmaking on a utilitywide basis and support the long-term
financial sustainability of the municipality.
We at the EPA look forward to working with this
subcommittee, our State colleagues, municipalities and many
other partners, stakeholders and citizens to implement the
integrated planning approach. We are committed to maintaining
improvements in water quality and moving forward toward full
attainment of water quality and human health goals.
Thank you again for inviting me to testify. Assistant
Administrator Giles or I will be happy to respond to any
questions you may have.
Mr. Gibbs. Ms. Giles, you are welcome.
Ms. Giles. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for giving me
the opportunity to make a few comments. I am happy to be here
today along with my colleague, Nancy Stoner, to talk about the
collaboration between EPA's headquarters and regional
permitting and enforcement programs to improve water quality
through integrated municipal stormwater and wastewater
planning.
We have made tremendous progress towards cleaner water over
the last four decades. Our goal is to continue to make progress
on clean water goals shared by communities across the country
by working together to make smart choices about priorities,
take advantage of innovations, and make sure that the most
important work is done first. These principles are the
foundation of the integrated municipal stormwater and
wastewater planning approach that we have now finalized and are
implementing.
We listened to States, cities, wastewater utilities and
many others in developing the final framework. We heard and
have responded to the need for flexibility to adopt affordable
and commonsense sequencing of work, to address the most
important problems first, and respond to new information over
the course of the community's implementation of its plan.
We were also encouraged that communities are increasingly
embracing green infrastructure as part of an affordable
solution to protect water and revitalize communities, and the
framework supports those choices.
We agree that the best answer will vary by community, and
that solutions need to be tailored to each situation. Sometimes
a permit will be the way to accomplish these objectives,
sometimes an enforcement agreement, and sometimes a combination
of approaches will work best.
We have reached agreements with many cities across the
country, including Indianapolis, Cleveland, St. Louis, Atlanta,
Philadelphia, Chattanooga, and many others that include these
new green infrastructure and integrated planning approaches. We
look forward to working with these communities and many others
who would like to pursue an integrated approach.
I am happy to respond to any questions.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you. You heard the first panel, and I
appreciate you listening to them so you got it firsthand. I
think I will start off. You heard the first panel discuss about
the pilot community demonstration projects and what, Ms.
Stoner, what you said back in December at our first hearing.
Where are we, where is the EPA on that? Because it seems
like to me if you can do that, that would highlight what is
going on, it would maybe work out the kinks and finesse it a
little bit to make this work, because I know you are committed
to making this integrated permitting process work. But where
are we on setting up some demonstration projects like pilots to
work through this?
Ms. Stoner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, we are in a
position where we have not turned anyone away yet from this
voluntary program. So all are welcome. So it is not an
exclusive list, but we are doing the very best we can to work
with the resources we were given, to work with those
communities that have stepped forward and indicated that they
would like to work with us. That is where we are.
Mr. Gibbs. What are you doing to reach out to them? Are you
taking the initiative, or are you waiting for them to come to
you?
Ms. Stoner. We are absolutely reaching out to communities.
Every regional office has been asked to work through the
States. The permitting authorities in 46 States--the States do
the permitting in 46 States, and we have asked the regions to
reach out to the States and the States to reach out to the
communities. We have done Webinars. We have done five
stakeholder meetings. We are getting the word out and asking
people to come work with us.
Mr. Gibbs. Do you have a response coming back? Do you think
you will have some setup here in the next 30-60 days going
forward? What kind of response are you getting?
Ms. Stoner. Well, we are already working with a number of
communities on both the permitting side and on the enforcement
side, so we have a number that have already stepped forward and
we are working with them.
Mr. Gibbs. OK.
Ms. Giles. I would agree. We had quite a number of
discussions ongoing, some of which have reached conclusion,
such as in the city of Seattle, and some of which are ongoing.
So we are working with Philadelphia, and I believe George
Hawkins mentioned in DC, and many other communities,
Cincinnati.
Mr. Gibbs. I would appreciate it if you would keep my
subcommittee staff up to date on the progress of that so we can
monitor that, especially since we aren't going to be here much.
