Chairman Crapo, Chairman Chafee, Members of the Committee, my name is Steven Levy. I am Executive Director of the Atlantic States Rural Water and Wastewater Association, serving Connecticut and Rhode Island and the Maine Rural Water Association and the. I am here today on behalf of the National Rural Water Association, a federation of 47 state rural water associations representing over 17,000 water and wastewater systems. For the past 16 years, like my colleagues across the country, I have been in the field helping small water systems provide safe drinking water. While you are familiar with the number and type of water systems in your state, I would like to identify some national facts regarding small community water systems.
Facts on Small Community Water Systems
* 53,335 of the 56,747 community water systems in the country ( 94%) serve populations of less than 10,000 persons. According to EPA the average size community water system serves less than 150 homes.
* In Maine 420 of the 436 community water systems serve less than 10,000 persons and one system larger than 100,000 persons. In Montana 688 of the 694 community water systems serve less than 10,000 persons and there is not one system larger than 100,000 persons. In Rhode Island 82% of systems serve less than 10,000. In Idaho, 789 of the 800 community water systems serve populations less than 10,000.
* The small water systems make no profits, are locally governed by rural citizens whose families drink the water, and were built to improve public health by eliminating the use of contaminated wells, shallow wells, streams, bogs, or cisterns as their drinking water source. Prior to the development of water systems, families hauled water from dozens of miles away to cisterns and collected runoff from roofs.
* Currently more than 1.1 million rural Americans live in homes without piped water. The primary reason these 405,855 families don't have water is they cannot afford it.
* Due to economies of scale, families on rural water systems often pay over $50.00 dollars a month for service.
Each state rural water association membership is comprised of small non-profit water systems and small towns. All members have water supply operation as their primary daily activity. Membership averages about 400-500 communities per state, with systems from all geographic areas of each state. These are active members - who continuously participate in the training and technical assistance program in an effort to improve their drinking water. This program actively assists all small water systems whether they are members of the state association or not. With a significant turnover in water operators and board members - and the ever increasing regulatory burden - the need for training and technical assistance remains constant.
Section 1.0 Drinking Water Quality is a Local Issue
The problem with the Safe Drinking Water Act is that improving drinking water in small communities is more of a RESOURCE problem than a REGULATORY problem. Every community wants to provide safe water and meet all drinking water standards. After all, local water systems are operated by people whose families drink the water every day, who are locally elected by their community, and who know, first-hand, how much their community can afford. Without the support of local people, regulations alone won't protect drinking water.
It was not a regulation that caused the individuals to act locally to start systems which provided the most dramatic public improvement ever in their community. Many interest groups petition this committee to authorize more and more, ever stringent federal unfunded mandates on small communities with the intention of improving public health on the communities' behalf. Unfortunately this does not work and things aren't that simple. The key to long-term improvement is local support, local education and available resources. We continually ask for the list of the small communities that need to improve their drinking water and are not willing to take the steps to do it. Such a list does not exist. Organizations that advocate increasing unfunded mandates on small communities should take their case directly to the local community. If they can get the community's support then we would back any new standard or policy. The problem has been that small communities don't support most of these policies at the local level because they waste limited resources on non-priority projects.
Mr. Chairman, my experiences starting water systems is very similar to thousands of others in every state. Small water systems were started to improve the public health. No one forced us to start these systems, which always required hundreds of hours of our time and often a lot of our money. In most cases small water systems made dramatic improvements in public health providing an alternative for families from gathering their drinking water from untreated streams, shallow and contaminated wells, and collecting their water off the roofs and cisterns. Millions of rural families still have water delivered to their homes. According to the USDA at least 2.2 million rural Americans live with critical quality and accessibility problems with their drinking water, including an estimated 730,000 people who have no running water in their homes. About five million more rural residents are affected by less critical, but still significant, water problems, as defined by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. These problems include undersized or poorly protected water sources, a lack of adequate storage facilities, and antiquated distribution systems.
Section 1.1 EPA's Significant Non-Compliance Study
Recently, EPA conducted a study on systems with a "history of significant non-compliance" as mandated under the 1996 Amendments. This list showed:
* No widespread contamination of the country's drinking water.
* All local government systems are taking immediate steps (often in advance of EPA notice) to quickly remedy any and all non-compliance.
* Most all noncompliance (including SNC non-compliance) is procedural.
* Many systems don't know they are a SNC.
Most all of this non-compliance can be quickly remedied by providing these system was immediate, simple, technical assistance. For example, Idaho Rural Water conducted a program in cooperation with the state to bring SNCs into compliance. Idaho Rural Water found that most SNCs studied can be returned to compliance through on-site assistance. Of the 30 systems identified by the state for the study; 29 were able to return to compliance through technical assistance by Idaho Rural Association. Most the technical assistance consisted of an initial phone call and a one hour on-site contact.
