Federal COVID-19 Relief Efforts Restart
Congress and the White House have reconvened efforts to pass COVID-19 relief before the year’s end. With just a month left in the congressional legislative schedule, three different efforts are being put forward. The first proposal is a bipartisan Senate relief package, entitled the American Worker Holiday Relief Act, that would deliver a total of $908 billion in aid to support small businesses, pandemic unemployment assistance, state and local governments, and schools. As of this writing, text of the bill has yet to be released and it remains unknown if a ratepayer assistance grants program to assist water utilities offset costs associated with delinquent bill payments during the pandemic makes it into the package. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) supports the package and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has signaled a willingness to accept the smaller relief package.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has developed a proposal that would provide $500 billion in aid and focuses primarily on delivering relief to businesses and does not include relief to states and local governments. According the proposal’s fact sheet, it would provide extensions for pandemic unemployment assistance created under the CARES Act that was enacted into law earlier this year, liability protections for businesses for COVID-19 related personal injury claims, establishes a second round of Paycheck Protection Program loans for businesses, and deliver limited funding appropriations to support education and childcare.  Finally, the White House and congressional leaders have renewed talks to try and negotiate a relief package before the year’s end, however there is no indication how fruitful the renewed discussions will be.

The reinvigorated effort to pass a relief package adds to an already packed legislative schedule that Congress must complete before the end of the month. At the top of the list is passing Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 spending bills.  While appropriators hoped to reach an agreement on the spending bills by December 11, when the current Continuing Resolution (CR) expires, the desire to pass a COVID-19 relief package has complicated negotiations. As a result, it is expected that the House and Senate will pass a one-week CR that will expire on December 18 to give appropriators more time to negotiate compromise spending bills. There is still a desire among lawmakers to pass an omnibus bill to quickly send all twelve spending bills to the President’s desk to be signed into law.

 

USEPA Develops Interim Strategy to Monitor and Manage PFAS In Wastewater
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has developed an interim strategy for how to manage Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) contamination in wastewater, as it continues to advance its regulatory determinations outlined in its PFAS Action Plan. The strategy is outlined in an internal Agency memo and only applies to PFAS chemicals for which the Agency has validated testing methods. It recommends a phased-in approach for additional requirements as further testing methods are validated for additional PFAS chemicals. This interim strategy may be edited, amended, or discarded by the incoming Administration next year if the Agency’s new leadership wants to take a different approach to tackle the issue.

In February, a workgroup was created to develop the strategy to guide the Agency’s Clean Water Act (CWA) National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting process on an interim basis across all USEPA Regions, while the CWA framework for regulating PFAS discharges is still being developed.  After reviewing the NPDES permitting process under CWA, analyzing existing state-issued NDPES permits with monitoring requirements, determining detection benchmarks in current permits, and soliciting input from state partners, the workgroup is making three recommendations for monitoring PFAS in wastewater.  The memorandum outlines the timeline for implementing an official strategy to monitor and manage PFAS in wastewater, with June 2021 being the target date to build-out permitting information on USEPA’s PFAS website and send information to NPDES Permit Writers’ Clearinghouse.

 

House and Senate Reach Compromise WRDA 2020
After months of negotiating, the House and Senate have reached a compromise Water Resources Development Act of 2020 (WRDA). The final bill focuses primarily on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) water infrastructure provisions that support improving USACE water infrastructure projects, studies and construction, strengthening U.S. ports and harbors, and improving the resiliency of communities to wet weather events by increasing the resiliency of USACE projects. The clean water and drinking water provisions that were included in the Senate’s America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2020 (S. 3591) were ultimately cut from the final WRDA bill during conference negotiations. A section-by-section fact sheet summarizing WRDA 2020 provisions can be accessed here.