A lot of things came up, the consent decrees. Is it
possible, I think your intent, we have issues with the
permitting. It is 3-5 years, extending that, versus consent
decrees. Let's go, for example, a municipality entity is under
a consent decree. Is the EPA willing to show flexibility if
that entity is willing to develop an integral plan? What are
you allowed to do and what are you willing to do?
Ms. Giles. Absolutely. We have said repeatedly, and we will
repeat again here, that we are happy to work with communities
under existing agreements to adopt an integrated plan, and we
have some record of amending existing agreements to do that,
most recently, Indianapolis and Atlanta.
Mr. Gibbs. You heard in the first panel about the third-
party lawsuits. Can you maybe expound on that, what the
challenges are there, if it is something we could address. I
guess what I am saying, if an entity, city, whatever, has a
plan and the EPA, you are all working hand in hand, you have
set the goals and they are making their benchmarks, and a third
party comes in and says hey, you are not doing it fast enough,
even though the affordability and all that, can you expound on
what those challenges are to help the committee understand that
a little better?
Ms. Stoner. Let me address the permitting side of it. So
under the Clean Water Act there is a permit shield provision.
So any permitted entity that is in compliance with its Clean
Water Act permit is shielded by the law from third-party
lawsuits. We think we have the flexibility now under the
existing statute and regulations to include compliance
schedules in NPDES permits that will enable entities to be
incorporating those long-term plans right into their permits in
the 5-year increments, and to do adaptive management as they go
along and learn more. So we believe we have the flexibility
now.
There is one caveat to that, which is a State which does
not allow that flexibility may not enable the permit to have
that occur. But every State can allow those compliance
schedules to be in permits if the State chooses to do so, and
they can make that change now for any requirements that are not
allowed now to be included in those 5-year permits.
Mr. Gibbs. Are you at the EPA considering on the integrated
permitting process to open it up more than just as you heard in
the testimony, drinking water, groundwater, if they have
challenges with that, or some of the other things they have to
come into compliance with, just besides the sewer overflows,
for example?
Ms. Stoner. Well, our focus right now is integrated the
wastewater and the stormwater, but that does include those
asset management issues that we were talking about earlier. So
the full range of wastewater and stormwater, whether it is an
obligation or whether it is providing the infrastructure
necessary to provide those sanitary services to the public, all
of that can be considered right now. That is the focus of our
approach.
Mr. Gibbs. To follow up a little bit, in the testimony I am
trying to recollect here a little bit, the affordability piece,
is EPA looking to address that? You heard from every panelist I
believe that you get wealthier people in the community and
poorer people, and unfortunately the people on the lower end of
the economic scale get hit hardest, and some of the formula
determining it, the 2 percent. I also couple that with would
EPA be more willing to look at the total integrating plan, the
2 percent, and not be in silos for each project?
Ms. Stoner. So the framework already talks about allowing
consideration of disproportionate burdens on portions of the
community. It also allows consideration of State and local
tools as well as the financial capability assessment guidance.
And that number that people were referring to repeatedly, the 2
percent median household income, is not a floor or a ceiling.
It is just a guide. So I believe the flexibility already exists
in the framework that they are looking for.
What I heard a lot of people saying is that they would like
to have more resources available, and certainly the needs are
great. But we think we have the flexibility now under the
framework to address this as best as we can in partnership with
State and local communities using the resources available.
Mr. Gibbs. OK. I will turn it over to Ranking Member
Bishop.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you both for your testimony, but more important, thank you both
for the work that you have done over the last several months on
this integrated framework. I think the testimony that we heard
from the previous panel, which, as I said before, was nearly
unanimous in its both endorsement and appreciation of the work
that you have done, is something we don't often hear in this
committee. So I thank you for that.
I just have two questions. The first is we now have a
framework. We are going to have to test that framework. So my
question is to what extent is the EPA prepared to be
additionally flexible going forward as we see whether or not
the framework does, in fact, result in the desired outcomes or
whether we are going to need to either introduce additional
flexibility or whatever?
Ms. Giles?