In addition to Idaho, EPA studies have confirmed our conclusions. A January 1998 report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Compliance (OECA) found dramatic improvement in small community compliance with EPA drinking water rules after receiving ON-SITE technical assistance.
The EPA's pilot project looked at small and very small public water system compliance with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act in three states, Colorado, Iowa, and Alaska. In these states, EPA utilized NON- REGULATORY assistance and training programs operated by small communities themselves as an alternative to regulatory enforcement (like fines and penalties) to solve noncompliance. The results are impressive. According to the EPA report's findings, after assistance was provided: of the 153 small water systems in Colorado with chronic noncompliance, 62% of the noncompliant community systems came into compliance and 59% of the non-community systems achieved compliance. Of the 280 systems in Iowa in noncompliance which received technical assistance 89% of the systems did not receive failure to monitor notices in the subsequent monitoring period.
This study is very significant because it quantified environmental results and progress by documenting actual success rates for specific programs. It is difficult to say what is working until you can measure it – this is a common problem with environmental programs. This type of ‘hard' results analysis should be used as a model for most federal environmental programs.
Section 2.0 Long-Term Success is Dependent on Local Responsibility
The challenge of balancing local flexibility in a federal regulatory structure was a key goal of the 1996 Amendments -- especially with regard to small communities. The Act has initiated a new approach of greater emphasis on technical assistance and a new commitment to local initiative which has greatly improved small community compliance with the law and promoted local responsibility for protection of drinking water resources. This approach has already resulted in enhanced environmental improvement. For example, over 2,900 communities have adopted source water protection programs, and 2,300 are in the process of adopting programs, utilizing the Act's expanded wellhead/groundwater protection programs.
The only way to achieve long-term success in ground water protection is to have the people who benefit from a cleaner environment actually take responsibility for protecting it. Once committed, local elected officials have brought together diverse groups such as farmers and manufactures. Local leaders (who speak the same language) are more effective than federal regulators at finding agreement among the diverse groups. According to most local Mayors and Councils participating in the program - "this is the best federal environmental program our Town has ever participated in" - a progressive, environmentally friendly, land-use program supported in small communities. Local folks taking care of themselves - and taking responsibility for protecting their own drinking water is the only way to sustain long-term protection of drinking water. Increasing the number and the stringency EPA regulations will not help folks without water get water. And more regulations won't help poor communities who can't afford them (see Attachment One). Providing resources to the folks at the grassroots level and recognizing local initiative has resulted in more environmental improvement than the regulatory alternative of increased enforcement. We encourage you to continue this effort. The dramatic increase in regulations over the next five years (due to the Amendments of 1996) will require expanded assistance to rural and system systems. (Table One list the schedule for new regulation under the 1996 Act)
Section 2.1 Montana Case Study in Local Responsibility for Protection Local Resources
Under the local grassroots approach in Montana, 115 systems have been covered over the past five years for less than $350,000. Of which, 54 have been completed and ten have been granted testing waivers. On the other hand, under the EPA approach $500,000 was spent over eight years to complete five public groundwater protection programs. National programs that don't have the backing of local government will likely result in similar lags and high cost experienced in the groundwater programs. Table Two documents the over 4,900 local communities that have adopted enforceable groundwater protection programs. Many local plans have evolved into county wide plans and some are expanding to cover watersheds. This bottom-up approach is far outpacing EPA's efforts for a fraction of the cost. In fact, many local officials have commented that EPA's source water program (authorized in the SDWA) will not be nearly are comprehensive, enforceable, nor environmental progressive as the rural water ground water protection. These official are concerned that EPA's program will confuse local systems and may act as a disincentive for locals to adapt a more protective program.
Section 3.0 Review of SDWA Implementation
In key provisions of the 96 Amendments, EPA staff have included federal authority in their regulations not provided in the Act. In other provisions, the agency has limited state and local government authority where the Act provided the agency with discretion including Capacity Development, Consumer Confidence Reports, Ground Water Disinfection Rule and others we been commented on and written to you in the past. We hope that in the future EPA will implement regulations in a manner consistent with the spirit and the intent of the law.
Three MAJOR EPA proposals, Radon, Arsenic, Disinfection Byproducts Stages II, Ground Water Rules represent a significant threat to ability of small communities to supply safe and affordable drinking water. These rules may have a negative impact on public health in rural communities because the process EPA is using to determine rules do not adequately assess the public health challenges in small communities and will force communities to spend limited resources on low risk public health threats. We feel EPA is moving in a direction, under these Rules, contrary to the intent of the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). We urge you to provide comon-sense in implementing these rules or clarify the scope of the EPA's regulatory authority. The following summarizes our concerns with these four critical rules.
