The fight for clean water continues

By Kevin Shafer

Our region’s significant investments in reducing sanitary- and combined-sewer overflows have paid off.

Yet our rivers, although healthier, are still not clean.

So what does the science say it will take to achieve cleaner waterways in the years to come? The answer lies in placing a greater emphasis on reducing polluted urban and agricultural storm-water runoff.

Although a water-quality analysis conducted by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission shows that polluted runoff accounts for more than 90 percent of the fecal bacteria in our rivers, there’s very little funding dedicated to address this problem.

Every time it rains, a huge volume of storm-water pollution flows into our waterways from roads, parking lots and other surfaces. It’s clear that investing resources to reduce that flow gives us the biggest water-quality bang for the buck.

But where will the money come from? Reducing storm-water pollution extends beyond the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District’s core mission of wastewater treatment, and the extent of the challenge far exceeds our available funding sources.

The MMSD is taking many actions to reduce its cost of doing business just to meet its wastewater and flood-management responsibilities. Some steps are nontraditional, like privatizing the operation and maintenance of our system in 1998.

Projections show this decision will save ratepayers more than $150 million over the life of the 10-year contract. Remarkably, the average household ratepayer in 2006 pays less for district operations and maintenance activities than in 1994.

To cut costs, we’ve also reduced staff, reined in health-care costs and reprioritized our capital investments. Yet we still face rising costs — particularly energy costs related to running our plants — that will drive up rates in the future.

In order to expand regional efforts to reduce pollution from storm-water runoff and sewer overflows and to reduce pressure on our rates, a new funding source must be identified. I believe a federal Clean Water Trust Fund is the answer.

Water is one of our most threatened natural resources, yet there is no viable federal-funding mechanism to provide this life-giving need.

The federal government has a Transportation Trust Fund for improvements to our federal highway system and an Aviation Trust Fund for airport improvements. But for water infrastructure improvements, it only funds a declining federal loan program.

And as sewer systems age and more developments and roads put pressure on our waterways, the hole we must climb out of to meet the future demand for clean water only gets deeper.

A broad coalition of national organizations (listed at www.cleanwateramerica.org) is teaming with the National Association of Clean Water Agencies to advocate for a Clean Water Trust Fund. In December 2005, U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., R-Tenn., introduced The Clean Water Trust Act of 2005 in the House of Representatives to establish a federal Clean Water Trust Fund that would provide approximately $7.5 billion annually from fiscal year 2006 through fiscal year 2010.

That amounts to nearly $38 billion in funding for local communities to address clean-water infrastructure needs. This federal legislation would be an important first step in addressing the looming funding needs of the nation’s water infrastructure.

We’ve taken this approach with other infrastructure needs. So why not water?