Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

social consequences to this program; and we know well enough the health and environmental results of failing to accomplish it.

Unfortunately, in total it will take vast amounts of money. And we think that to accomplish this task, special programs, such as that envisioned by the bill under consideration, will have to be used to bring in our areas of rural poverty. Pennsylvania, and hundreds of its municipalities, have demonstrated a willingness to tackle this as the serious problem that it is; but we are finding that parts of our State need special help. We are facing an emergency, and we urgently need the "Emergency Community Facilities and Public Investment Act of 1972.". Mr. WILCOX. Thank you, sir.

I was a member of a three-member panel which held 3 days of public hearings in rural Pennsylvania about a year ago and two of the subjects most frequently mentioned as representing very critical problems for the rural poverty sections of Pennsylvania and particularly the areas inhabited, what we have come to call the rural landless poor, were the sewer problem and water problem. If I may I would like to read just a couple of paragraphs from the two sections of our final report dealing with these two subjects. These were a few of the comments about the water supply problem.

One of the most serious problems discussed at these hearings is the shortage or lack of supply of potable water, repeatedly identified with poor housing and with poverty conditions generally. From the record the problem appears most serious in the bituminous coal region of western Pennsylvania. The water supply was shown to be generally one of the critical needs of rural areas. The water supply problem divides into two interrelated topics: inability of existing water supply systems to provide satisfactory service and the contamination of individual water supply sources of those not served by these systems.

In Pennsylvania, according to a group which appeared before us, we have 854 public water suppliers. Of these 295 are municipal authorities, 211 municipal systems, 348 private companies, and of these 348 private companies-I think this is an important figure53 percent of them had fewer than 500 connectors. Specific figures given in Indiana County, one of the counties where we held the hearings, that 23 suppliers served 56 percent of the population, and of these 13 had fewer than 500 customers, and even the average was a mere 290.

The problems of these small companies and their customers were entered into the record primarily at specific complaints and they had virtually everything one could think of to say about the fallacies and shortcomings of these small systems.

One lady testified, and I think her two or three sentences perhaps summarizes the problem as well as one could. She said her daughter has seven children and she tries to wash with an automatic washer and has to take the filter off four or five times and she doesn't have a tub of water in which she doesn't find tadpoles, leaves, etc., and she is only one of a lot of persons down there and they pay $4, a high water bill. They have been doing this for years. And other witnesses reported corrosion and sedimentation of home plumbing after only a few months. There was repeated testimony about unannounced and lengthy service disconnections and we have reason to believe some of these service disconnections by the private water companies, sometimes owned by the same person who owned the entire village, perhaps a village at one time had been a company town, actually turned off these water supplies as a disciplinary measure to punish the community when the landlord felt that the behavior was, from his point of view, unsatis

factory. Some customers were subject to 32 days without water during the summer. Low pressure was reported because of the 50-year-old main would burst under normal conditions.

Those are the kinds of problems that we encountered with respect to water supply in these rural areas of Pennsylvania, and one of the concluding recommendations of the report was that various Federal agencies, especially FHA and HUD, have programs to aid local water and sewer systems, but one witness reported that these agencies have 10 applications for every 1 for which funds are available.

Witnesses and panelists also note that even high percentage grants and loan programs are inadequate because the small local companies do not have the financial resources to provide the rest.

Well, we have similar problems with respect to the sewerage systems in these counties or more properly the lack of sewerage systems. One paragraph in the report, and I will read just one under the sewerage section testimony, states that "Despite Federal and State assistance programs, small communities usually effected by low personal incomes and other characteristics of a declining economy have no resources for providing the rest of the funds needed. The problem appears to be extremely serious because it is dangerous to public health. It is deleterious to the environment because it is so sensitive geographically. Further, a solution is difficult because of the high cost to be anticipated in correcting it."

Well that, in short, is the problem as we perceive it in Pennsylvania. There are many complicated formulas which require an expert really to understand in full detail, I guess, with respect to this, but Mr. Rosso tells me we can make the generalization that under the most ideal circumstances conceivable the best that a community can do is to get two-thirds of the cost of a sewer system, that is, both the treatment and the collection system, from a source other than local sources; and the average is probably just a bit over one-third of the total cost.