Ground Water Rule:
Small communities feel that the rule should clearly demonstrate ground water contamination before requiring systems to disinfect or take any other steps. The law provides EPA shall develop a rule that requires disinfection "as necessary" for ground water system. As necessary should mean: when contaminated. Not water that "may potentially" become contaminated. EPA is proposing developing a rule that regulates what a community must do to prevent contamination - a major change in the federal regulatory model. All EPA instruction on how to run a community (water system) to prevent contamination should be NON-regulatory (i.e., information, grants, training, education etc. to encourage towns to adopt the latest practices). The Rule should clearly demonstrate ground water contamination (physical, chemical, biological, or radiological substance or matter in the water) before requiring systems to disinfect or take any other steps. This common sense, "innocent until proven guilty" idea is the direction that the small communities feel EPA should adopt.
Radon Rule:
EPA is likely to propose a radon maximum contaminant level in the range of 200-500 pCi/l. This level is lower than radon levels in outdoor air. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently released a report on radon which determined a general background level of radon in outdoor air of 0.4 pCi/l (water to air transfer ratio in homes is 10,000 to 1). The straightforward multiplication of these values yields 0.4pCi/l is equivalent to 4000 pCi/l in water. In essence, a standard of 200-500 pCi/l, will force communities to spend millions to ensure their water is less of a health risk than naturally occurring outdoor air. Under the SDWA of 96, a community can comply with the outdoor air equivalent if it initiates a multimedia mitigation program. However, EPA appears to be requiring overly prescriptive mitigation program rather than an education/technical assistance approach. For example, EPA is proposing that "results" will be required under multimedia program. However, the NAS feels that because of background activities that it was not possible to measure the effectiveness of any particular program element. We strongly feel that small communities have better more important things to do with their funds and resources than to reduce the risk of drinking water lower than outdoor air. And we urge you to limit EPA's authority to a radon standard that is no more stringent than the risk equivalent of naturally occurring air.
Disinfection Byproducts:
EPA is in the process of developing a rule to regulate disinfection byproducts (DPBs Stage II). EPA has already promulgated a Stage I rule for DPBs. EPA acknowledges there was not adequate information on health effects science to justify Stage I levels. The maximum contaminant levels set under Stage I were overly stringent and will likely result in more harm than good in small systems. However our immediate concern over this rule is EPA's indication that they will be including small systems under Stage II. EPA's move is contrary to what was agreed too under Stage I which was the basis reauthorization and was partially codified in the 1996 Act. The Stage I "agreement in principal" provided a "backstop" that would limit Stage II MCLs to "surface water systems serving at least 10,000 people." This was endorsed in the 1996 Act's Conference Committee Statement, "all further negotiations for the Stage II regulations for the control of DBPs should follow and be consistent with the considerations that led to an agreement regarding the proposed rule for Stage I." We feel that EPA's proposal to extend Stage II levels to small systems is: (1) not supported by the health effects' science, (2) provides a final rule deadline years before the necessary public health data will be available, (3) would result in an overall decrease in public health protection in rural and small communities, and (4) is contrary to the Stage I agreement (backstop) which was the basis for reauthorization.
Section 3.1 Review of Specific Committee Questions
1) Ground Water Rule Schedule for Promulgation: We are not nearly as concerned with EPA's expedited schedule in promulgating this rule, as we are with the actual content of this rule as described above.
2) Variances: We are not aware of any variances being granted in any state. The variance provision has proved unworkable because it is unclear how it works. To make it workable we would recommend the following changes: make the income threshold consistent with the CDBG (HUD) and USDA thresholds for affordability, allow variances be provided for all contaminants solely at the state's discretion (EPA review bureaucratizes the process), and provide for an immediate exemption if EPA has not identified an affordable alternative treatment. We would be happy to work with the committee further on improving the variance systems.
3) The Recent GAO Report: We do not agree with GAO... that it is too early to gauge EPA's success in implementing the SDWA. We feel that GAO should have concentrated more on the content of the rules and the specifics of their statutory authorization. GAO focuses on EPA's success in meeting rule deadlines. EPA's timeliness of promulgation is insignificant when compared to the content of regulations. This was the heart of the Congressional debate on reauthorization, the specific words in statute make all the difference. For example, GAO analyzes the EPA's "implementation... [of] the provisions to ensure the viability of the thousands of smaller water systems... " GAO adoption of the term "ensure" (which is not in the statute) to gauge EPA's success in implementation reflects a lack of understanding of statue and ability to gauge implementation. Senator Kempthorne specifically made a case that EPA is to "assist" systems with viability. This one word changes the entire authority in that provision. This is significant, and GAO should focus on this critical implementation issue.
