By DAVE PIDGEON, Staff
Lawmakers in Harrisburg will try to figure out this week how to keep municipalities from being bankrupted by the cost of cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.
Under a federal mandate, municipalities in the bay's watershed, which includes the Susquehanna River and its tributaries, have just two years to drastically curtail the flow of pollutants called nutrients - primarily chemicals like phosphorus and nitrogen.
Nutrients cause uncontrolled algae growth in the bay, which chokes off other aquatic life. The main sources of nutrients are municipal sewer treatment facilities and fertilizer runoff from farmers' fields. The federal mandates will require expensive sewage treatment plant upgrades - perhaps totaling as much as $1 billion statewide - that municipalities can ill afford.
"I honestly think the state and federal governments need to look at some financial (help for local governments), maybe a bond," said Brian Hill, president of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council.
The issue is coming to a head this week in Harrisburg. Meetings between state and local officials have been scheduled to address how to pay for the required upgrades.
The state Department of Environmental Protection is scheduled to meet with local government representatives today to talk about the issue.
"Clearly, the bay is an important environmental strategy for all of us," state Sen. Jake Corman, a Centre County Republican and his party's Policy Committee chairman, said Tuesday. "What I'm hearing from all of the authorities in my district is ... they are very concerned about the cost to meet requirements."
Corman will chair a Republican policy hearing in Harrisburg Thursday. He estimated the total cost to upgrade municipal sewage treatment systems in Pennsylvania's portion of the watershed at $1 billion.
Hill put the estimate lower, at between $500 million and $600 million.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set a 2010 deadline for improvements in the watershed.
Gov. Ed Rendell is expected to form a task force this week to look at how the state can provide funding to cash-strapped municipalities.
Neil Weaver, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the state is limited in the money it can dole out for sewer improvements because the federal government has slashed water infrastructure subsidies to Pennsylvania by 50 percent in the past three years.
"We don't have that funding to do the massive upgrades that are needed," Weaver said.
He said DEP would like local governments to consider alternatives to expensive facility upgrades, such as conservation, water reuse and partnering with farmers to limit nutrients getting into the water.