Ms. Giles. Yes. We designed the framework so that we would
allow that additional flexibility, and I think one of the
things that you heard from all of the witnesses today on the
first panel is the importance of being able to adapt to the
specific circumstances of a community. So that is why we
designed it in the way that we did, so that we can work with
each community to try things that will work for them. And as we
go, we will learn by doing. And I think the communities will
also learn from each other about which programs work well.
Mr. Bishop. OK. Thank you. Ms. Stoner, anything to add?
Ms. Stoner. No. I agree.
Mr. Bishop. All right. The second question. We heard from
Mr. Portune and others in the first panel about whether they
would be called model cities or showcase communities or pilot
projects or whatever. So my question is this. One of the
mantras of this committee has been that we should be doing more
with less. Now, we are certainly providing the less. The EPA's
budget, if the chairman's mark in the House Appropriations
Committee is enacted into law, it would result in a $1.4
billion reduction year-to-year under fiscal year 2012, a 17-
percent reduction in 1 year.
So my question is, if we agree that this notion of having
showcase communities is a really good one, that is worthy of an
effort, does the EPA have the capacity, do you have the
financial capacity to invest in these showcase communities, or
would such an effort require additional appropriations, or
would you have to hurt some other activity of the EPA in order
to undertake this one?
Ms. Stoner. As you are probably aware, the State Revolving
Funds that are the principal source of funding we have under
the Clean Water Act and the 319 funds, they all go to the
States and they are distributed according to formulas, and we
couldn't just shift money to particular communities even if we
thought----
Mr. Bishop. I am sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, actually
maybe I do. Are you saying that this is a State-based decision
as opposed to a Federal decision?
Ms. Stoner. Well, it is the Federal law. The grant money
goes from us to the States, and then the States distribute it.
And there is no specific pot of money set aside anywhere that I
know of for pilot communities on this.
Mr. Bishop. So to be clear, if we were to engage in pilot
communities, that would require an investment on the part of
the States, from their SRF funds, in order to make that happen.
Is that correct?
Ms. Stoner. Yes, if they chose to do that.
Mr. Bishop. And we are handicapping, or handcuffing the
States by virtue of the huge reductions that are proposed for
the SRFs. So this notion, even if it is a really, really good
one of pilot communities or test communities, would be really
hard to pull off. Is that a fair assessment?
Ms. Stoner. There is no new money available for this.
Mr. Bishop. I think that is a yes. OK, thank you very much.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Gibbs. Representative Napolitano.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And after that, the
administrative handling fees for the State upon the entities if
there were to be such a program, or I mean if they were going
to be able to do that. So that if you sent it to the State and
the States get a certain amount, 5, 10, whatever percent for
administering the programs to the cities, so you lose money in
that area, right?
Ms. Stoner. The amount of money is fixed, so if one city
gets more, another city gets less.
Mrs. Napolitano. Well, you heard some of the questions that
I had posed to some of--and thank you very much. Your western
representatives are great with my communities, especially my
councils of government. They have done an outstanding job. I
know years ago they came to me because they were being asked to
comply with the runoff to the ocean, and they felt that it was
very hard for the cities to be able to keep sacred stuff from
going to the ocean and then be fined by EPA, so they came to
some agreement in that area. So thank you for that.
Last December, I had asked you a question regarding the 28
different agencies that deal with the water issues and how does
the integrated framework memorandum address integration across
all these various agencies of the Federal Government that deal
with water, and how do we know that we can help in being able
to clarify or assist in making it a little better, less
paperwork, less work, less funding, and as was pointed out,
expensive forms, time consumed in that.
Ms. Stoner. We do have a number of efforts that are efforts
at integrating the Federal agencies and their approach to
working with communities. That is actually the centerpiece of
what the urban waters effort is, which was created by
Administrator Jackson, and it is to work with communities on
what their priorities are in terms of reviving their water
bodies and access to those water bodies and arraying all of the
Federal agencies that can help put that together through the
various mechanisms they have.
Mrs. Napolitano. You did make mention that you do reach out
to some of the communities to be able to help them learn more,
but I am sure, as with everybody else, your funds have been
consistently diminished to be able to do that outreach. Well,
that is no different for the States' current standing,
especially in California where many cities are going bankrupt.
