Note: This is a copy of a letter sent to Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan and Oak Ridge City Council members, among others.
Dear Mayor Beehan,
Next Monday evening you will begin considering a major increase in the Oak Ridge city debt to finance the sewer upgrade project. This increase and the associated utility rate increases:
- Hurt existing city businesses, especially large water users—making it substantially more difficult for them to economically compete;
- Give realtors in surrounding communities another sizable competitive advantage, drawing even more U.S. Department of Energy reservation workers away from our city (and away from Anderson and Roane counties);
- Limit future financing options for our schools;
- Limit Oak Ridge’s ability to afford other key city services like police and fire protection; and
- Impose a financial burden on residents who live on limited, fixed incomes.
Most importantly, the added debt seriously weakens the city’s negotiating position with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and DOE. Why should EPA or DOE come to the table, if the Council readily imposes this debt on the community?
I recommend that the Council:
- Defer the debt hike until EPA, DOE, and the Council have completed negotiations. Oak Ridge is in a strong position to request a reasonable EPA order to replace the current one. The city has taken important positive steps to address the underlying environmental concern. And it’s in DOE’s best interest (i.e., in the best interests of DOE’s science, defense, and environmental management missions) to negotiate a fair cost-sharing arrangement. There is no reason that negotiations with EPA and DOE should take more than a few weeks—once they are at the table.
- Propose a reasonable technical alternative to the current EPA order. Do not simply “meet†with EPA; propose an alternative order that’s tailored to the city and gets the job done at an affordable cost. This alternative can be quickly created by appropriate technical experts. If preparation takes longer, you do not have the right experts.
- Establish a negotiating position that recognizes the bulk of this problem is a federal pollution legacy. Most of the Oak Ridge sewer system was hurriedly designed and constructed by the federal government. It was seriously undersized from the beginning. Local residents and businesses should not have to pay to correct a pollution problem created by the federal government to serve a federal need.
- Closely monitor the costs, schedule, and scope of the entire sewer upgrade program—during Council meetings. Utilize comprehensive baseline cost and schedule estimates that address all upgraded processes, not just those of the capital project.
- Retain the services of a project manager to assist the Council.
- Defer this month’s utility rate increase until: (a) EPA enters negotiations on the order and (b) DOE contributes a fair share of the costs.
- Host the next meeting with EPA in the City of Oak Ridge and open that meeting to public comment.
We need your leadership—and the leadership of Vice-Mayor Jane Miller—to find the best path forward. The city is at an important crossroads.
Martin McBride
Oak Ridge
Dave Smith says
Wishful thinking and fanciful reasoning is not a prudent approach for addressing the need to comply with the EPA order, but this is the approach being “recommended†by Mr. McBride.
There is really too much wackiness, as well as some patent
insincerity, in this letter to fully address in a comment. I will limit myself to a couple of instances.
“Recommendation 1…Oak Ridge is in a strong position to request a reasonable EPA order to replace the current one….â€
I can’t imagine on what Mr. McBride is basing this conjecture. In 2012 there were several EPA civil Enforcement cases and settlements in Tennessee and to my knowledge in not one of them did the EPA back away one iota from its stance on alleged municipal violations of the Clean Water Act and the resulting injunctive relief imposed on the
municipality. He should cite an example of a municipality that has convinced the EPA to back off even a tad on its enforcement of the Clean Water Act so we will know just how strong is our position. By the way, the EPA is not the only agency involved in the settlement. The
U.S. Department of Justice, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, and the Office of the Tennessee Attorney General are all parties to the action. I can’t imagine that the City of Oak Ridge could – with one attorney – take on these agencies and expect
a favorable resolution in “a few weeks.â€
Here are links to a couple of EPA settlements with cities that are
getting hammered even harder than Oak Ridge:
http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/cases/civil/cwa/cityofchattanooga.html
http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/cases/civil/cwa/memphis.html
“Recommendation 3…Local residents and businesses should not have to pay to correct a pollution problem created by the federal government to serve a federal need.â€
The allegation that the federal government is liable for a pollution problem in a 70-year-old sewer system is specious, but in the interest of expediency I will simply address Mr. McBride’s insistence that we seek to have the federal government pay some or all of the cost to rehabilitate the sewer system. As we all know, federal monies are derived from taxes, duties, fees, etc., and borrowing. Lately, about 40 cents of every dollar of federal spending is borrowed. So even if the feds were to fund the repairs to the sewer system, the taxpayer would be on the hook for more debt. In essence we would be asking U.S. taxpayers to borrow money to fix a sewer system that we got for free and have been using for more than seven decades with scarcely a thought that we should be putting aside some money for future repairs. The fable of the grasshopper and the ant comes to mind here.
