Thanks to G. Tracy Mehan III, executive director for government affairs at the American Water Works Association, who sent me this letter AWWA just sent to President-Elect Joe Biden.
Download AWWA letter to President-Elect Biden
I like the letter's organization - brief introduction to AWWA, then a number of issues, their descriptions, and then requests. I'll give the intro and then the first issue - recovery from the pandemic. The others issues are water infrastructure, workforce, protecting our sources of drinking water, and research. I'll then cut to the end, which discusses new regulations.
Here goes!
November 13, 2020
The Honorable Joe Biden
President-Elect, United States of America
1120 20th St. NW
Washington, DC 20036Attn: Dr. Cecilia Martinez, CEQ Review Team
Patrice Simms, EPA Review TeamDear President-Elect Biden,
The American Water Works Association (AWWA) congratulates you on winning the 2020 election. You will take office during a critical moment in U.S. history, and we are confident your commitment to research and science will serve you well.
AWWA’s 50,000 members are water professionals who represent the full spectrum of water utilities—small and large, rural and urban, municipal and investor-owned. We are an international, non-profit, scientific and educational society dedicated to protecting public health.
Our members provide safe drinking water through source water protection, treatment and distribution, and they safeguard the environment by cleaning wastewater and managing stormwater before returning it to our waterways. They also create the technology and equipment that keeps water flowing. The infrastructure our members maintain is the foundation on which our country’s communities are built. That infrastructure -- and our members -- need your help.
To help you and your team hit the ground running, we have developed a set of recommendations that will provide investments and attention needed to help address challenges the country faces in drinking water issues.
Recovery from the Pandemic
AWWA’s research found that revenue shortfalls at U.S. drinking water utilities may reduce economic activity by $32.7 billion and cost 75,000 to 90,000 private-sector jobs. Drinking water utilities will see revenues from customer payments drop by nearly $14 billion. This is the result of the elimination of water shutoffs for non-payment, increased late payments due to high unemployment, reductions in non-residential water demands, and the addition of fewer new customers due to economic stagnation.We appreciate the interest by some in Congress to send more relief funding to state and local governments—they need help, but public utilities do too. Last spring’s CARES Act did provide funding relief to state and local governments, the act also carried a provision prohibiting the use of those funds to offset lost local utility revenues. Many utilities, particularly those serving small to medium-sized communities, are at risk resulting from diminished operating revenues. Not only do these lost revenues mean local communities are less able to renew, repair, and sustain aging infrastructure and treatment facilities, but some are feeling the effects in their ongoing operating finances, which may result in the loss of operators that are needed to ensure the utility is in regulatory compliance.
We know it is critical to continue to provide water service to our communities during a pandemic. Consequently, water utilities themselves, or state or local governments across the country have instituted moratoria on disconnecting water service for non-payment during the COVID-19 crisis. However, we urge that if there is to be a mandatory moratorium on disconnecting water service, that such a moratorium be limited to the duration of the current coronavirus public health emergency plus a reasonable amount of time after the formal declaration expires. Some past legislative proposals would have imposed a moratorium on shutoffs indefinitely, for any public health emergency. In addition, they imposed a moratorium if any part of a local government accepted relief funds, even if none went to the water utility. It would be harmful for water utilities to be subject to such mandates if they have not received any benefits.
Providing financial assistance to people who are struggling to pay their water utility bills is needed now more than ever. In many states, water utilities are actually prevented from providing this assistance. Giving utilities a path forward to assist customers who are on low or fixed incomes and struggling with unemployment at this time would help us keep the water flowing at a time when it is needed the most.
Request: As you work with Congress on the next COVID-19 relief package, we urge you to make sure it includes the following:
1. Funding to help low-income customers pay their water bills during the current pandemic emergency;
2. Funding to help those local water utilities that have suffered significant revenue losses due to the pandemic, so that they can continue to operate and provide safe water services; and
3. A definitive limitation to any mandated moratorium on disconnection of water service for non-payment, if such as moratorium is included in a legislative package.
And now, the finish:
New Regulations
Federal drinking water standard setting is a scientific, risk-based and data-driven process that discerns what substances are to be regulated, and at what levels. This takes a significant amount of time, which can be at odds with perceived risk. This is where the research efforts mentioned above can accelerate and improve regulatory processes.We caution against setting a precedent of by-passing these established processes via legislative action. The nation tested that approach with the 1986 Amendments to the SDWA with untoward results. Those amendments required that EPA to set 25 new regulations every three years. Bob Perciasepe, former assistant administrator for water, said in congressional before the House Subcommittee on Health and Environment in 1996. “The current requirement to regulate 25 new contaminants every three years needs to be replaced with a scientifically defensible, risk-based approach. The current regulatory treadmill dilutes limited resources on lower-priority contaminants, and as a consequence, may hinder more rapid progress on high priority contaminants.”
That said, we are eager to follow the data on substances of concern wherever it may go in the investigative process so that we may know how to best protect public health. We will then prepare our members to comply with any new regulations. AWWA offers the expertise and field experience of its diverse membership to help you and your team address these multiple water issues. We have a government affairs office in Washington, D.C., that you can contact for immediate assistance. Our Executive Director for Government Affairs is Tracy Mehan, who can be contacted at 703 850-9401 or tmehan@awwa.org.
Sincerely,
Melissa Elliott
President
American Water Works Association
Read the whole letter.
I like that motto: "Dedicated to the World's Most Important Resource"
Enjoy!
"Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up in unforgivable." - Joe Biden
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