The second point I would like to make is that the community with the greatest need frequently have the fewest resources. Of 74 communities ordered by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources to construct sewerage facilities under the Sewerage Facility Act of 1965, only six were outside areas of serious unemployment.

Could you hold that map up for us a moment?

This pink area on the map here, the shaded area, represents areas of substantial unemployment, 6 percent or more, and these communities have been cited by our department of environmental resources to install treatment facilities. You can see that the communities that have been cited are virtually, with five or six exceptions, in the areas of greatest economic need and in a few cases just across the border from the county just as bad off as the adjoining communities, but for statistical reasons doesn't show in the shaded area. So I think that this map dramatically represents the problem in Pennsylvania as we see it.

So in short the third point I want to make is that these matching programs, since they are available to the communities, which have the resources to match them, is a kind of Robin Hood in reverse in this situation and when you combine that with the fact that, for example, in Pennsylvania we are not permitted by the constitution to have a graduated income tax, so we have a flat income tax and

sales tax. Both taxes are, I think, admittedly regressive. There are some allegations that with the various loopholes the Federal tax itself also in some respects is regressive. We are really taking from everybody to give to those communities which have the local resources to provide the matching funds and that frequently means the wealthier communities.

I wouldn't want to conclude this testimony this morning without relating all of this to the housing problem, and on page 4 of my prepared statement there are two paragraphs which I would like to read.

The prohibition on new connections is a relatively new program; but we can see serious implications if other trends continue. We will have to expect that wealthier suburbs, where land costs are high and building codes encourage expensive homes, will come to be the only ones open to new construction. The implications are serious for those large numbers of our citizens who cannot afford to buy into these communities.

In short, this problem can become statute for the exclusionary zoning practices which some communities already use to keep out all but the wealthy.

Nor do we want to let the absence of adequate sewage collection and treatment facilities become a new excuse for some municipalities to keep out denser development or multifamily uses. Pennsylvania has established its policy of ultimately requiring adequate sewage treatment facilities in every community, and of giving substantial help, backed with legal enforcement.

We approve this proposed legislation very enthusiastically.

It is a very depressing experience, as I am sure some of you gentlemen or perhaps all of you know, to be talking to people out in the rural areas that are unemployed and see these terrible needs and just wonder why the needs can't be matched with the unemployment situation and something effectively done to deal with it, and I think that H.R. 13853 would be a tremendously important device to get people employed and to get some of these extraordinarily unhealthful and really life-threatening situations abated in rural Pennsylvania. That is all I have to say at this time, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, sir.

Mr. WILCOX. Could I say one other thing?

We have a film that was made

The CHAIRMAN. That has been called to my attention.
It was made in the field, was it?

It was made in Pennsylvania?

Mr. WILCOX. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. In connection with your studies?

Mr. WILCOX. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. And you want to show that during the noon hour, if it is permissible?

Mr. WILCOX. If it is, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not know about how much audience you would have. As far as I am concerned, and unless some member objects, and I am sure they will not, it will be all right for you to use the room for this purpose during the time we are in recess.

Mr. WILCOX. Could I make one comment about the film? It is not the usual sort of educational or training film. There are a number of people who were witnesses at State hearings who were filmed as they

testified, and I think that in a brief 20 minutes you would not be hearing so-called experts and policymakers, and so forth, but the people who are real victims of this situation. I think, in many ways, they will tell the story much more eloquently than I, for example, could tell you.

The CHAIRMAN. I would be very glad to see it myself, and I believe the others would also be glad to see it. Twenty minutes shouldn't be too long. We will probably have 2 hours for lunch, depending upon the wishes of the committee.

Next is Mr. Harry J. Peyton, Jr., on behalf of the National Utility Contractors Association.

Mr. Peyton, we are delighted to have you, sir, and you may proceed. If you have anybody accompanying you, you may identify them for the record.

STATEMENT OF HARRY J. PEYTON, JR., PRESIDENT, NATIONAL UTILITY CONTRACTORS ASSOCIATION; ACCOMPANIED BY JOSEPH M. STONE, GENERAL COUNSEL

Mr. PEYTON. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Harry J. Peyton of Baltimore, and I am appearing here today as president of the National Utility Contractors Association, a trade association composed of utility contractors engaged in such work as the construction of utility lines-including metallic and nonmetallic pipe for storm and sanitary sewers and drainage, water lines, cables, ducts, conduits, and projects relating to drainage, sanitation, sewage disposal, irrigation, flood control, water supply, and similar underground construction work.

