Washington, D.C. – Congressman John D. Dingell, Ranking Member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, today warned that the President’s budget not only cuts funding for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by $500 million but also fails to address significant unmet needs.

"This budget, like the President’s decision to role back the Clinton rules on arsenic, is harbinger of worse things to come," Dingell noted. "The simple fact of the matter is that improving the nation’s water systems to ensure safe drinking water and reducing arsenic will take a substantial investment. The President, in his budget, once again has failed to put his money where his mouth is."

The President’s budget plan fails to meet the needs for safe drinking water across the country. Public water systems must invest in infrastructure improvements to ensure that they can deliver safe drinking water to consumers. In February 2001, the EPA released the results of a comprehensive survey of the nation’s infrastructure needs. The key finding of the survey is that "$102.5 billion is needed now to ensure the continued provision of safe drinking water." This compares to the $823 million budgeted by the Bush Administration for the drinking water state revolving loan fund. Further, the $4.5 million reduction in research and development funding for the Office of Safe Drinking Water includes approximately $1 million for arsenic research.

The Bush budget will also fail to meet the need to clean up brownfields from abandoned gas stations, and groundwater contaminated by MTBE and other releases from leaking underground storage tanks. These tanks are often the source of MTBE and petroleum contamination in groundwater and it is estimated that over 200,000 old gas stations are brownfield sites. The budget acknowledges that there is a "backlog of Underground Storage Tank sites with confirmed releases waiting to be addressed." Although the federal government has a trust fund of $1.57 billion, collected as a .01 gas tax, to be used for the clean up of these sites, the Bush budget only allocates $71.9 million.

"Cleaning up brownfields not only improves our environment and water but also helps strengthen local economies. Sadly this budget will do little of either," Dingell said. "To add injury to insult, the Bush budget eliminates 270 federal and civil personnel charged with enforcing our clean air, clean water and hazardous waste laws. This erosion of federal enforcement hurts both the environment and honest businesses everywhere."

Overall, the Bush Administration’s budget slashes the authorization for enforcement personnel by 270 full-time equivalents, or about eight percent of the total EPA enforcement staff from the FY 2001 budget. The large majority of the work year reductions come from compliance monitoring, civil and criminal enforcement, and enforcement training.

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