Introduction - What is the Clean Water Needs Survey?

The Environmental Protection Agency's CWNS is required by Sections 205(a) and 516(b)(1) of the CWA. The CWNS is a summary of the estimated capital costs for water quality projects and other activities eligible for SRF support as authorized by the 1987 CWA Amendments. These activities include both facilities and certain water quality program elements. Activities include the planning, design, and construction of publicly owned wastewater collection and treatment systems and projects controlling CSOs, SW, and NPS pollutants. Other eligible water quality program elements are those that involve one-time expenditures supporting the CWA goals, such as program development and implementation. Ongoing expenditures, such as operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, are not included. The 1996 CWNS, a joint effort of the States and EPA, is the twelfth such survey since the CWA was enacted in 1972.

How Is the CWNS Used?

The CWNS has served as a basis for Congressional allocation of funds for the Construction Grants program as established by the CWA in 1972, and for capitalization grants for the SRF program. Further, the CWNS can help States and EPA plan how they will attain and maintain CWA goals. The needs estimates and other information that are compiled for the CWNS can help agencies develop a comprehensive view of the projects and other activities necessary to comply with the CWA.

The SRF program gives States the flexibility to fund projects that are more comprehensive than those eligible under Title II of the CWA, including new or expanded treatment facilities to accommodate projected population growth. States can allocate SRF funding to a broader range of projects to address the problems that they consider most significant in terms of achieving water quality goals. This flexibility provides the opportunity to develop watershed-based water quality plans. Aggregating needs by watershed can provide a useful complement to needs aggregated by jurisdictional boundaries. Among other benefits, identifying needs by watershed can help to develop a strategy to optimize the effectiveness of water quality investment in the watershed.

The CWNS is used to assist the Federal government and the States in program planning, policy evaluation, and program management. Private firms, public interest groups, and trade associations use CWNS information in marketing, cost estimating, and policy formulation.

The CWNS database contains detailed cost and technical information on publicly owned wastewater treatment and collection facilities nationwide, and includes data on facilities with existing needs and on those for which needs have already been met. The primary purpose of this report is to summarize the cost information for existing needs.

What Are the Objectives of the 1996 CWNS?

The goal of the 1996 CWNS is to provide a broad and valuable source of water quality program information. The primary objective is to update and expand the documented costs for all program categories eligible for SRF funding. This included a substantial redocumentation effort for individual documented projects with needs greater than $5 million and documentation dated prior to 1990.

Another objective is to improve the estimates for the needs that depend on cost curves and cost models. In the 1992 CWNS report, CSO needs were estimated in part by a national cost model. This model has been replaced by CSO cost curves suitable for use on a site-specific basis. These cost curves were used in conjunction with documented needs to arrive at the total CSO control needs. The 1992 cost model for the NPS management programs to control runoff from agriculture, confined animal facilities, and silviculture was revised for greater accuracy. A new national cost model was developed for estimating the SW needs.

Finally, substantial effort went into improving the technical information associated with individual facilities, particularly population and flow data, and into improving the needs estimates for small communities.

What Is the Scope of the CWNS?

The 1996 CWNS includes water quality programs and projects eligible for funding under the SRF program in accordance with Title VI of the CWA. It encompasses the documented capital costs required to meet the needs of the nation's wastewater collection and treatment infrastructure in accordance with Section 212 of the CWA. It also covers the NPS and National Estuary Programs defined in Sections 319 and 320 of the CWA, respectively.

This report also includes modeled estimates for the Phase I SW Program and NPS control programs, for which documented information was not available or was incomplete. Modeling did not directly cover eligibilities in all NPS areas, such as ground water, estuaries, and wetlands. In these areas, only the documented needs are reported. The estimates do not reflect the total costs required to address problems in these areas. For estuaries, EPA assumed that the majority of the activities conducted under the Section 320 estuary programs are either point source or NPS control activities and that their needs will be captured in Categories I-VI or by the NPS model.

The needs for small communities are emphasized in the 1996 CWNS. While individually the small community needs are often overshadowed by those of larger population centers, collectively they make up a substantial portion (11 percent) of the total documented needs and 71 percent of the total number of facilities.

What Is a "Need"?

With respect to the CWNS, a "need" is a cost estimate for a project eligible for SRF funding under the CWA. It includes those costs associated with the prevention or abatement of a public health or water quality problem. The cost estimates for the needs identified in the 1996 CWNS database were either reported by the States or modeled by EPA. Reported needs include costs for facilities used in conveyance, storage and treatment, and recycling and reclamation of municipal wastewater. In addition, costs for structural and nonstructural measures and costs to develop and implement State and municipal SW and NPS programs were included in the database. For the modeled categories (i.e., SW and NPS), EPA prepared cost estimates for facilities and program activities eligible for funding under the SRF program.

Needs estimates for all categories do not include annual costs for O&M. They also do not include needs that are ineligible for Federal assistance under Title VI of the CWA, such as house connections to sewers and costs to acquire land that is not a part of the treatment process.

What Are the Eligible Clean Water Needs Categories?