So there is very little way for them, or no way at all, for
them to be able to implement any of the requirements. So this
then becomes a great issue for entities.
And then again, going back to the disenfranchised
communities such as the tribes and the colonias, which have no
Government, the colonias, so-to-speak, and the tribes, because
sometimes they do not have the ability to be able to navigate
the Federal system. Can you give some examples of how the
integrated planning might be beneficial to these entities to be
smarter and more efficient in the development and use of water,
and how are you going to deal with them, what outreach or
education will you be providing?
Ms. Stoner. So we do provide funding to tribal nations,
with running--can you hear me now? How about now?
Mrs. Napolitano. I think your system is gone. You can just
speak up. I think somebody might have leaned on something.
Ms. Stoner. We do work with tribal nations. We do have some
funding to provide to them to continue the funding to assist
tribes in developing water quality standards and protecting
those tribal waters. I think this kind of approach that we have
will help all communities----
Mrs. Napolitano. I am sorry to interrupt, but my time is
coming up. What about the nonfederally recognized tribes.
Ms. Stoner. The funding does go to federally recognized
tribes.
Mrs. Napolitano. Only the federally recognized, and the
others are out of luck?
Ms. Stoner. Just the federally recognized. That is my
understanding.
Mrs. Napolitano. That can create a problem, because there
is the issue of health, and that is maybe something we need to
be able to get more in tune with. There is a whole bunch of
other questions, but can you describe some of the green
infrastructure tools that you are proposing that water agencies
use as part of the integrated solutions to the water
management?
Ms. Stoner. Absolutely. So green infrastructure is very
popular with communities we are working with. They find that
whether it is swales along roads, whether it is rain gardens,
green roofs, rain water harvesting, all kinds of approaches
that they can use to reduce pollution and augment water
supplies. But I think communities drive economic
revitalization. We find it is very popular in a lot of
communities and want to integrate that into their existing
plans.
Mrs. Napolitano. A lot of this new technology coming up,
being able to utilize solar panels or other means of being able
to produce energy that will cut the cost of, say, the pumping
and other stuff--there you go, are you working with any of the
entities that are making these groundbreaking new technologies
available and being able to, not promote necessarily an item or
a business, but being able to cut the usage of electricity, for
instance, to do some of the work?
Ms. Stoner. Yes. We are doing the best we can in terms of
providing technical assistance. Just last week we provided
$950,000 in technical assistance to communities who want to
know how to get going on green infrastructure, how to evaluate
what they can do to remove local barriers. I was just up at a
Water Environment Federation conference on new technologies in
stormwater management just last week also in Baltimore. I think
there is a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of efforts being made
both inside and outside the Government to disseminate knowledge
about these technologies so everyone can benefit from them.
Mrs. Napolitano. I am sure you do--just a second more, Mr.
Chair--you know a lot of those new technologies. But how would
an entity that has no idea of how to get that information, how
would they be able to know where it is? Do you give it to the
Members of Congress, do you give it to the cities themselves,
is it published in the Conference of Mayors, the National
League of Cities, so they can disseminate it to those that
don't have your Web site, your email address or any other way
of getting in touch to provide this information to help
themselves?
Ms. Stoner. We do all of those things that you are talking
about. We did just redesign our Web site to make it easier for
people to find information. We are putting together an
opportunity for green infrastructure, not too much, and so we
are working on getting the word out through all of those
different partners that you mentioned. And the other thing that
is happening is that there is lots of consultants who are also
letting people know about these technologies and how they can
help their communities in employing them to revitalize their
waterways.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the
indulgence. Thank you for your answers.
Mr. Gibbs. Representative Edwards.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Stoner and Ms.
Giles, I hope you don't take this personally. We want to hear
you.
Ms. Stoner, I wonder if you could tell me, I know here in
the metropolitan region, the Anacostia watershed runs through
Prince George's County where I live and represent, and last
year the county received $200,000 from EPA to implement several
green infrastructure initiatives. You had an opportunity to
visit one that was supported by the EPA out in Edmonston. And I
have to tell you for these small municipalities, when they get
that, what is really essentially a little bit of money, the
other municipalities, one, they want to compete with each
other, they want to outdo each other, they want to do green
infrastructure. Do you have plans to award competitive grants
to municipalities on an annual basis?
