Water Quality Financial Assistanceby Jolene Unsoeld Back in "the good old days" the feds provided grants to local governments for up to 70 percent of the cost of huge water pollution control facilities. With an additional state grant, local communities were only required to put up a small fraction of the cost of these facilities. Some local communities contributed as little as 5 percent of the capital cost of these projects. Millions and millions and millions of infrastructure dollars flowed into states throughout the nation. By the early 1980s, the Congress was sending signals that states were going to have to stretch the dollars by replacing the generous grants with revolving loan funds and states would be required to provide a match for the federal dollars. Out of this necessity came The State Revolving Fund (Chapter 90.50A RCW) adopted in 1988. Rather than abandoning the drive for the protection of our state's surface and underground waters by waiting for the federal axe to fall, we here in Washington jumped into action. We knew there were many communities who had not taken advantage of federal grants and could not make by themselves the expensive investment in water quality planning and infrastructure required to meet federal and state requirements for clean water and water quality protection. If federal grant money were no longer to be available, we would provide state funds to supplement federal loans. Up until this time major programs were only undertaken by using state bonds or a one-time appropriation of dollars for a specific project. As the State was very close to its bonded indebtedness ceiling at this time and because of the inevitable loss of project dollars to cover debt service (up to 50 percent of the total dollars borrowed), an attempt was made to create a pay-as-you-go system to finance water quality needs by using a tiny fraction of the property tax. It passed the House in 1985, but the Senate balked because they were unwilling to consider the property tax. The concept of financing without increasing state debt did stick, however. In 1986 the Legislature established a water quality account and adopted an additional tobacco tax to provide a revenue stream to feed the account. This fund was later renamed the Centennial Clean Water Fund to celebrate Washington's centennial anniversary. In my view, with the best of intentions, the program has lost sight of some of its origins. We need to be reminded of that original spirit and recapture its intent. RCW 70.146.010 Purpose -- Legislative intent The long-range health and environmental goals for the State of Washington require the protection of the state's surface and underground waters for the health, safety, use, enjoyment, and economic benefit of its people. It is the purpose of this chapter to provide financial assistance to the state and to local governments for the planning, design, acquisition, construction, and improvement of water pollution control facilities and related activities in the achievement of state and federal water pollution control requirements for the protection of the state's waters. It is the intent of the legislature that distribution of moneys for water pollution control facilities under this chapter be made on an equitable basis taking into consideration legal mandates, local effort, ratepayer impacts, and past distributions of state and federal moneys for water pollution control facilities. It is the intent of this chapter that the cost of any water pollution control facility attributable to increased or additional capacity that exceeds one hundred ten percent of existing needs at the time of application for assistance under this chapter shall be entirely a local or private responsibility. It is the intent of this chapter that industrial pretreatment be paid by industries and that the water quality account shall not be used for such purposes. It was to these funding sources that Thurston County turned to finance the extension of a sewer line out Cooper Point. In following Thurston County's grant application, I found two particularly disconcerting issues. The first is the method by which the Department of Ecology distributes financial assistance. In a praiseworthy, but misguided, effort to standardize the hardship criteria used in awarding financial assistance, the Department of Ecology has created a formula for determining hardship situations. DOE declares that a hardship condition exists if "a water pollution control facilities construction project will result in a residential user charge in excess of 1.5 percent of the median household income." With hardship determination a project may receive greater financial assistance than without it. What this formula does is to encourage gold-plated projects which will be more likely to meet DOE's hardship criteria. The following illustrates the inexplicable results of DOE's financial hardship formula when no initial screening is used to determine what communities are truly financially strapped and DOE relies, instead, only on the 1.5 percent median household income formula: According to the Office of Financial Management, the Washington State Median Household Income (MHI) for the year 2000 (estimated) is $50,152. In the FY2001 cycle hardship consideration was given to Skagit County with an MHI of $20,000; Stevens County, $28,550; Skamokawa, $29,258; Coupeville, $27,897; Pe Ell, $28,309; and Tamoshan in Thurston County, with an MHI of $59,637! There were other applicants who failed to meet DOE's hardship criteria formula although they fell in the MHI range of $19,070, $20,268, $22,329, $24,086, $25,005, etc. Although there can be other circumstances contributing to the decision by DOE to either give no financial assistance or to give only loans to some of the above, I believe there is a fundamental flaw in the theory when a community such as Cooper Point (whose MHI of $59,637 is more than $9,000 above the State MHI) is considered eligible for hardship status and other communities with MHI from a low of $19,070 and up to $30,000 were not considered eligible. My recommendation:
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