Needs estimates are presented for the following categories of wastewater treatment and water pollution control projects:

What Is the Priority of a Need?

The CWNS does not attempt to prioritize the various categories of need and is not intended to be used by States as a vehicle for determining the priority of eligible needs projects to be funded. Under the SRF program, States may fund any project on their priority list regardless of its position on the list. However, EPA encourages the States, to the maximum extent practicable, to give priority to the needs that:

• address the most serious risks to human health; and
  
  
• are necessary to ensure compliance with requirements of the CWA.

Over the past two years, the EPA Clean Water SRF program staff has been working with its State partners to develop a document that would clarify the range of projects that may be funded with the SRF. The SRF Funding Framework (EPA 832-B-96-005, October 1996) is a policy and guidance document that outlines options for States to consider for improving and enhancing their systems for planning and prioritizing projects eligible for funding. The Framework presents two broad options for States that would integrate broader watershed planning activities to include NPS and estuary projects along with more traditional wastewater treatment projects.

What Time Period Is Covered?

The eligible needs identified in this report include existing needs as of January 1, 1996. Historically, because of the nature of the Construction Grants program, wastewater infrastructure needs were planned and designed for a community for a 20-year period. This period approximates the design life for newly constructed facilities that are designed to meet the requirements of the current population plus the net population change for the next 20 years. Thus, for those facilities with an existing need, estimates are reported for the "design year" (2016).

Since the 1987 passage of the CWA Amendments, however, communities often plan their infrastructure needs for a shorter period. This planning horizon for SW, NPS, and other program areas may be only five or ten years and States often submit five- and ten-year planning documents as the basis for documenting a need. These are all reviewed in accordance with the established documentation criteria.

What Needs Were Reported and Documented?

As in prior CWNSs, EPA asked States to update their needs for wastewater treatment and collection on a facility-by-facility basis in accordance with established documentation criteria for all categories of need. A more detailed discussion of the documentation process is presented later in this report in the section entitled "Documentation of Needs." Additionally, a special effort was made in the 1996 CWNS to improve the quality and national consistency in the reporting of documented needs. Special criteria, developed jointly by EPA and the CWNS Workgroup, required States to redocument their needs greater than $5 million if the documentation was dated prior to 1990.

What Needs Were Modeled?

In past CWNSs, certain categories of needs were not adequately reported, often because the information to complete the necessary planning was lacking. There is reason to believe that some needs continue to be underestimated. For example, since States and localities are still evaluating how to meet the requirements of the Phase I SW Program, the documented needs do not fully reflect the program costs. In the case of NPS pollution, types of controls very different from traditional wastewater treatment infrastructure may be required. For these reasons, EPA developed modeled estimates for the Phase I SW Program and selected NPS programs to be able to present more complete needs estimates in the 1996 CWNS report. Ultimately, the goal is to supplant modeled estimates with documented needs. Summaries of the modeling methodologies are presented in the sections on modeled needs.

What Is the Scale of the Sanitary Sewer Overflow Needs?

SSOs are releases of raw sewage from a sanitary sewer collection system before the headworks of a wastewater treatment plant. SSO problems can be found throughout the United States. The most immediate health risks associated with SSOs are bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens.

The scale of the SSO problems is being studied by EPA. In efforts separate from the CWNS, EPA is developing cost estimates for addressing SSOs on a national basis to support the work of the SSO Federal Advisory Committee and other Agency work.

The causes of and solutions to the SSO problems are closely related to the issues addressed by the CWNS. SSOs can be caused by a variety of factors, including blockages, system failures (e.g., power outages at pump stations or pipe collapses), high flows caused by large volumes of infiltration and inflow (I/I), and inadequate pipe or pump capacity. A comprehensive mix of measures is needed to prevent SSOs, including:

• Sewer and pump rehabilitation/replacement;
  
  
• I/I correction measures;
  
  
• Expansion of sewer, interceptor, and pump capacity to address existing capacity limitations and/or to provide for future growth;
  
  
• Expansion of treatment plant capacity;
  
  
• Provision of backup facilities;
  
  
• Preventive maintenance measures (e.g., cleaning); and
  
  
• Improved operational procedures.
  
  

Many municipalities have not fully investigated their SSOs or measures necessary to correct them;

Some municipalities have not submitted documented needs for SSO correction measures such as I/I measures or sewer rehabilitation/replacement because these types of projects have traditionally been given low priority; and

Some of the costs of addressing SSOs are not capital related (e.g., preventive maintenance and operational measures) and are not eligible for funding under the SRF program.

What Is the Relationship to the Drinking Water Needs Survey?

There is a close parallel between the CWNS and the Drinking Water Needs Survey (DWNS). In the CWNS, needs are associated with meeting the requirements of the CWA. In the DWNS, needs are associated with meeting the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and maintaining the infrastructure of drinking water systems. In considering the cost implications for water, wastewater, and other water quality utilities, both types of needs are generally additive. However, in certain cases, improvements in water quality may even reduce the need for drinking water treatment.

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