[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 60 (Thursday, April 29, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4429-S4430]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      COMBINED SEWER OVERFLOW CONTROL AND PARTNERSHIP ACT OF 1999

  Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Smith-Snowe 
Combined Sewer Overflow Control and Partnership Act of 1999. If 
enacted, this bill will eliminate or appropriately control combined 
sewer overflow (CSO) discharges in this country by the year 2010. This 
legislation will also help ratepayers in at least 53 communities 
throughout the state of Maine and over 1,000 other communities around 
the country. Presently, over 43 million people in the U.S. are 
incurring the high costs of trying to overcome the problem of combined 
sewer overflows because of the lack of federal statute and funding to 
meet federal sewage treatment mandates for these CSO communities.
  Mr. President, CSOs are by far the single largest public works 
project in the history of almost every CSO community. When the Maine 
Municipal Association members met with me last month, they informed me 
of communities where people are facing paying more in sewer rates than 
they will owe in property taxes. This, to me, is unacceptable.
  Most, but not all, of the combined sewer systems are located 
primarily in the Northeast and Great Lakes areas where sewer lines and 
stormwater collection systems were first constructed in the 1800s and 
early 1900s. Typically, sewer lines designated to carry raw sewage from 
urban residential areas and business were laid first. These were 
followed by stormwater drainage systems designed to collect rainwater 
during storms to reduce or eliminate urban flooding. In many cases, 
sewer lines and stormwater conduits were connected into a combined 
sewer, which served as a single collection system to transport both 
sewage and stormwater. Eleven states in the two geographic areas of New 
England and the Great Lakes account for 85 percent of the water-quality 
problems attributed to CSOs nationwide.
  Sewer overflow problems arise mainly during wet weather, causing an 
overload of the systems, and the untreated or partially treated waste 
water discharges through combined sewer overflow outfalls into 
receiving waters such as rivers, lakes, estuaries and bays. The CSOs 
are the last remaining discharges from a point, or known, source

[[Page S4430]]

of untreated or partially treated sewage into the nation's waters.
  The federal government has been long on regulation and short on 
financial assistance. The CSO problem was first addressed when Congress 
revisited the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, better known as the 
Clean Water Act, almost three decades ago. The subsequent Clean Water 
Act Amendments of 1972 established the fundamental principles and 
objectives of a national wastewater management policy. To implement 
these goals, a national program was created to regulate the discharge 
of pollutant into surface waters, the National Pollutant Discharge 
Elimination System, or NPDES. This system required outfalls for 
industrial process waste and sewage from municipal treatment plants. 
Individual states were allowed to assume responsibility for the 
administration of NPDES once their permitting processes were approved 
by the EPA.
  Maine and 37 other states operate EPA-approved NPDES permitting 
programs. The law requires that state water-quality standards be 
consistent with federal policy, but, if necessary to achieve the act's 
objectives, states are allowed to impose water-quality standards more 
stringent than those required by federal regulations.
  Section 10(a)(4) of the CWA Amendments of 1972 explicitly linked the 
achievement of national water-quality goals to federal financial 
assistance for municipalities affected by the new mandate by creating 
the Construction Grants Program (CGP) that provided subsidies for the 
construction of publicly owned treatment works. In Section 516(b), the 
EPA was charged with administering the program, and was required to 
develop biennial estimates of the cost of construction of all needed 
publicly owned treatment works in each of the States.
  In the past, federal funds have paid for as much as 75 percent of the 
construction costs for water treatment and sewage facilities. In recent 
years, federal contributions have been limited to low interest loans 
rather than grants, through a revolving loan fund (SRF), and local 
ratepayers and taxpayers bear the burden of rehabilitating, upgrading 
and for operating costs. It is clear that more federal funding 
assistance is needed so that CSO communities can be given policy and 
financial tools with which to handle their ongoing CSO problem of sewer 
overflows into our rivers and bays.
  The Smith-Snowe CSO bill amends the Clean Water Act and addresses the 
problems faced by such CSO cities and towns, 45 in my state alone. The 
purpose of the bill is to move forward with technology-based controls 
that are the most cost effective and to make sure communities do not 
put in controls that are not actually needed. The bill seeks to codify 
the Environmental Protection Agency's rational approach to CSO control, 
its ``CSO Policy of April, 1994''. Codification is necessary since the 
implementation of EPA's CSO policy has been inadequate to date.
  The bill also provides congressional approval of the inclusion of 
realistic water quality standards compliance schedules for CSO control 
in permits and other enforceable documents issued as called for in the 
1994 EPA Control Policy.
  Initiation of the water quality standards/designated use review and 
revision process called for in EPA's Control Policy must also occur 
before requiring long-term CSO control plan implementation. The 
guidelines that the EPA is currently developing to assist communities 
for implementing measures for the control of CSOs are only just that, 
guidelines, and could potentially be changed after a community has 
spent hundreds of thousands of dollars following them. CSO communities 
need certainty, not changing guidelines after costly measures have 
already been taken.
  The bill also authorizes federal grant funding assistance for CSO 
communities to implement long term CSO controls.
  The problem of CSOs has been a long standing issue Mr. President, for 
which I cosponsored similar legislation in the House in the 102nd 
Congress. The CSO problem is not going to go away, but only become a 
bigger financial burden for our CSO communities.
  I want to thank my colleagues who have agreed to cosponsor the Smith-
Snowe CSO bill and urge those not yet cosponsoring to join us in 
support of this much needed legislation.

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