What I see as the end result of Mr. McBride’s recommendations, were they to be pursued by council and the city manager, is a sizable amount of unnecessary cost to the city with no tangible benefit.
Martin McBride says
Thank you for your comments on my letter. I think you raise some important concerns about EPA andDOE.
Regarding your first point, I was a federal regulator for some years. Although I worked for the NRC rather than the EPA, there is a distinct similarity in their processes.
The current situation was triggered by an EPA inspection that went badly. Like any regulator, EPA wanted to know two things when it visited Oak Ridge: (a) when will full-compliance be achieved and (b) is there a sense of urgency in coming into compliance. EPA failed to get a satisfactory response on either point.
The city had no date for full compliance—which means (from EPA’s point of view) that Oak Ridge might never comply.
Based on this, EPA—again, as a normal federal regulator—felt there was no choice but to lower the boom on Oak Ridge.
They did so with an Administrative Order. Although overly-expensive, this Order did accomplish the regulatory purpose. It specified a date for full compliance and lit a fire under the City of Oak Ridge.
EPA has hundreds of communities to try and get into compliance. They do not have time to fool around. We failed an inspection and paid the heavy price.
That was the situation several years ago. Thanks to a great deal of effort on the city’s part, the situation has now changed.
Oak Ridge has now spent millions in a focused effort to achieve compliance—demonstrating good faith. It has raised rates and is poised to raise them again (and again.) It brought in experts and assembled a technically-sound project. Oak Ridge is showing both a will to comply and a clear sense of urgency.
Yet, the city is still handcuffed by the original EPA Order. Pausing before we raise rates (and issue more debt) for say, two months to negotiate a technically superior document that “gets-the-job-done†at less cost—is reasonable (and essential) in my view.
Regulators are also very concerned about setting a national precedent. If they give Oak Ridge an inch will they be forced to give other communities a mile? Since only two other Secret City communities were created like Oak Ridge, our city is almost a unique case. That further strengthens our stance on this issue. EPA will not create precedence.
Regarding your second point, in my opinion this is federally-created pollution—similar to the radioactive material and heavy metals released into our streams years ago.
Some of that pollution also goes back 60 or 70 years.
Much of the Oak Ridge sewer system was undersized and hurriedly built to meet a federal need during the 1940s and 50s. It’s that design and construction that are at issue. That is the polluting agent.
Consider a mine owner that digs a deep mine and then sells the property. The present owner does have some responsibilities. Yet, it’s customary to go back to the original mine-owner to recover environmental cost—should that old mine-shaft become a pathway to leach hazardous material into the environment.
Or, consider who would be responsible if radioactive contamination—from the time of the Manhattan Project—were discovered in an Oak Ridge neighborhood.
Finally, consider the fact that it’s in DOE’s own interest for the Oak Ridge economy to become competitive and an attractive place for federal workers to live. The department needs these workers to live in Oak Ridge in order to stabilize the wonderful political support DOE has enjoyed for so long.
Much of DOE’s political support rests in the city’s seniors. That demographic is changing. Individuals without close ties to our plants are taking their place. If Oak Ridge fails to attract reservation workers, it will have substantial consequences for future of nuclear activities at ORNL and Y-12.
It’s almost impossible to
create another nuclear reservation in today’s political climate. DOE
needs to hold on to all of its nuclear assets, especially Oak Ridge. The
department cannot affo rd to see the city’s economy damaged by this issue. They could end up being the biggest loser!