Rural Water continues to press EPA to stick to the specific provisions and intent in the SDWA of 1996. In closing, I would like to again thank the committee for this hearing, ask for your continued support for additional technical resources to the grassroots level, your assistance to clarify the intent and meaning of key provision in the 96 Amendments, and you resistance to calls from interest groups for more and more, ever stringent federal unfunded mandates on communities. Unfortunately things aren't that simple. The key to long-term improvement is local support, local education and available resources. Mr. Chairman, my name is Steven Levy. I am Executive Director of the Atlantic States Rural Water and Wastewater Association and the Maine Rural Water Association, serving the States of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maine. I am here today on behalf of the National Rural Water Association.
I testified before this committee in May of 1990 on financing environmental facilities. I discussed the plight of the Long Pond Water Company, a tiny 160 customer, private, unfiltered, surface water supply in Sorrento, Maine. They faced the daunting prospect of COMPLIANCE with the Safe Drinking Water Act which required them to install a filter plant. Their story demonstrates the impact of the SDWA on small communities.
The company and the Town wanted to comply but did not know how to pay for the million dollar mandate. That mandate did not come with any funding and most small towns don't know what to do when hit by such costs. They did what thousands of other communities do in every state... they called their rural water association. Each year rural water associations will assist the Long Ponds of America handle the onslaught of EPA regulations.
With Rural Water's help, the town stepped up and accepted the challenge of bringing that water system into compliance. Our technical assistance program helped create a nonprofit water district and rural water helped them secure a U.S. Department of Agriculture funding for $1.5 million to pay for the new treatment plant and a new stand pipe. Average water rates climbed from $81 per year to over $500 per year.
The point of this story is that small towns will take the necessary measures to protect their water. However they need common-sense assistance, provided in a simple form that small towns can understand and it takes someone going to that town, stiting down with them evening after evening, and working with then through the ENTIRE process and getting them an answer they can understand. Giving them a copy of the federal register and phone number to call would help them. No one else does this except rural water technical assistance. We also help show them how and where to find funding such as the USDA and the SRFs -- which can require complicated paperwork.
Each time we help out a community they know how to do it on their own next time. THIS IS KEY – ENCOURAGING LOCAL responsibility. If the community does not accept and support measures to protect their water, no amount of regulation will protect it.
Long Pond's troubles are not over, the water system is now in need of $1 million funding package from the State Revolving Loan Fund to replace their antiquated transmission line. This is the case with small systems in every state. The flood of new regulations is increasing over the next five years. Consumer confidence report, radon, ground water rule, operator certification, source water protection, disinfection byproducts, and others. We urge the committee to expand the technical assistance under the act and tell your systems to utilize it. We also urge you to expand the capital resources available to small system, especially the USDA water and sewer grant and loan program.
Enormous progress has been made in drinking water protection since the passage of the 1986 and 1996 amendments. Most of the progress has been made by local people taking local action and being educated through technical assistance.
For example:
* In Rhode Island and Connecticut, rural water has assisted 44 communities and 13 non-community systems develop source water protection plans and SOC waiver forms, saving thousands of dollars per system in testing costs.
* EPA Rulemaking has been especially challenging to our smaller public water systems, who often lack full-time trained help and can't take full advantage of the waivers in the Act. This is where we come in... in Maine our staff helped 175 community and non-transient systems complete wellhead assessments and SOC waiver forms. Total savings were about $186,000.
* Nationwide, the Act has initiated a new approach of greater emphasis on technical assistance and a new commitment to local initiative which has greatly improved small community compliance with the law and promoted local responsibility for protection of drinking water resources. This approach has already resulted in enhanced environmental improvement. For example, over 2,900 communities have adopted source water protection programs, and 2,300 are in the process of adopting programs, utilizing the Act's expanded wellhead/groundwater protection programs. The list is included with my written testimony.
The only way to achieve long-term success in ground water protection is to have the people who benefit from a cleaner environment to actually take responsibility for protecting it. Local folks taking care of themselves - and taking responsibility for protecting their own drinking water is the only way to sustain long-term protection of drinking water. And more regulations won't help poor communities who can't afford them. Providing resources to the folks at the grassroots level and recognizing local initiative has resulted in more environmental improvement than the regulatory alternative of increased enforcement. We encourage you to continue this effort.