Transcripts For CSPAN3 Rural Drinking Water 20150831 : compa

Transcripts For CSPAN3 Rural Drinking Water 20150831

Number one concern and worry is Drinking Water and number two is wastewater. Everything else is a distant third. If theres a problem with the Drinking Water it has to be addressed immediately. Middle of the night, middle of the winter, it doesnt matter when. Every citizen and especially the most vulnerable depend on the safety of the water including families with infants, schools, our Nursing Homes and people with compromised immune systems. We cant have any contamination of the Drinking Water. Our sewer system also needs to function prop toerl avoid any probability of a sewage spill or sewage backup into peoples homes. I would say to you that this really does keep me up at night. Congressman tonko knows that right now our part of the state is buried in snow, just last week the frost penetrated the ground so deeply that we experienced two ruptures in our water planes that are 5 to 6 feet underground. This forced us to issue a boil water advisory where we have to tell families to boil water as well as contact all the schools, they have to cover their water fountains, the press, nursing home, et cetera. I actually call as many citizens as i can by robo call. When Something Like this occurs we manage the situation around the clock, locating equipment to excavate the frozen ground, repairing the water line, getting the tests to the lab and waiting for the all clear results. We appreciate the assistance of the subcommittee and congress in helping us protect the public and successfully operate public Drinking Water and Wastewater Supply through the various funding programs and on site Technical Assistance initiatives. My village relies on this assistance, i want to thank congressman tonko for sponsoring the act 20614 in the last congress. Small and Rural Communities support your legislation because it enhanced the current Drinking Water state Revolving Fund by further targeting the fund to go communities most in need. We do need help. Everything from financing, regulations, compliance and the various programs are very complicated for small communities. We dont have Financial Professionals on staff and often dont understand many of the funding processes. We currently have needs approaching 3 million for our wastewater system. We need new aeration tanks, new sludge drying equipment and new pumps as our facility is over 30 years old wechlt need to stop rain water from leaking into the system and overtaxing our capacity. My water operator is constantly explaining to me the need for these upgrades and his concerns of possible failure, however, we dont really have a way to finance it. It would triple the sewer rates to take out a loan for that much. You can see in the picture at the back of my testimony that we have some very old Drinking Water pipes that need updating or replacing at a substantial cost. The one in the picture is stamped with a date from the 19th century and they are still in the ground in parts of the village. We are concerned that without more water line replacement we are vulnerable to more breaks and crisis. You can see the other picture of a few ber collated pipe that is cloeded with corrosion and deposits to the point it is almost occluded. In my remaining time i want to emphasize the essential assistant we receive from the new York Rural Water Association and explain why it is so helpful. The association has circuit riders that are on call throughout the state that will come and assist us immediately including evens and weekends, the circuit riders are experts on the technical side of water operations. Just a week ago we called for help for locating a run steward pipe that could have occurred over any part of the 100 foot water line. They have specialized equipment that can detect noises and vibrations to locate the exact location of a break. In addition my operators received 90 of the training needed to retain their operators licenses from the new York Rural Water Association. We depend on them just like every other Small Community. Mr. Chairman, every a lot more to say but you have been very charitable with your time and attention to small and Rural Communities. On behalf of every small town elected official we are grateful. Thank you for hearing from us. I will answer any questions later. Thank you very much. Since my district mostly has communities below 2,500 people i thank you for those thank you comments because hopefully they are paying attention also. Those bells signal that we have been called to vote early. I think we will just break here. We as a congress i dont think are going to be in a hurry today, so we will all most of us will all get back here and hear the final testimony then go into questions so with that i will recess the hearing. We will call the hearing back to order and i will call to mr. Kt newman on behalf of the Rural Water Association. You are recognized for five minutes. Good morning, mr. Chairman. And members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify here today. My name is k. T. Newman and i have been working for or in small and Rural Community Water Systems in the mississippi delta for nearly 20 years. I first started out as a small city water manager in my hometown of vaton, mississippi which has about 1,000 homes. I then worked for the mississippi Rural Water Association as a circuit rider for ten years. In this capacity i visited every one of the deltas approximately 500 small communities to help them with their water and sewer problems. Currently i am working for about two dozen small delta communities assisting them with their water and sewer utilities. I am honored to be accompanied here today by the mayor of one of these small towns, mayor everett hill from co mow, mississippi. The town of co mow has a population of approximately 1,200 persons. The mayors challenges are compounded by the fact that as a small town mayor he has a full time job as a truck driver and has to handle much of the citys issues on his free time. His community has little professional staff because they simply cant afford it. In cuomo the wastewater system is failing because of its age and inability to meet its current epa treatment. The cost to update their sewer system to be compliant is approximately 2 million. The cuomo Drinking Water system needs an additional 1 million in upgrades. The town was recently fined by the department of Environmental Quality for failure to comply with their wastewater discharge permit. Currently the cuomo Wastewater Treatment facility is actually discharging only partially treated wastewater due to failure of the Current Treatment works. Cuomo is just like thousands of other small communities in the delta and the other states. They need a grant rich Infrastructure Program like the Usdas Rural Development program and they need access to someone they can trust for technical advice, on site assistance and help with managing the funding application process. Mississippi has 1,234 regulated public Water Systems, only two serve populations over 50,000 persons and only 59 serve populations over 10,000 persons. More Training Needs to be provided to small town mayors like mayor hill so that multimillion dollar upgrades that will most certainly tax the rate pairs of these communities can be more readily understood and communicated to these residents who will ultimately be responsible for bearing the financial burden. Recently many of the small kmujts in the delta have received violations for a relatively new epa regulation referred to as the dis infections byproduct rule. These byproducts are a result of disinfecting their water to make it safe to drink. If these small communities limit or reduce the disinfectant levels of the water they will most certainly comply with this epa regulation, but the water may no longer