GOVERNMENT

Senate Bill, Hearings Spark Efforts To Renew Clean Water Act

• New legislation focuses on non-point-source pollution control and watershed planning, avoids wetlands protection issue

Lois R. Ember, C&EN Washington

One of the highest environmental priorities of the 103rd Congress is reauthorization of the Clean

Water Act, last amended in 1987. To that end and in the spirit of cooperation, the chairman of the Environment & Public Works Committee and the panel's rank­ing Republican member have again co-sponsored legislation they hope will avoid the rocky shoals that capsized their previous effort to renew the law.

The Water Pollution & Control Act of 1993, S. 1114, cosponsored by committee chairman Max S. Baucus (D.-Mont.) and

ranking minority member John H. Chafee (R.-R.L), "focuses on key remaining water pollution problems and provides promis­ing new approaches, like watershed man­agement and pollution prevention initia­tives, to address them/' explains Baucus. The bill "strikes a balance," he says, achieving environmental goals through "sound science and sound economics."

Describing the features of the bill, Sen. Baucus says it increases the funding lev­el for the state revolving loan fund and improves its operation; tightens limits on toxic pollution; encourages pollution prevention planning; improves pro­grams for controlling municipal pollu­tion from combined sewer overflows and storm water drains; and contains stricter enforcement provisions.

The bill's cosponsor, Sen. Chafee, cites two other "themes in this reauthorization bill that I would mention as being partic­ularly important." These themes—really two new programs—are non-point-source pollution control and watershed planning.

Highlights of the Clean Water The current law, P.L. 100-4:

• Requires states, with EPA guid­ance, to set limits on the quantity of specific pollutants that can be dis­charged into surface waters by mu­nicipal sewage treatment plants and industrial facilities, and then to issue discharge permits to each facility based on these limits.

• Authorizes federal funds (state revolving fund) to help states and cit­ies pay for building sewage treat­ment systems.

• Requires states to develop and execute plans to control non-point-source pollution.

• Establishes a federal program to protect wetlands.

The Baucus-Chafee Water Pollution Prevention & Control Act of 1993, S. 1114:

• Increases funding for the state sewage treatment revolving fund and

Act for the non-point-source pollution control program.

• Initiates new programs to pre­vent and control toxic water pollu­tion, including pollution prevention and a phaseout of certain toxic dis­charges.

• Augments controls over indus­trial discharges.

• Expands the authority to control nonpoint sources of pollution.

• Provides new authority for wa­tershed planning.

• Improves control programs for discharges from municipal sources, including a program to control raw sewage overflows from combined storm and sanitary sewers.

• Expands citizen suit authority, improves emergency response au­thority, and provides additional au­thority for enforcement against fed­eral facilities.

Rural and urban runoff, the prime con­tributors to non-point-source pollution, contribute "more than one half of our re­maining water pollution problems," Cha­fee says. The other Chafee theme is the bill's "new emphasis on living resources" evidenced by "new watershed planning and habitat protection provisions." Envi­ronmental Protection Agency Administra­tor Carol M Browner calls this "ecosys­tem protection," a topic she focused on in her confirmation hearings.

Amendments to a controversial provi­sion of the existing law, protection of wetlands, derailed reauthorization ef­forts last year. The Baucus-Chafee bill, as introduced, contains no provision for overhauling the current program that regulates the development of wetlands. An environment committee spokesman says that "by the time the bill moves out of committee it will contain a wetlands provision. It doesn't now because the rest of the bill was ready to go and Sen­ators Baucus and Chafee wanted to move ahead with hearings."

The day after Baucus and Chafee of­fered their bill, the Senate Environment Subcommittee on Clean Water, Fisheries & Wildlife, chaired by Sen. Bob Graham (D.-Fla.), held its first hearing in prepara­tion for marking up the bill. Among those testifying was Browner, who sup­ported but did not endorse the bill, even though Baucus and Chafee consulted closely with EPA while crafting their comprehensive reauthorization bill.

To reach the goal of passing a bill this year, Graham's panel plans to hold a se­ries of fast-track hearings tentatively scheduled for every other week until Congress' August recess. Graham wants to mark up the Baucus-Chafee bill by early fall and get a bill to the floor for debate by late fall.

