Jan. 6, 2010
When it comes right down to it, it’s all about effluent.
Seriously, dealing with sewage is just about the most fundamental building block there is to any civilized society.
In one of those illogical twists, however, the less effluent a city has, the more expensive it is to handle. The fewer people paying connection fees, the harder it is to raise capital to build large enough treatment plants to keep up with growth.
Drop in a few state and federal mandates that limit how close to capacity a city’s sewage plant can get, and you’re constantly up the old — ahem — effluent creek without a paddle.
Consequences can be severe, as Arvin discovered in the 1990s when it came under state orders to fix its sewage problem or else. Arvin’s solution was to outsource. It’s been in a successful, long-term contract with a French company, Veolia Water, since 1999.
“It may be a very unsexy topic, but dealing with that flow is one of the most important things we do,” Arvin City Manager Alan Christensen agreed. “When people flush, they have faith that we’re taking care of it.”
For more years than I care to remember, I’ve been writing about what a terrible monkey this has been on the backs of just about every small outlying city in Kern County.
Which is why I’m applauding Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s new legislation designed to help small towns have greater access to federal dollars to expand wastewater treatment plants.
The federal money is given to each state, which then loans it at low interest to municipalities through what’s known as the state revolving fund, or SRF for short.
Two big problems with the SRF have been that small cities often lack start-up money for design and environmental plans needed before they can even apply for a loan and larger cities snap up the bulk of the SRF money leaving only crumbs for their smaller brethren.
McCarthy’s bill would apply some very simple fixes.
It creates a “pre-loan” option for cities with populations of 50,000 or less to get money for the design/environmental phase.
Currently, through the wizardry of government finance, if a small city can scrape up the cash to do the design/environmental studies on its own and is eventually approved by the SRF, it is “reimbursed” for that start-up money, which it then has to pay back as part of the overall loan package.
That kind of helps with cash flow, I was told by Delano’s wastewater treatment plant project manager John Wankum. But getting all the money up front would remove the main stumbling block for most small communities to expand their plants on a consistent basis.
Delano is in the midst of expanding its plant with about $31 million of SRF money that it applied for in 2006.
“On the whole, it’s difficult,” Wankum said of applying through SRF.
Bakersfield opted to bond for the $234 million it needed to expand one of its two treatment plants rather than go through SRF, Public Works Director Raul Rojas told me.
When they used the SRF money before, he said, the state actually took some things out of the city’s plans that would have made the plant run more efficiently. The city had to go back in and reinstall items at a higher cost.
“It made things worse for us and cost us more money.”
An obviously much-needed feature of McCarthy’s bill would address that as well by requiring the Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the money, to give Congress recommendations on how to streamline the program.
His bill also sets aside 30 percent of SRF money for cities with populations of 50,000 and less and allows states to give special assistance to disadvantaged cities, through loan forgiveness or no-interest loans.
This is smart government. (No, McCarthy’s mom did NOT pay me to say that!)
This bill won’t cost us any more money. It won’t create any new levels of bureaucracy. And it addresses a real problem in a straightforward manner.
Hopefully it won’t be flushed away by partisan politics.
Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com
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