As utility contractors we are extremely interested in H.R. 13853 which provides needed funds to meet basic community sewer and water facilities, and I am therefore most appreciative of this opportunity to present the utility contractors' views. Obviously, as a group, we stand to benefit materially from the enactment of this bill, but we sincerely believe that we also speak as concerned citizens and that the overall picture is so crystal clear rearding the need for the expenditure of these funds that it would be eminently unfair to dismiss the uitlitycontractor viewpoint as self-serving.

Let me say at the outset that I have read Congressman Patman's statement appearing in the March 17, 1972, Congressional Record accompanying the introduction of this bill, and I am thoroughly in agreement with his views as to the need for expanded sewer and water facilities, the lack of meaningful expenditure of appropriated funds and the impact which passage of the Emergency Community Facilities and Public Investment Act of 1972 would have.

Parenthetically, it may be of some interest to note that at the recent annual convention of this association held from May 10 to May 14, 1972, the membership passed a resolution-a copy of which is attached to this statement-voicing the vigorous opposition to the administration's failure or refusal to expend all funds appropriated by the Congress.

In the past decade the surge in suburban growth has created a tremendous demand for water and sewer facilities and, indeed, public interest in such facilities has been quickened by an awareness of the ecology problems which must be met. Because of the demands of the

association's convention and the limited time afforded us for preparing for this hearing, we have not been able to prepare an extensive statistical listing of the "demand" or "need," on a nationwide basis, for water and sewer construction projects. Indeed, we are not even sure whether or how much of that kind of data is available, particularly since an evaluation of the need of water and sewer facilities must be made in terms of relatively small political units with respect to the watersheds serving them. Such surveys are expensive, involving, as they must, a projection of population growth and an evaluation of where such growth will occur within the political unit. That there are such studies, of course, is clear. For example, I am aware of one made several years ago for Montgomery County in Maryland, and it is my understanding that Fairfax County in Virginia is about to embark on another. I might note in passing the problem in Montgomery County where, as you know, inadequate sewage treatment facilities has necessitated a ban on further sewerlines and consequent inability to build houses, which, of course, means a loss of employment.

Within the time and means available to us, however, we have quickly gathered some information from our members across the country which we think should be of interest to this committee concerning the real need for a substantial increase of the Nation's water and sewer facilities. We have received from our New Jersey chapter a report, dated February 3, 1969, made by the New Jersey State Department of Health, Division of Clean Air and Water, entitled "Anticipated Capital Needs for Sewage Facilities in New Jersey." Attached to this statement are excerpts from that report. In brief, however, it shows that:

The four year authorization contained in the Federal funding statute would in accordance with the statutory formula, provide New Jersey a total of about $109 million in aid or 12 percent of the cost described below. However, if the funds appropriated continue for the next two years at the level of the last two years, Federal aid will amount to less than three percent of the total needs described below.

To date Federal and State funds that have actually been appropriated have been in such small amounts as to have no measurable impact on the pollution control program.

***The total estimated cost of all facilities now needed is $906 million.

The $906 million total is the estimated cost of treatment plants, trunk lines and outfalls now needed in New Jersey and which are eligible under for Federal and State construction grants. The total does not include the cost of upgrading the treatment plant and conveyance systems of the Passaic Valley Sewage Commissioners. *** It is our guess that the cost of bringing these facilities into conformity with State law and Department requirements is in excess of $100 million. As noted above the $906 million is the assessment of the cost of eligible facilities. It will be necessary to accompany the construction of these eligible facilities with the construction of an estimated $225 million of sewage collection systems which are not eligible for Federal and State aid. (There is some eligibility for limited Federal aid for such collection systems from the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and other Federal agencies. There is no eligibility for aid from the principal funding agency: The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, Department of the Interior).

In our judgment it is wholly unrealistic to expect local government with the little Federal aid now available to bear the enormous cost of constructing facilities now needed.

To do so would place an unconscionable additional burden upon the property owner in the form of additional property taxes or use charges.

The report goes on to state that the estimates are based on 1968 dollars and no attempt was made to adjust the cost for normal inflation. Obviously, since the date of the report the cost has considerably

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »