Peggy Gallos, Author at Association of Environmental Authorities of New Jersey

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AEA NJPDES Committee Makes Case for Science-based Approach to Address PFAS Chemicals in Surface Water

Posted on: February 4th, 2021 by Peggy Gallos

The AEA NJPDES Committee in January presented well-reasoned recommendations regarding future regulation of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in surface waters in testimony to the Clean Water Council (CWC). AEA advised the CWC and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to formulate permitting regulations informed by EPA-approved testing and data being collected by drinking water purveyors.

The CWC is required to hold an annual public hearing but COVID pushed the 2020 hearing into 2021; it was held Jan. 21 virtually. The hearing opened with remarks by Shawn LaTourette, Acting Commissioner, along with Virginia Wong, Chief, NPDES Permit Program, Water Division at USEPA Region 2 as well as Meg Parish, permits section manager, and Josie Nusz, water quality scientist, both from the State of Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment.

Pam Carolan, executive director of Mount Laurel Township MUA and committee chair, was the first of representatives from AEA-member organizations who testified. She was followed by Tom Laustsen of Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission, Ron Anastasio of Somerset Raritan Valley RSA, Mike Wynne of Hanover Sewerage Authority, Diane Alexander of Maraziti Falcon, John Scheri of Mott MacDonald, and Dennis Palmer of Landis SA.

PVSC also arranged for Attorney Amanda Waters of Aqualaw, a Maryland-based firm with expertise in water, wastewater and related law, to testify. The entire AEA NJPDES Committee worked together to formulate the testimony.

Ms. Carolan testified that the wastewater sector shares the concerns about the presence of PFAS compounds in the environment.

“We are partners in environmental protection,” she said, noting that AEA members have worked successfully with the DEP to address nitrate in the Passaic River and PCBs in the Delaware River.

Several speakers advised the CWC that source control is the best option for managing PFAS chemicals. AEA recommended that New Jersey allow time for the gathering and analysis of the valuable data that new drinking water regulations will provide to help determine locations in the State of greatest concern. AEA noted that although there is no EPA-approved method of analysis for wastewater at this time, it is expected soon. Waiting for that approved method would create clarity and uniformity.

Treating PFAS chemicals in wastewater is a problematic approach because of limitations in technology available and the great costs of these technologies, Mr. Scheri and Mr. Palmer testified.

Mr. Laustsen described steps PVSC is already taking to track potential sources of PFAS in its flow. He and several speakers discussed the value of this type of voluntary monitoring. The State should take a targeted approach, using source control and protection of drinking water intakes as the objectives, several speakers advised.

AEA testimony also advised the State be cognizant of the impact surface water regulations could have on the processing of biosolids, limiting well-accepted approaches like land application and causing big cost increases.

AEA submitted a seven-page comment document to the CWC on Jan. 29, available for reading and download here. Among other entities that submitted written comments were PVSC, Landis SA, and Pinelands Wastewater Company, which is owned by Middlesex Water.

The CWC is a statutorily created body of State government established in 1967 to serve as an advisory board to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and to improve the water pollution control program in New Jersey. The Council consists of 18 appointed members: seven permanent members and 11 members who serve for four year terms. For its current membership, follow the link: https://www.nj.gov/dep/cleanwatercouncil/cwcmembers.htm.

Interested in learning more about the AEA NJPDES Committee or becoming a members? Contact Peggy Gallos.

Tags: PFAS
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Is George Hawkins Making the Case for Public Water and Sewer?

Posted on: February 10th, 2020 by Peggy Gallos

You might want to check out George Hawkins, former manager of D.C. Water, on the Water Values podcast (thewatervalues.com).

Hawkins is interested in helping older systems with a declining rate base through the nonprofit arm of a new venture he has dubbed Moonshot Missions. (It also has a for-profit side offering services Hawkins says relate to “change management.”) He spoke about this venture at the Jersey Water Works conference on Dec. 13.

On the 20-or-so-minute podcast, Hawkins says, “The question has been on my mind, how to help these resource-constrained communities. Really good people working hard, but hard-pressed to adopt strategies that can save on existing operating and capital expenditures while improving performance to try to get into a virtual—virtuous!—cycle of performance.”

Moonshot Missions will provide free consulting services to struggling systems located in struggling communities. While Hawkins does not speak directly in terms of public versus private on the podcast, his optimism about the ability to turn the systems around seems to reflect a broader optimism that public systems have the capacity to manage their own problems and when warranted, change course. It is an alternative narrative to the one that our friends in the investor-owned community like to offer. Their narrative implies that the era of government ownership and operation of water and sewer systems has run its course and that only private Big Water (such as American Water Works subsidiary, New Jersey American Water or Aqua or Suez) can solve the problems and deliver good service. The president of the National Association of Water Companies, Robert Powelson, has been making the rounds of New Jersey op ed pages lately, pushing that narrative.

