Underground Construction - September 2017 - 10

WASHINGTONWATCH

By Stephen Barlas, Washington Editor

House, EPA Move To Address
Water Infrastructure

Both the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) and Congress took
steps to address additional funding
for water infrastructure projects.
A House committee unanimously
passed a bill on July 29 which would
raise the authorization ceiling on
the Drinking Water State Revolving
Fund (DWSRF), and make some other ostensibly positive changes to the
program. Meanwhile, the EPA finally
selected 12 state and local water
projects to receive funding from the
Water Infrastructure Finance and
Innovation Act (WIFIA) program,
which Congress created in 2014 but
has been slow to get off the ground.
The House Energy & Commerce
Committee passed the Drinking Water System Improvement Act which
authorizes the DWSRF at $1.2 billion in fiscal (FY) 2018, $1.4 billion
in FY 2019, $1.6 billion in FY 2020,
$1.8 billion in FY 2021 and $2 billion
in FY 2022. Authorizations set funding ceilings; appropriations set final
dollar levels.
The Congress appropriated
$906.8 million in fiscal years 2014
and 2015, and $863.2 million in fiscal 2016 and '17. President Trump
has asked for $2.3 billion to capitalize the State Revolving Funds
in 2018. That total would leave the
DWSRF at the fiscal 2017 level in
2018. Final congressional appropriations for fiscal 2018 won't be
established for months, but chances
are the DWSRF appropriation won't
hit the level in the new authorization, which must be agreed to by the
Senate.
Besides setting new, considerably higher authorization levels, the
House bill also expands eligible uses
of DWSRF to now cover costs associated with preconstruction activities
and replacing or rehabilitating aging
treatment, storage or distribution
facilities.
Regardless of what level Congress
finally appropriates for the DWSRF
in fiscal 2018, that total will be augmented in 12 states that are likely
to receive the first credit subsidies

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under the WIFIA program. Those
subsidies essentially allow states to
expand SRF loans. The Indiana Finance Authority was one of the state
and local programs asked to submit
applications under WIFIA in an announcement the EPA made in July.
A spokeswoman for the authority
says projects would be eligible to apply via the state's SRF loan program.
The 12 programs will share, unless some disqualifying factor suddenly interferes, about $20 million
in credit subsidies. The EPA states
the 12 projects will also leverage
more than $1 billion in private capital and other funding sources including EPA's State Revolving Fund
(SRF) loans, to help finance a total of
$5.1 billion in water infrastructure
investments. The selected projects
demonstrate the broad range of project types that the WIFIA program
can finance including wastewater,
drinking water, stormwater and water recycling projects.
The EPA has not produced details
about the 12 projects, but from just
their titles they seem to be heavily
weighted toward wastewater and
storm treatment. Those are generally
big-dollar projects, which WIFIA was
established to help. That said, there
appears to be, at first glance, few
drinking water projects involving
laying of pipe underground. "I would
have liked to see more drinking water projects," said Tommy Holmes,
legislative director of the American
Water Works Association. "But because of the public health implications, the EPA may have been a bit
more conservative about including
drinking water projects. And this is
only the first round of funding."

Appeals Court Decision May Trump
House Pipeline Bill
The House passed two pipeline bills
- which could run into trouble in the
Senate for lack of Democratic support - amidst continuing industry
unhappiness with federal and state
regulatory agency foot-dragging on

permit approvals. The U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit, which has authority to clarify federal regulations, made decisions on two separate pipeline cases
in June. In one of them the court
clarified that the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) has
the right to grant a pipeline an exemption from state law in the event
a state drags its feet on permitting
new construction. The court's actions - and one of the House bills
- are particularly germane with regard to Transco's 200-mile Atlantic
Sunrise pipeline, meant to deliver
Pennsylvania shale gas south. FERC
approved the project in February.
However, the state of Pennsylvania
has yet to grant the three permits
necessary for the $3 billion project to
break ground.
While clarifying FERC's exemption authority, a victory for the pipeline industry, however, the DC court
also made it clear that deadlines for
issuance of permits under the Clean
Water Act (12 months) and Clean
Air Acts (18 months) take precedence over timeframes FERC typically establishes under its Natural Gas
Act authority. FERC normally gives
state and federal agencies 90 days to
issue permits after it approves an environmental impact statement.
"We are still working with the
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and are awaiting clearances from the state before
we can begin pipeline construction in Pennsylvania," said Transco
spokesman Chris Stockton. The
project includes 183 miles of new
greenfield pipeline which will take
gas from Pennsylvania and move it
south to Maryland, Virginia, North
Caroline and South Carolina.
"After nearly three years of intense regulatory scrutiny, it is time
for our own state government to
complete its review of this important
infrastructure project so that Pennsylvanians can immediately benefit
from the economic growth and jobs
it promises to deliver," said Rep.

Mike Turzai, speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, in a
June statement.
The failure of states to participate in a timely manner in the FERC
completion of an environmental
impact statement and their ability to
withhold permits after FERC project
approval, were the rationales for
the Promoting Interagency Coordination for Review of Natural Gas
Pipelines Act (H.R. 2910) passed
by the House on July 19 on mostly
a party-line vote. The legislation
requires that federal and state agencies conduct their respective permit
reviews concurrently with the FERC,
as it develops its environmental impact statement. The second bill that
passed the House was the Promoting
Cross-Border Energy Infrastructure
Act (H.R. 2883). It replaces the Presidential permitting approval needed
before constructing an oil and gas
pipeline or electric transmission line
that crosses a border with Canada or
Mexico with a more transparent, efficient and effective review process.
Because H.R. 2910 may get hung
up in the Senate, the bigger impact
on pipeline construction approvals
may come from the two cases decided by the DC appeals court. One
case involved Millennium Pipeline
Company LLC asking the court to
force New York State to certify Millennium's request for a water quality
certification, required under Section
401 of the Clean Water Act, that
would allow Millennium to construct
its Valley Lateral Project Millennium
submitted its application with the
state agency in November 2015, but
almost 19 months later, the agency
has still failed to act. In the other
case, Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co.
LLC, a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan,
argued a local government was refusing to issue a permit under the Clean
Air Act for additional compressor
capacity.
The Pennsylvania Department of
Environmental Protection has held
up granting a permit to Transco for
Atlantic Sunrise because of nitrogen oxide emissions generated by
construction equipment involved in
building the pipeline.
Underground Construction September 2017

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Underground Construction - September 2017

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