be safe to drink. Once the dis infection byproduct rule is violated many small communities are forced to spend limited resources to report these violations to the consumers. In the town of shaw, population 1,900 persons the community was under a boil water order for over six months because of a broken color nater needed to disinfect the Drinking Water. The local schools had to buy bottled water for six months. After they called the mississippi Rural Water Association circle required Tom Abernathy they were able to come one a plan to pay for a new color nater, revise the towns Billing Program able to come one a plan to pay for a color nater, revise the towns Billing Program to accurately assess the water used by citizens and receive the payments, train the new mayor and town council, get the towns credit stable and secure some emergency state resolving fund financing. In closing, whenever a Small Community is facing a compliance issue, the complication of a new epa rule, a line break that they cant find that is causing people to lose Water Service and emergency from a storm or power loss, we all call the circuit riders to tell what you say it means and what to do. They have developed a trust relationship with small communities in their state that know how to fix things and are willing to come to your town day, night or weekend. Thank you for the opportunity to testify here today. Mayor hill and i remember available for questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. And welcome mayor hill. Good to have you with us also. Id like to turn to mr. Bobby selman on behalf of the mississippi Rural Water Association. You are recognized for five minutes. Thank you. Good morning, mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. It is an monitor appear before you today. My name is bobby selman. I am a certified Drinking Water and wastewater operator in the state of mississippi with an engineering background from mississippi state. I have been working in the water world for 25 years starting in my hometown in Lawrence County. I still work for the Lawrence County Water Authority in addition to 12 other small communities and Rural Water Associations. I want to thank my congressman gregg harper for his support and assistant to over 150,000 small public Water Systems across the country for sponsoring the grass roots rural and small Community Water assistance act. Representative harpers bill directs the Environmental Protection agency to prioritize the type of Technical Assistance that small communities find is most beneficial. This is what all the small communities in mississippi and the other states rely on for help with compliance, operations, emergencies, line breaks, loss of water, setting rates and training for operator certification. I am told that Congress Funds the epas internal management budget by hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Small and Rural Communities Want Congress to know that the only benefit we get comes from the small portion of the epa funding that is directed to on site Technical Assistance provided what we call circuit riders. What small communities do when they have a economy or water issue is call their local circuit required that they know, trust and know can give them clear answers. These circuit riders often come immediately on site to small communities to teach them how to fix their problem. There is not not enough in the field at the local level providing this accept. After katrina two of my small communities in Simpson County were devastated. Each served approximately 2,500 people and they were without power and water. People in communities can get by without power for a while, but not without water. I called the mississippi Rural Water Association circuit riders and they found an emergency generator for me and delivered them to the communities at no charge. Since the circuit riders know everybody in the state they were able to borrow some generate frers northern communities not impacted by the hurricane and have the generators delivered to get the Drinking Water and sanitation restored immediately. The circuit riders also have the technical know how to rig the generators electrical system, size the right voltage and even dry drooif a backhoe to big up ruptured lines. All this have assistance is essential to restoring water in an emergency. I called a circuit rider out to help me at a community of 1,000 homes to find a line break causing a loss of water for many homes. The circuit rider came with advanced radar equipment that can precisely identify the location of the break, which on this day happened to be out in the woods. Finding the circuit riders congress is allowing all small and rural kmupts to share this technical resource that no one community can afford on their o own. We think it is the best use of our federal water environmental dollars. With the federal zags of the operator certification under the safe Drinking Water act of 1996 state Rural Water Associations have become the main source of training for operators and the main source of continued Education Credits which are needed every year to maintain this certification. Many parts of the Rural America have seen move on leaving behind depressed economies. In my region the Garment Industry moved south after naft tachlt when this happens raising rates becomes overly burdensome. In the town of new labor, mississippi with over 400 people we are now being told that we need to comply with a new epa wastewater discharge permit that would cost 2 to 3 million. I will close with comments on the federal water Infrastructure Programs. Namely the epa state Revolving Funds and usda Rural Development grant and loan program. We are very appreciative for congressional funding of these initiatives and realize that funding constraints in congress and the nation, notwithstanding the federal funding, Regulatory Burden continues to increase and become more complex. We urge you to emphasize grants in these funding programs, low interest loans often dont help the communities facing the most hardship from federal compliance leaving the loan funds to be used for compliance with greater ability to afford financing. We are grateful for the funding assistance, it is t. Has allowed many rural and small communities to have Drinking Water and sanitation that would otherwise not have been able to afford without the federal assistance, we want to be part nerts effort to make the initiative as efficient and successful as possible. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman, and im eager to answer any questions at the appropriate time into thank you very much. Our last but not least panel list is mr. Robert stewart who is the executive director of the Rural Community Assistance Partnership. Welcome, sir, and you are recognized for five minutes. Thank you, chairman, shimkus, Ranking Member tomorrow co and members of the committee. I think the previous witnesses and yall have done an excellent job in framing the issue. As someone who has worked 20 years with hundreds of communities in texas both for the Rural Community Assistance Partnership and Rural Water Association and someone who has directed the National Program for ten years im here to tell you that the needs of small communities are many, the resources are limited but i tell you that the dedication and the determination of small communities to provide their citizens with the best possible water is strong and undiminished. I want to im sure everyone knows i wont repeat things that are in my testimony. I wanted to sort of make a few points that have been touched on, maybe i could amplify a little bit. One is access to capital. I think theres a real issue in small communities in accessing the Financial Resources that they need in order to build the infrastructure, extend lines to new custome

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