EPA staffers are concerned about the tight hearing schedule, which is forcing the agency to develop positions rapid­ly on key clean water issues without an assistant administrator for water in place. Further complicating the situation

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Baucus: promising new approaches

is that EPA positions on some key issues have to be developed in concert with other federal agencies and then ap­proved by the Office of Management & Budget, a process that can take months.

The House has taken a slightly differ­ent tack. The prime mover, the House Public Works & Transportation Subcom­mittee on Water Resources & Environ­ment, convened a series of oversight hearings that ended in May. The panel is now in the process of drafting a reautho­rization bill.

A major issue hovering over—and prodding—reauthorization of the Clean Water Act is the future of federal assis­tance to states and localities. Such assis­tance, now in the form of grants to state-established funds that are used to make low-interest loans to localities, expires next year. These so-called state revolving loan funds are usually used for building wastewater treatment plants and other water pollution control projects.

Both the Administration and Con­gress agree that these grants need to be continued. The Administration, however, would like to change the program slightly to allow states and localities more flexibil­ity in how they spend the money. States, particularly those with older cities, would like to use the funds for projects to reno­vate combined sewage systems carrying both wastewater and storm water. Under the current program such projects are ex­cluded from funding.

The Baucus-Chafee bill addresses this issue. First it would increase the autho­rized level of appropriations to the state revolving loan fund to $2.5 billion in

1994, up from $2 billion this year. Au­thorizations would increase $500 million per year until the total authorized level of $5 billion is reached by 2000. Second, in addition to construction of wastewa­ter treatment plants, states would be able to use the funds for overhauling combined sewage systems and for non-point-source pollution control programs.

Other special features would allow states to use these revolving funds to cut costs to disadvantaged communities. And states would also be able to count technical and management assistance to small communities toward their re­quired 20% state match.

Speaking for the Administration, Browner has stressed the need to refocus its water pollution control effort from one that limits specific wastewater dis­charges—a focus on chemicals—to one that manages entire watersheds, espe­cially biological resources. "EPA strong­ly supports what we call the 'watershed protection approach/ which is a way of promoting a more holistic, targeted ap­proach to the complex and often persis­tent problems in watersheds around the nation," she told the Graham committee.

There is also strong support in EPA and in Congress for beefing up the cur­rent non-point-source pollution control program, which critics say is inconsis­tent and underfunded. Farmers and land developers are concerned, howev­er, that a strengthened program would have the federal government poking its head into local land-use decisions.

Chafee: emphasis on living resources

The Baucus-Chafee bill also addresses these two issues. The bill proposes a new program for voluntary watershed plan­ning that would allow states to identify impaired watersheds and develop plans to meet water quality goals. And the bill mandates that states revise and upgrade their non-point-source pollution control plans to address new activities that cause water pollution. These plans would pre­scribe best management practices for new uses and would require site-specific man­agement plans for existing agricultural sources in impaired watersheds.

Other provisions of the Senate bill es­tablish a new initiative—pollution pre­vention planning—and require tighter control on toxic discharges. EPA would be required to identify 20 chemicals re­quiring intensive pollution prevention efforts, and states and industry would be required to develop such plans for re­ducing these pollutants.

EPA would also be required to devel­op a list of bioaccumulative-toxic pollut­ants. Discharges of these pollutants would be phased out over a five-year period, unless no safe substitutes exist.

Also, EPA would be given added au­thority to establish industrial effluent guidelines. This authority would allow EPA to write guidelines that take into account in-plant process changes, pre­vent shifting of pollutants from one me­dium to another, and upgrade standards for conventional (as opposed to toxic) pollutants.

Addressing the Graham committee, Richard A. Conway, Union Carbide se­nior corporate fellow, warned that dur­ing reauthorization, Congress "should take a risk-based approach to determin­ing the appropriate focus." Specifically, he said, "flexibility through alternative compliance mechanisms should be pro­vided when overall risk at a site or local­ity is reduced on either a single or multi­media basis." The current law, he said, "lacks sufficient flexibility in regard to industry discharges to allow us to take full advantage of multimedia risk-reduc­tion opportunities."

The Administration has not yet official­ly endorsed the Baucus-Chafee bill and it is not expected to offer its own clean wa­ter reauthorization proposal. Further clouding the entire clean water debate is the absence of a top EPA official to ad­dress water pollution issues, and the shadow of the looming wetlands contro­versy. All this makes passage of renewal legislation problematic this year. •

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