U.S. Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) recently introduced legislation that would increase the permit cycle of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES).
If passed, the legislation will lengthen the NPDES from five years to 20. Graves said the bill will grant small towns the time they need to wisely make decisions about funding required improvements.
The current system requires small towns to borrow a 20-year loan each time they use a NPDES permit, which controls water pollution. This means that these small towns could be paying off loans required for four separate five-year permits.
“Many of these municipalities are already struggling financially, and having to pay off multiple loans at once is an added burden that simply does not make sense,” Graves said. “The common-sense solution is to increase the length of the NPDES permit cycle to match the time a municipality is in debt to one permit cycle. Our bill will do just that.”
Fellow members of the Missouri delegation to the House of Representatives, including Billy Long (R-MO), Ann Wagner (R-MO), Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), Blain Luetkemeyer (R-MO) and Jason Smith (R-MO), also support the bill.
“This issue was brought to my attention during a meeting with officials from the Hannibal Public Works Department,” Graves said. “I am glad to see the Missouri delegation come together to introduce a solution to a problem facing many communities across our state.”
NPDES permits are issued by the Environmental Protection Agency as part of the Clean Water Act. The municipalities then team up with with industry, developers and homeowners to meet the permit requirements.
“More and more cities across the United States are caught in the trap of paying for improvements to sewer plants when those improvements can no longer be used by the city because of changing effluent limits,” Floyd Gilzow, the vice president of Member Relations, Governmental and Environmental Affairs for the Missouri Public Utility Alliance, said. “Grandfathering the limits until debts are retired is a common sense approach that continues to protect the environment and the pocketbooks of ratepayers at all levels.”