Here’s a quick poll—raise your hand if you’ve participated in the EPA’s Clean Watersheds Needs Survey during the past year. No? How about raising your hand if you know what it is?
Despite EPA’s efforts to increase awareness of the survey in the stormwater arena, there are probably many of you out there who haven’t heard of it, and more of you who have but just haven’t paid much attention. EPA conducts the survey every four years to gather information about several types of projects and facilities, including publicly owned treatment plants, decentralized wastewater management facilities, estuary management projects, nonpoint-source pollution control projects, and stormwater and combined sewer overflow control facilities. EPA has been conducting the survey at various intervals since 1972; this year’s is the 15th one.
Although some stormwater-related items have been included for the past several iterations, EPA reports that relatively few stormwater programs participate, and therefore our needs have been underrepresented in the report the agency issues to Congress following each survey. For example, the 2004 survey report estimates capital investment needs in all categories to be $202.5 billion. This breaks down, according to the responses on the 2004 survey, to $134.4 billion for wastewater treatment and collection systems, $54.8 billion for combined sewer overflow corrections, $9.0 billion for stormwater management, and $4.3 billion for recycled water disribution. Although almost all states participated in the survey to some extent, only 28 of them plus the District of Columbia reported stormwater management program needs. A goal for the 2008 survey, which is underway right now, is to get a better handle on the necessary capital costs for stormwater infrastructure needs over the next 20 years.
The data-collection period for the 2008 survey runs from February 2008 through February 2009, so if you haven’t participated but would like to, there’s still time. This time around, the agency has put a lot of effort into moving the whole system online so people can enter data directly (see the EPA’s site www.epa.gov/cwns for information on how to set up an account). Not only stormwater program managers but also facility personnel, municipal employees, nonprofit organizations, and others can provide information. On the EPA Web site you can also see data from the last three surveys and explanations of how the data can affect legislation and funding.