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May 30, 2010

NACWA Seeks Member Agency Support For Key Financial Capability Effort With The U.S. Conference Of Mayors

As NACWA increases its advocacy focus — in the legislative, regulatory, and legal arenas — on ensuring that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) takes a reasonable and more flexible approach to assessing communities’ financial capability, the Association is seeking to leverage its resources and its members’ expertise in a variety of ways.  At its National Environmental Policy Forum in Washington, D.C. last week, the Association’s Board of Directors endorsed a resolution calling for a New Approach to Affordability and Assessing Community Financial Capability (see 4-23-10 Clean Water Current).  A NACWA web seminar, Money Matters. . .Making the Case for Affordability, is slated for June – and the Association plans additional advocacy outreach activities in the coming weeks and months.

Among our highest priorities — and one that is poised to achieve results in the near-term — is an  Association effort to provide strategic information, input, and guidance to the U.S. Conference of Mayors (the Mayors) as they embark on their own aggressive advocacy initiative.  The Mayors will focus their efforts on persuading top EPA and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials to change the Agency’s inflexible enforcement stance related to combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs), including in the area of financial capability. 

NACWA Urges Member Support to Ensure Success of this Important Effort

As an affiliate member of the Mayors' Urban Water Council, NACWA has a seat at the table and is poised to represent the interests of its Member Agencies as this effort advances when the Council next meets in early May. NACWA is joined in this effort by Affiliate Members Barnes & Thornburg and Limno Tech, who also sit as affiliate members on the Mayors’ Urban Water Council.  To demonstrate its support, NACWA plans to allocate monies from its Wet Weather Advocacy Fund (WWAF) to cover 50% of the costs associated with this initiative. (NACWA’s support is estimated at $60,000 over two fiscal years.)  Additional funding is also being sought from public agencies interested in participating.  We encourage you to seriously consider support for this important effort and, if interested, to contact Fred Andes at Barnes & Thornburg LLP (312-214-8310 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) prior to May 30.

The Mayors have the unique ability to voice a strong message about the difficult economic circumstances that currently exist in municipalities across the country – and the need for a smarter, more innovative and flexible approach to Clean Water Act enforcement.  We are confident that the Mayors effort – and the variety of other complementary initiatives NACWA has underway or planned – will be most successful when public clean water agencies provide key strategic input, data, and anecdotal information that can lend credibility to sound economic arguments and ensure that they are both authoritative and compelling.  Again, we urge your participation.  Should you have any questions specific to NACWA's involvement in this effort please feel free to contact Adam Krantz ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   or 202-833-4651).

*This Advocacy Alert is provided to Affiliate Members for information only.