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NACWA’s Money Matters Summit & Fly-In was held in Washington, DC on March 1-2 with nearly 50 public clean water agency leaders coming together to make the case for a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approach to regulatory priority-setting and affordability issues. In an open dialogue, NACWA members expressed growing concern about their inability to determine which among the expanding array of Clean Water Act (CWA) requirements they should comply with first, and the lack of ability to realistically balance cost with water quality benefits.

NACWA is pleased to provide members with the enclosed copy of Two Sides of the Same Coin…Money Matters — Increased Investment & Regulatory Prioritization tri-fold, which helped frame the Summit & Fly-In discussions. The tri-fold serves as a compelling leave-behind document that summarizes the findings of a related and more detailed white paper. Both the white paper and the tri-fold take an economist’s approach in exploring the trend of declining federal investment and increased regulatory compliance costs — linking both to unsettling data on an apparent reversal of some of the water quality gains clean water agencies achieved in the decades following the 1972 enactment of the CWA. The tri-fold is intended to be used as a complement to the original Money Matters two-pager (also enclosed) to help paint a comprehensive picture of the very real challenges municipalities face in terms of CWA compliance and increasingly difficult affordability challenges.

These documents provide a foundation from which NACWA is developing a legislative proposal which will offer a more flexible planning approach to CWA compliance. It is anticipated that this legislation will be released in May at NACWA’s 2011 National Environmental Policy Forum, with plans for bipartisan introduction in both the House and Senate.

NACWA would be happy to provide members with additional copies of the tri-fold to share with your elected or appointed leadership. To order additional copies – please visit NACWA’s website at www.nacwa.org/pubs. All the documents discussed above are also available on NACWA’s Money Matters website, www.nacwa.org/moneymatters.