LIMA — After attending the 84th annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors last weekend in Indianapolis, Lima Mayor David Berger expressed optimism as to how federal lawmakers are hoping to address municipal water and sewer infrastructure.
Service as vice-chair of the environment committee, Berger helped put together a resolution at the conference supporting the Water Resources and Development Act of 2016, still under consideration by the U.S. Senate.
“I had testified before the Senate in April,” he said. “Subsequent to that, I was pleasantly surprised to see that within three weeks, the Senate [Environment and Public Works] Committee under the leaderships of Sens. [James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, and Barbara Boxer, D-California] had adopted the Water Resources and Development Act, about 200 pages of legislation dealing with everything from constructing port facilities to water resources, including 25 pages of languages that addressed concerns the Conference of Mayors has been expressing concerning integrated planning and consent decrees.”
In the resolution, the conference said that “local governments have invested over $2 trillion in water and sewer infrastructure and services, $117 billion in 2013 alone, while federal investment has remained flat at approximately $2 billion.”
Lima is currently under a consent decree from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to rebuild its sewer discharge system, separating sewer and stormwater discharges. One of the provisions in the legislation would provide for $1.8 billion in grants over five years to help offset combined sewer overflow projects, as well as giving municipalities the chance to prepare an integrated plan.
“The resolution for the entire conference to be in support of that legislation passed unanimously for both the committee and the entire conference,” he said. “Going forward, the staff will be working to see that the legislation comes to a full vote in the Senate and attempt to get the same sort of legislation in the House.”
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