Stated and Revealed Financial Assistance Priorities: Evidence from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (original) (raw)
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Land Economics
Using the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System compliance and the Clean Water State Revolving Funds (CWSRF) data for wastewater treatment plants in nine states between 2010 and 2018, we examine a) the effect of non-compliance on the distribution and size of awarded CWSRF loans, and b) the effects of the CWSRF provision and award size on postfunding compliance. We observe that funded facilities have poorer compliance records than the unfunded ones and that funded facilities decrease violations within two years after receiving financial support. On average, a $50 million CWSRF loan decreases violations by one count within two post-funding years.
2019
This paper studies the ex post effectiveness of the financial support program (CWSRF) for compliance with NPDES permit system. It examines violations of not only particular pollutant restrictions but also the cumulative violations across all pollutant regulated by the NPDES permits. Our results show that facilities which are receiving the funds have smaller probability of violation under fixed effect logit model. However, CWSRF assistance is not helpful in terms of reducing the frequencies of NDPES permit violations. Facilities which received CWSRF at any time in the last two years are not having any significant reduction in frequencies of NPDES permit violation. It reflects that the plants receiving loans were not the plants most in need of improvement but were already among the best.
Policy Studies Journal, 2004
The Clean Water State Revolving fund (CWSRF) program provides states with significant discretion to design, implement, and administer the program to meet their water quality needs. An important aspect of the program is the decision whether to leverage existing funds to generate additional capital for loans. This article seeks to explain the leveraging decision process, using three models as explanators. We conceive leveraging as a two-stage process-(1) the decision to leverage and (2) the decision of how much to leverage. By employing regression techniques, we find that the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) stated reasons for leveraging-environmental needs and demand for loansare not significant in the decision to leverage, although needs are significant at the second stage. Likewise, there is limited support for "capacity/commitment" model of environmental implementation. A third model employing a larger range of independent variables is the best predictor of both the decision to leverage and the amount of leveraging. Furthermore, the factors important at each stage of the decision process differ substantially, reinforcing our conception of a two-stage decision process.
The Effects of Source Water Protection Grants: Evidence from the Minnesota Clean Water Fund
2020
Protecting drinking water sources is a growing challenge in the U.S. as local communities struggle to finance measures needed to comply with Safe Drinking Water Act standards. In November 2008, Minnesota voters approved an increase in the state's sales tax to fund the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment. The Clean Water Fund (CWF) is one component of this program and provides funding to protect drinking water sources. This paper examines the impacts of CWF source water protection grants on drinking water outcomes. Leveraging the water violation records of hundreds of community water systems (CWSs) in Minnesota, we employ panel data and event study research designs to study the impact of these grants on violations. We find evidence that water systems incur less health-based violations after they receive a grant.
Drinking Water Equity: Analysis and Recommendations for the Allocation of the State Revolving Funds
2021
In this report, we evaluate how states allocate support from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) using national and state-level data from 2011 to 2020. This program already helps address disparities and has even more potential to do so. We find that states address disparities by targeting assistance towards:Health: Communities with more health-based Safe Drinking Water Act violations are more likely to receive assistance.Income: Communities with lower median household incomes are slightly more likely to receive assistance.We also find that states could do more to address disparities by expanding:Reach: 7.1 percent of eligible drinking water systems have received assistance.Additional subsidies: 26.6 percent of total assistance was distributed as principal forgiveness, grants, or negative interest loans, despite a federal ceiling of 35 percent for disadvantaged communities.Diversity: Small communities and more racially diverse ones are less likely to receive assistance
Land Use Policy, 2007
This paper provides a baseline assessment of one component of Maryland's Smart Growth legislation, the ''priority funding area'' (PFA) designation in combination with the state's incentive program for water and sewer infrastructure. Maryland's Smart Growth legislation established urban boundaries areas and designated that state infrastructure funding would only support projects serving areas inside those boundaries. We use data on the location of water and sewer infrastructure investments between 1997 and 2002 to examine two questions. First, to what extent has Maryland's Smart Growth policy constrained investment to areas inside the PFAs, and second, what are the local conditions that affect county cooperation with state policy. As expected, there are variations across counties in their compliance with the Smart Growth initiative. Projects supported with state funds are primarily located inside PFAs. However, excluding projects where the precise service area could not be identified, 29% of state funds went to projects located outside of PFAs. This was a larger share than local funding, where only 25% of local funds went outside PFA boundaries. The statistical analysis indicates that the faster the county's population growth rate and the stronger the local tax base, the more likely projects will occur outside the PFA. The greater the state subsidy in a project and the higher the county's per capita income, the more likely a county will comply with the state initiative and concentrate water and sewer projects inside their PFAs.