Hawkins also challenges another assumption, one that is widely repeated across the water/sewer sector by all kinds of people and that Big Water loves to refer to. Hawkins questions oft-noted statistics, mainly from the American Society of Civil Engineers “report card,” about the enormous costs required to fix aging infrastructure. “It is one of my fervent beliefs that the numbers that we hear about ‘oh, it’s a trillion dollars needed for the improvements to water and infrastructure’ are wrong. Because all of them are premised on how money used to be spent.” Hawkins concedes that when he managed D.C. Water, he spent money the way it “used to be spent.”

But, he told Water Values host Dave McGimpsey, he has come to believe a different approach, one that could make managing infrastructure costs more manageable for struggling communities, is in order now. “If the water main on 18th street needed to be replaced, we’d replace the whole main. Those are incredibly expensive projects and the water main is the cheapest part of it,” he said. He enumerated “non-pipe” expenses, including traffic control, permitting, and resurfacing. Hawkins says the “new” approach he now endorses involves doing a condition assessment of the existing pipe, “surgically” repairing it, and then cleaning and lining it.

“You can save 75 percent of that cost!” said Hawkins.

In calling out the idea of wholesale line replacements, whether he means to or not, Hawkins is challenging another investor-owned utility talking point. Their narrative includes direct and indirect references to the ASCE and similar assessments as a justification for why they are the answer to the Future-of-Water/Sewer.” They often emphasize pipe age as the most significant metric for determining capital priorities. If a mile of pipe is old, it must need replacing, they say. Coincidentally (or not so coincidentally?), investor-owned utilities collect profit on (ROI) capital projects. While they may have a strong incentive to keep operating costs down, the incentive to keep capital costs down would seem to run counter to their own best interests. For them, replacing that whole old line on 18th street makes sense, doesn’t it?

Tags: infrastructure, privatization, public ownership, water values podcast
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AEA Opposes Proposed Bill That Places Corporate Interests Ahead of Public Good

Posted on: June 17th, 2019 by Peggy Gallos

The following is based on written comments AEA submitted to the Senate Economic Growth committee regarding S3870.

The Association of Environmental Authorities (AEA) strongly opposes S3870 because it places corporate interests ahead of the public good, and it will hurt most the people who can least afford it. We are a trade association representing 85 public agencies, primarily authorities, which provide water, wastewater and solid waste utility service to millions of New Jerseyans. More than 40 private sector firms that provide professional services to the public sector also belong to AEA.

S3870 puts the ratepayer last because it favors a sales process focused on attaining a high price rather than securing the most efficient, cost-effective quality sewer service and getting the best deal for the people paying the sewer bills. These deals often are portrayed as great for the ratepayer, but what is left unsaid is that the corporate buyer can recover all or most of the purchase price in the rates paid by the ratepayers of the system. These deals are actually disguised loans—and expensive ones at that. The governing body gets to look great because they have secured a supposed “windfall.” What they have really done is ceded control of the town’s “circulatory” system and saddled the people who pay the sewer bills with the cost.

AEA believes preserving public ownership and operation of public systems in New Jersey is worthwhile. Among the many things wrong with this bill is that it will help promote sales and undermine public ownership. Pennsylvania has similar legislation already in place, and the result has been what one article referred to as a “feeding frenzy”[1] of acquisitions at inflated prices.

Because S3870 permits methods of appraisal that will result in inflated prices, S3870 favors investor-owned utility shareholders over the people who have been paying the sewer bills for years. This bill will hurt ratepayers with lower incomes. It also hurts contractors and construction workers: dollars that go to shareholders can’t be spent to employ them on capital projects.

The bill allows so-called “fair market value” approaches to be used to determine the “value” of the system. These three approaches (cost, income, market) are borrowed from the real estate industry and are based on the assumption that a utility is sold on a competitive market. They do not apply well to the monopolistic nature of utilities. Fair market value approaches give the buyer AND the seller incentives to negotiate the HIGHEST, not the lowest, prices. By requiring the lower of two fair market value-based valuations, the bill appears to protect the ratepayers and get them the best price. But it doesn’t because those two prices are both likely to be inflated.

