Engineering Inc. - January/February 2010 - 9

ACEC CHAIRMAN TIM PSOMAS: From your perspective, does Congress think it has done enough to handle the nation’s needs for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure upgrades? What more needs to be done? REP. EARL BLUMENAUER: The biggest challenge in water infrastructure is how to get people in Congress to focus on the issue. I’ve found that when we do, they are well aware of water quality problems. Across the country, 6 billion gallons of water are leaked every day, the equivalent of 9,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. And over 1,000 communities have problems with combined sewer overflows. When people think about health and economic development and the stability of our nation’s infrastructure, they recognize that we have a problem and should be doing more. What frustrates me, however, is that too many people do not have a sense of urgency. We’re trying to change that by helping people understand that the extreme weather events and droughts associated with climate change will create additional stress on systems already in poor repair. With this information, I suspect there will be more recognition of the urgency and a willingness to do more. ACEC PRESIDENT DAVE RAYMOND: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provided new funding to the states to supplement the State Revolving Funds for water and wastewater. How successful was that stimulus bill in jumpstarting infrastructure funding, and to what extent do we need to follow it up now with more activity on a sustained basis? BLUMENAUER: The stimulus bill was extraordinarily helpful, but did not go far enough. President Obama and his team inherited an unprecedented set of circumstances. We had been losing jobs every month for a year before Obama took office, and then the already struggling economy went over the cliff. They had to move quickly, even before they had a chance to have their team in place; we lit- Gary Landsman erally were preparing this before President Obama took office. However, I think we sent mixed messages. In an effort to reach out and be bipartisan and accommodating, the stimulus package was scaled down and included things that minimized the infrastructure piece. In the House, we tried to have a larger portion devoted to infrastructure, but ran into conflicting interests: People wanted all the work done tomorrow; people wanted more safeguards. But if you step back and take a broader look, you’ll see that the stimulus package has made a difference in every state. Because of the long-range nature of infrastructure investment, it’s just now starting to peak and still is playing out. We’re going to see the benefits of this at least into the next quarter or the quarter after that, but it’s still not sufficient. That’s one of the reasons why I’m pushing the water infrastructure bill, and why we’re trying to focus on the transportation reauthorization. Right now, I’d give the stimulus package a B-minus, but I’d hate to think of where we would be if we didn’t have that money for health care, for energy, for water and for transportation. We really would be in worse shape without the recovery funding. PSOMAS: You are the author of a water infrastructure trust fund—the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act—that will create a new dedicated source of revenue to finance water infrastructure and environmental restoration in the United States. What are the benefits of this trust fund, and what is your prediction for passage of the legislation in this Congress? Right now, I’d give the stimulus package a B-minus. But I’d hate to think of where we would be without that money… the test of time. We were looking for something that would be walled off, unavailable for other purposes, something that would be deficit-neutral, yet would enable us to expand water infrastructure spending by $10 billion a year, for the State Revolving Fund and for clean wastewater treatment. Our proposal also contains special provisions that would help smaller communities and provide for research and development. After working with a couple hundred stakeholders, we arrived at funding sources that focused on users who either benefit from clean water or those who contribute to the need for extensive treatment. Each of them would pay a little bit, such as a fee on water-based beverages, and another on flushable products. We would have a tiny surcharge on all American industry that benefits from clean and safe water and couldn’t survive without it. Then there is the tricky area of pharmaceuticals. As more and more drugs are flushed into our wastewater system, we are slowly medicating the American population with trace elements of potentially very dangerous drugs. Since these not only are hazardous to our health, but also very expensive and hard to remove, we’d impose a small fee to address the increased costs of water treatment. Combined, these fees could result in $10 billion of revenue each year and could leverage billions of dollars more from the private sector in local communities’ bonding authority. If we use these fees to jump-start this program, we could be looking at a trillion dollars for water infrastructure over the next 20 years—investments that would add tremendous value to our communities, significantly improve public health and actually save money in the long run. RAYMOND: This is a critical time for transportation policy—current revenues in the Highway Trust Fund are insufficient JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2010 ENGINEERING INC. BLUMENAUER: We’ve been working on a water trust fund, something like the dedicated Highway Trust Fund, for three years, trying to create something that will stand
Engineering Inc. - January/February 2010

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