Ms. Stoner. I wish I could say yes to that. So we did just
give some money, it was actually technical assistance, to
communities wanting to do green infrastructure. We also have
urban waters grants. We also use Brownfields grants which can
include green infrastructure. There are some communities that
have gone to TIGER grants from the DOT to get that money. So it
is really about putting together the pieces, what is it that a
community wants to do, can it be funded through DOT, through
HUD, through EPA? USDA has an urban forestry program. So that
is what we are trying to help people do, is identify as the
resources are shrinking, what are the pots of money available
to help them do what they need to do.
Ms. Edwards. Well, I appreciate that, because these are
incredibly popular, and even with the technical assistance it
provides a little bit of resource to help communities
understand what they have the capacity to do and then to do
even the little things that can make a huge difference in a
watershed.
I introduced, and, of course, you know this because you
helped me work on it before you came to the EPA, H.R. 2030,
which is the Green Water Infrastructure Act, and among other
things it would establish three to five centers of excellence
for green infrastructure, these would be located throughout the
United States, on the theory that we have to do some of this
stuff regionally, that we can't think about one-size-fits-all
approach when it comes to green infrastructure because regions
are simply different.
You have recognized the need for establishing best
practices for water infrastructure, green water infrastructure.
Can you tell us what practices are emerging and how you have
been able to communicate that with stakeholders?
Ms. Stoner. Sure. I think there are increasing practices
that are finding out how to harvest that rainwater. For
example, putting the stormwater back in the ground where it can
replenish groundwater and subsurface flows. That is one of the
things I am seeing a lot of development in. We can continue to
see development in green roofs and blue roofs. We certainly
continue to see development in terms of methods for addressing
stormwater runoff from transportation, including storage under
streets, under roads.
So there is a lot of innovation that is occurring. There is
a lot of new businesses developing around these innovations.
And, as I believe George Hawkins said, these are also jobs.
People can build this and maintain it. Those are local jobs
that we can create through those efforts.
Ms. Edwards. One of the things that occurs to me is that
with the green infrastructure practices, in our earlier panel,
we heard a couple of allusions to, or skepticism expressed
about whether overall it would actually save money.
Do we have any more empirical data or are there things that
we can investigate to look at this question? Because I think,
particularly for the larger municipalities where we really need
a lot of work, for them to be able to adopt these practices,
there has got to be a real benefit in the cost. So how do you
track that?
Ms. Stoner. We are doing a lot of work to look at the cost
and the benefits. So the benefits are multimedia benefits. So
it is pretty complicated to look at them. But we are looking at
things like air pollution reduction, urban heat island
reduction, as well as water quality, flooding reduction,
enhanced water resources and so forth.
But we are also looking at the cost. And I do think that
green infrastructure can compare favorably from a cost
standpoint with a lot of traditional approaches, particularly
as you get to what is called the knee of the curve.
So as you move out on, for example, on the reductions in
combined sewer overflows or sanitary sewer overflows per
gallon, as again George Hawkins was talking about, you can get
more expensive costs out on the end of the curve. And green
infrastructure can help a lot with respect to being cost
favorable with respect to those additional reductions at the
end of the curve.
Ms. Edwards. I will submit another question for the record
that goes to how you deal with issues around good faith efforts
by local communities in the consent process, because that was
an issue that came up earlier, and I think it is important to
have EPA's perspective about how it looks at that in the
permitting process.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gibbs. We are going to wrap up. I appreciate you all
being here and listening to the first panel. I hope that, I am
sure you did, from the first panel catch their passion and
their dedication. And we are all committed to reach a goal of
cleaner water, but the challenges and demands that these local
communities go through and the expenses. Hopefully you heard
the message of flexibility, the affordability issue and the
challenges that they have, and we look forward to working with
you in the future as we implement the integral plans.
So thanks for being here, and this concludes this hearing.
[Whereupon, at 12:42 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]