A June 7, 2019 blog — “Here’s what’s happening in State X: State law lets investor-owned acquirers and municipal system owners negotiate their own prices, subject to deferential state commission review….” The blog goes on to say, “The state regulator approves the rising acquisition prices, as long as they don’t exceed some standard borrowed from the real estate industry… that has no relevance to the acquired system’s real value.”[2]

The valuation provisions in S3870 rob current ratepayers of the benefit of billions of dollars in savings from the federal and state grants that built the systems. Soon after our organization was founded, nearly 50 years ago, the federal Clean Water Act became law. It was a golden age of sorts when it came to clean water funding. The Federal Construction Grants Program provided financial assistance to public bodies to upgrade and expand sewerage infrastructure. By 1983, the program had given $6.3 billion in grants in New Jersey. Our state created its own supplemental matching/supplemental grant program and gave regional sewerage facilities funding priority. Those grants helped introduce advanced wastewater treatment to our State — an enormous environmental achievement. S3870 says that when a sewer system is being appraised, “the original source of funding for any part of the sewerage system shall not be considered in determining the value of the sewerage system.” That means that those billions in dollars in grants are, for the purposes of the valuation, treated as if sewer system users had actually spent them. This is yet another way to inflate value.

AEA believes that every sales transaction deserves public scrutiny and should go to referendum. By eliminating public referendum as currently required, S3870 cloaks and obscures utility system transactions from public view and discourages public involvement. S3870 allows governing bodies to sidestep a full and vibrant public discourse about a vital community asset. Instead of going to the voters, under this bill, a handful people on a governing body could post a couple of routine meeting notices and agendas to initiate discussions that take place over one, two or maybe three poorly attended public meetings. Within a few months or less, this handful of people could decide to take the momentous and irretrievable step of selling the community’s wastewater system asset without making certain the people who pay the bills understand what is happening. Then, under this bill, the sale would be reviewed by a state-level board comprised of five gubernatorial appointees who deliberate in Trenton, in most cases miles away from where the ratepayers live, and they do so via a complex, quasi-judicial proceeding that is virtually opaque to the uninitiated or the lay person. In a recent report touting how great water/wastewater is for investors, Aqua America said legislation like S3870 represents a “favorable” regulatory trend. This of course begs the question: favorable for whom?

Utility finance expert Janice A. Beecher, Ph.D. of the Michigan State University Institute of Public Utilities, has referred to these investor-owned utility/municipal deals as having “potential for distorted incentives” that can leverage “public problems as private opportunity” in a way that can be seen as “unfair or even predatory.” The bill promotes shortsighted decision-making – what one expert calls “today’s proceeds rather than tomorrow’s performance.”[3]

Public servants in governing bodies need to understand that they do not need to mortgage the ratepayers’ future by selling or entering into lease/concession deals highly favorable to the concessionaire. They can decide not to raid wastewater funds, they can dedicate appropriate levels of funding to the system, they can apply for principal-forgiveness loans from the New Jersey I-Bank, and they can exercise oversight by hiring knowledgeable and dedicated managers. There are thousands of them out there.

AEA respectfully asks the Senate Economic Growth Committee to think of ratepayers, especially those with fewer resources, and to vote against releasing this bill.

[1] https://www.inquirer.com/philly/business/new-pennsylvania-law-private-water-sewer-acquisitions-aqua-pennsylvania-american-20180905.html

[2] Hempling, Scott. “Water Mergers: Are They Making Economic Sense?” June 7, 2019. www.scotthemplinglaw.com.

[3] See footnote #2

Tags: AEA correspondence, legal, legislation, Trenton
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Public Utility Agencies, Local Press, and Civic Engagement

Posted on: April 12th, 2017 by Peggy Gallos

The news business in New Jersey has changed. In many instances, local news has migrated to online platforms: NJ Arts, NJ Spotlight, or Politico NJ. TapInto.net operates about 60 NJ franchise sites. In my own town, the owner of a local B&B faithfully updates a “good news” Facebook page. People get news from Twitter and other platforms. Meanwhile, broadsheets and tabloids are declining. Staff of newspapers has been cut and cut. According to the NJ Press Association website, there are 16 dailies, 12 group weeklies, and 15 independent weeklies, far fewer than there used to be. Throughout this transformation, local news has suffered.

That’s not only bad for the journalists, press workers, and advertising staff who work in local news. It is unfortunate for local government, too. Without a doubt my view is influenced by that fact that I once worked in local news. But in my current role as someone who speaks on behalf of local clean water and solid waste agencies, I am more convinced than ever that the decline in the availability of local news is not good for local government. I saying this knowing full well that news coverage is a mixed bag. AEA member organizations have been unfavorably or inaccurately covered by local news media. Stories about misdeeds in authorities are certainly fair game, but an unfortunate side effect of them is that they shape perception and reflect badly on the many, many local elected and appointed officials and employees who are honest, professional and dedicated.

News coverage may not always be comfortable, but it is useful–even vital — for local water/solid waste agencies. Local media connects local agencies to local people who depend on their services. It provides platforms for telling about good work. A recent Pew Research Center study found that civically engaged people are more likely to value and use local news sources. Civically engaged people are the ones most likely to take Girl Scouts on a tour of a plant or ask questions about the mayor’s plan to sell a system to a corporation.

