The Unpaid Costs of Washington Good Intentions

Once again, Washington politicians are sending Arizona the bill for their good intentions.

Of course, that’s not supposed to be the way it works anymore. In 1994, when Republicans took control of Congress, we passed an Unfunded Mandates law, generally requiring the federal government to end the practice of sending new regulations to states and localities without giving them the money to pay for the compliance costs.

Unfortunately, new arsenic standards for drinking water threaten the spirit, if not the letter, of the Unfunded Mandates law – at a cost of well over $100 million to our state.

A little background is in order here. In one of the last acts of the Clinton administration, new regulations were issued requiring a sharp and immediate decrease in the acceptable level of arsenic in drinking water (from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion).

In early 2001, this quickly became the cause celebre of segments of the environmental movement. President Bush’s decision to delay implementation of that order -- while looking at the scientific evidence justifying it – was attacked as nothing short of a threat to the environment and public safety. Never mind the fact that there was no scientific consensus in support of this new mandate on states – or that the issue ranked so close to the bottom of the Clinton administration’s priorities that it wasn’t issued anytime earlier during his eight years in office. Reasoned discussions were not welcomed.

So now that arsenic standards are lowered – as of February 22 of this year – Arizona, like every other state in the union, faces the unglamourous issue of actually paying for them. This is where the Unfunded Mandates law I mentioned earlier might be expected to kick in.

Arizona puts the cost of compliance as high as $122 million. The costs to the city of Scottsdale alone – where high amounts of arsenic naturally occur – are roughly $64 million, or about $145 per Scottsdale household. Thirty of Scottsdale's 34 underground wells, nearly half of the City's overall water supply, will be affected by the new standard. The problem is even worse in rural areas – where small water systems face bankruptcy if no financial assistance arrives to fund compliance. In that event, residents of these areas would have to resort to private wells for their water – possibly drinking unhealthier water with more contaminants than they had to begin with!

But EPA officials have come up with a much different estimate: roughly $10 million. They indicate that compliance costs would be covered by the Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund, which allocates money to states. But Arizona received only $9 million from this fund for the year 2002.

Of course, that amount of money will not begin to even cover the costs for Scottsdale -- much less the entire state. Further, the drinking-water loan funds are designed to help states comply with all regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act -- not just those pertaining to arsenic.

So even though EPA thinks it has found a way to foot the bill for these new arsenic standards, Arizona is left with an expense of tens of millions of dollars that Washington won’t even acknowledge.

Congress can do several things to fix this problem – and several measures are actively underway. At my request, the General Accounting Office (GAO) will study how the EPA devises its cost estimates for the regulations it imposes on states. This study will also examine why states and localities’ calculations differ from those arrived at by EPA.

Additionally, I have worked closely with the city of Scottsdale to get the EPA to fund a pilot project in Scottsdale on the use of different technologies to lower arsenic levels to meet the new standards. I am also in contact with the EPA and the Bush administration to request additional funding assistance to help states comply with this new standard – particularly small water systems that lack the money to buy the expensive technologies that it takes to filter out arsenic at these new levels.

Finally, we’ve got to restrain Washington’s habit of dictating new mandates to states and localities, especially if there’s not going to be any money to pay for them.

As T.S. Eliot once wrote: "O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention."

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