This Week in Washington is a weekly publication of the Water Environment Federation’s Government Affairs department. It provides updates on the latest legislative and regulatory developments that affect the water and wastewater communities.

House Panel Marks 35th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Chaired by Congressman James Oberstar (D-MN), held a hearing on Thursday, October 18, to commemorate the 35th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act.  The Panel heard testimony from an array of stakeholders that have helped implement the Act’s requirements over these thirty-five years, including John Paul Woodley, Assistant Secretary of the Army Corps of Engineers; Ben Grumbles, EPA Assistant Administrator for Water; Linda Eichmiller, Executive Director of the Association of State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Agencies; Mayor Kathleen Novak of Northglenn, Colorado; Ms. Derry McBride of the Garden Club of America; Christopher Westhoff, President of National Association of Clean Water Agencies; Paul Lehner, Executive Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council; Kevin Paap, President of the Minnesota Farm Bureau; Mark Singleton of the American Whitewater for Outdoor Alliance; and, Mr. James King, Jr., of the National Utilities Contractors Association.  Chairman Oberstar opened the session by recounting the history of the Act’s birth and by showing a seven minute film produced by the then Senate Committee on Public Works in 1970 on the extent of pollution present in the nation’s waterways prior to the Act’s establishment in 1972.  Witnesses urged the committee that to continue meeting the Act’s challenges of achieving fishable and swimmable waters that new tools for maintaining infrastructure, dealing with non-point sources of pollution and other critical issues facing the clean water community must be addressed.  Testimony by the witnesses can be found on the committee’s website at http://transportation.house.gov/.

House Panel Examines Legislation to Require Public Notification of Sewage Overflows
On Tuesday, October 16, the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and the Environment held a hearing to examine whether to require wastewater utilities to notify the public when sewer overflows occur. H.R. 2452, the Raw Sewage Overflow Community Right to Know Act, would require all publicly owned utilities to provide immediate notification to the public and permitting authorities when a sewage overflow occurs in either combined or separate sewers.  The legislation was introduced by Congressman Tim Bishop (D-NY) who chaired the hearing, and co-sponsored by Congressman Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), earlier this session in order to establish national reporting standards among wastewater utilities when an overflow event happens.  Witnesses included Ben Grumbles, EPA Assistant Administrator for Water; Robert Summers, Deputy Secretary for the Maryland Department of the Environment; Stuart Whitford of the Kitsap County Health District in Washington State; Kevin Shafer, Executive Director of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District; Dr. Erin Lipp, Associate Professor of Environmental Microbiology at the University of Georgia; and, Katherine Baer of American Rivers.  While none of the witnesses testified in opposition to the legislation, witnesses detailed reporting requirements already established by the EPA as well as by state and local governments. Kevin Shafer, testifying on behalf of the National Association of Clean Water Agencies urged the committee to examine this issue in the context of a broader and more comprehensive rule dealing with separate sanitary overflows, which is currently pending at EPA.  The subcommittee is expected to take action on this measure before the end of this year, though no date has been established. Testimony by all the witnesses is available at http://transportation.house.gov/.

Report Urges Stronger EPA Leadership to Improve Water Quality on the Mississippi River
The National Research Council (NRC) issued a report on the status of water quality for the Mississippi River Basin and called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take more leadership in implementing the Clean Water Act to clean up the Mississippi River. The NRC report, Mississippi River Water Quality and the Clean Water Act: Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities, urges EPA to use its authority under the Act to more strongly enforce its provisions and to step up monitoring and reporting requirements.
The NRC committee that wrote the report concluded that more effort is needed to ensure that the river is monitored and evaluated as a single system and recommended that EPA take the lead in coordinating existing efforts. The 10 states along the river corridor all conduct their own programs to monitor water quality, but state resources devoted to these programs vary widely and there is no single program that oversees the entire river.

The report acknowledges that measures taken under the Clean Water Act have successfully reduced point source pollution and that many of the Mississippi’s remaining pollution problems stem from nonpoint sources — mainly nutrients and sediments that enter the river and its tributaries through runoff. Although the Act cannot be the only means for improving water quality in the river and Gulf, the report says, it can effectively address many aspects of pollution in these waters if the law’s provisions are comprehensively implemented. The report is available at the National Academies of Sciences Web site, http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12051.

“Clean Water Act: The Next 35 Years” WEFTEC Panel a Success
On October 15, the Government Affairs Committee hosted “The Next 35 Years of the Clean Water Act,” a session at WEFTEC.O7 in which panelists discussed new actions that must be taken to preserve and extend the purpose of the CWA for the next three and a half decades.

Keynote speaker Benjamin H. Grumbles, Assistant Administrator for U.S. EPA’s Office of Water, opened by saying, “Water is the oil of the twenty-first century. I’m grateful for the leadership WEF provides in the fields of water and wastewater and have high hopes of attending WEFTEC thirty-five years from now to celebrate further successes for the Clean Water Act.” Grumbles highlighted the current successes of the Act, but stated that past accomplishments have taken the United States “only part of the way to achieving national clean water goals,” and “we need to continue to evolve and adapt to our challenges.”

Grumbles was followed by an “Intergenerational” Panel composed of Nichole Baker, a Project Manager for RMC Water and Environment; Todd Danielson, the Community Systems Manager of the Loudoun County (VA) Sanitation Authority; Matt Boone, a Project Engineer for Malcolm Pirnie; Alan Vicory, Jr., the Executive Director and Chief Engineer for the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission; and Geoff Grubbs, the former Director of the Office of Science and Technology, Office of Water, U.S. EPA. 

After the panel, session attendees were divided into small groups to discuss potential changes to the Act and WEF’s role in advocating for these changes.  A full summary of the keynote address and the panelists’ remarks will later be available on the WEF Government Affairs website. 

WEFTEC.07 Sets New Records
WEF announces a record attendance of 19,929 for WEFTEC.07, making this the largest event in the conference’s 80-year history.  The record number of 1,030 exhibiting companies and more than 267,000 net square feet of floor space were announced by the Federation in mid-September.  “This year’s record number of attendees and exhibitors serves as a testament to the strength and value of WEFTEC,” said WEF President Mohamed Dahab.  “For 80 years, WEF has been providing the highest quality of products, services, and training in the water quality field and we remain committed to meeting the ever-evolving needs of our members and the water quality profession for many years to come.”  The previous attendance record of 18,704 was set at WEFTEC.02 in Chicago.  WEFTEC will return to the Windy City for WEFTEC.08 on October 18-22, 2008. 

Quote of the Week: 
Resilience is predicated upon “staunch acceptance of reality; a deep belief, often buttressed by strongly held values, that life is meaningful; and an uncanny ability to improvise.”
 - Diane L. Coutu, Senior Editor at the Harvard Business Review. Excerpted by speech given by G. Tracy Mehan on meeting water resources challenges under a climate change regime. 

To receive This Week in Washington via e-mail, contact Sharon Thomas at sthomas@wef.org.