Civic engagement coupled with local news coverage changed and deepened the dialogue when Evesham Township was considering dissolving its authority. Dennis Palmer, executive director of Landis Sewerage Authority (LSA) in Vineland, has made it a years-long practice to cooperate with local reporters and make himself and his staff available to them. Local media has enabled Palmer to show the commit to efficiency and innovation of the commissioners who oversee the authority. He heightens the community’s awareness of its water and sewer system through local poster contests for children that are covered in the local paper. When the mayor held secret discussions about dissolving the authority, Palmer held press conferences and issued news releases to tell the LSA perspective and to clarify inaccuracies. The local press was instrumental in his effort to build consensus. He put forward fiscally sound proposals that addressed the city’s needs without fixing an asset that wasn’t broken to begin with.

So my advice to AEA member authorities or any local government entity is to keep in touch with the civically engaged people in your community by engaging with local news media. Subscribe to newspapers. Seek out local news sources online. Issue news releases. Engage social media about important civic questions such as clean water. Encourage coverage. Take journalists on tours of facilities. Discuss local services and needs with them.

The press is taking some hard hits lately. That’s too bad. A free press promotes transparency and public dialogue. It’s one of the fundamentals of democracy–whether that democracy is being lived out in Evesham, Vineland, Trenton or Washington, D.C.

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Public Utility Agencies, Local Press and Civic Engagement

Posted on: April 12th, 2017 by Peggy Gallos

That’s not only bad for the journalists, press workers, and advertising staff who work in local news. It is unfortunate for local government, too. Without a doubt my view is influenced by that fact that I once worked in local news. But in my current role as someone who speaks on behalf of local clean water and solid waste agencies, I am more convinced than ever that the decline in the availability of local news is not good for local government. I say this knowing full well that news coverage is a mixed bag. AEA member organizations have been unfavorably or inaccurately covered by local news media. Stories about misdeeds in authorities are certainly fair game, but an unfortunate side effect of them is that they shape perception and reflect badly on the many, many local elected and appointed officials and employees who are honest, professional and dedicated.

Civic engagement coupled with local news coverage changed and deepened the dialogue when Evesham Township was considering dissolving its authority. Dennis Palmer, executive director of Landis Sewerage Authority (LSA) in Vineland, has made it a years-long practice to cooperate with local reporters and make himself and his staff available to them. Local media has enabled Palmer to show the commitment to efficiency and innovation of the commissioners who oversee the authority. He heightens the community’s awareness of its water and sewer system through local poster contests for children that are covered in the local paper. When the mayor held secret discussions about dissolving the authority, Palmer held press conferences and issued news releases to tell the LSA perspective and to clarify inaccuracies. The local press was instrumental in his effort to build consensus. He put forward fiscally sound proposals that addressed the city’s needs without fixing an asset that “ain’t broke” — the well-run, and efficient sewerage authority.

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Exhibitors are a Source of Info and Advice at AEA Conference

Posted on: March 31st, 2017 by Peggy Gallos

The AEA spring conference (“snowed” out in March) will be held April 25-26 at Caesar’s, Atlantic City. One of the best things about this event is the exhibit area, where attendees can get advice and information, and exhibiting businesses can make connections with decision-makers. This year’s exhibitors include: All Covered, BCM Engineers*, EMEX, Mott MacDonald, Maser Consulting, NJM Insurance Company, NJ’s Clean Energy Program/(Honeywell), PSI Process & Equipment/Div., Pumping Services Inc., Suburban Consulting Engineers, Inc., and Solid Waste Association of North America. Executive directors and other eligible attendees who participate in the “Attendee Connection” program will be included in a drawing for a special door prize.

Speakers

Daniel Fagin

AEA is welcoming Pulitzer Prize winner Dan Fagin, Prof. Fagin wrote Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation, which tells the story of drinking water contamination in that Ocean County town. He will discuss the story, its aftermath, and environmental journalism. Other speakers will discuss preparing the next generation of managers, and attendees will hear about a wastewater resource recovery project at Rahway Valley SA. The DEP will be on hand to discuss emerging contaminants, and Monroe Township utility department representatives will discuss a basin transfer project. Redevelopment, connection fee reform, and the work of the AEA NJPDES Committee will be the subject of presentations Wednesday morning. The agenda closes with presentations on energy and the recycling market.

Recognition

AEA will hold its annual awards luncheon Wednesday, 4/26. This year we will be honoring Toms River MUA, Somerset Valley Regional SA, Hamilton Township MUA, Cape May County MUA, Passaic Valley SC, and Atlantic County UA. New this year: a recognition ceremony for the men and women who have completed the Environmental Professional Development Academy.

ICYMI

March registrations will be carried forward for the April dates. For more info, including about new registrations, visit our home page.

*Links indicate AEA member organizations.

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