Essays on Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act
This dissertation empirically examines three issues related to CWA and SDWA: 1) Financial Assistance and Environmental Compliance; 2) Financial Assistance Priorities from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund; and 3) Drinking Water Compliance during COVID-19 Pandemic. Using the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System compliance and the Clean Water State Revolving Funds (CWSRF) data for wastewater treatment plants in nine states between 2010 and 2018, chapter 2 examines a) the effect of non-compliance on the distribution and size of awarded CWSRF loans, and b) the effects of the CWSRF provision and award size on post-funding compliance. Funded facilities are found to have poorer compliance records than the unfunded ones and that funded facilities decrease violations within two years after receiving financial support. On average, a $50 million CWSRF loan decreases violations by one count within two post-funding years. Adequate investment in wastewater infrastructure remains a critical challenge for environmental protection in the US. In Chapter 3, I examine states' prioritization of investment in wastewater treatment facilities using the Clean Water State Revolving Funds (CWSRF) allocation and wastewater treatment plant data from 2010 to 2019 from nine states. Discrepancies and consistencies between regulators' stated and revealed funding priorities are documented based on the records of intended and observed allocation of CWSRF support. I find that states intend to and provide CWSRF assistance to wastewater treatment plants with poorer Clean Water Act compliance records in previous years. I also find that larger facilities are prioritized in intended as well as observed allocation of assistance. Although impairment of discharge receiving streams is not a significant factor in assistance distribution plans, the observed allocation of funds is positively correlated with receiving stream's impairment. Poorer communities are prioritized in intended as well as observed assistance allocation. However, income-based prioritization is weaker in states with greater corruption. According to the USEPA, the COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected water systems' operations due to supply chain disruptions, water workforce staffing shortages, financial effects, and operational difficulties. Such challenges for drinking water systems functioning need to be analyzed to ensure current and future public health safety. In Chapter 4, I empirically examine SDWA violations to identify environmental regulatory risks emerging from COVID-19 pandemic. Using annual data from 2011 to 2020 for all 50 states, I observe that counties with more COVID cases experience decreased facility level SDWA health-based violations relative to the counties with fewer COVID cases. Also, the reported number of health-based drinking water violations decreased after February 2020 when the pandemic hit US. The decrease in health-based violations can be a result of weakened monitoring or reporting (M&R) activities. SDWA monitoring and reporting violations deceased with growth in the number of COVID cases. Using mediation analysis, I observe that the direct effect of COVID on health-based drinking water violations vanishes once I account for M&R violations as one of the regressors for health-based violations. Thus, I conclude that COVID-19 had no direct effect on health-based violations but did weaken monitoring and reporting activities. Staff and equipment shortages, limited access to sample collection locations, and EPA's temporary enforcement discretion policy for regular monitoring activities are some of the possible channels that could have affected M&R activities during the pandemic. On the other hand, staffing, chemical treatment, and operational budget shortage can also increase the number of health-based violations. However, in the presence of degraded M&R activities, such health-based violations can remain undetected. Our negative and significant estimate of the effect of the number of COVID cases on health-based violations supports such possibility. We observe a positive and significant effect of COVID cases on M&R violations, which explains the decrease in health violations when COVID cases increase. 1.1. References
State Expenditures and Policy Outcomes in Environmental Program Management
Policy Studies Journal, 1997
Comparative state environmental research seeks to explain the factors contributing to intergovernmental environmental management. In pursuing the answer to this query, researchers have relied on either fiscal (expenditures) or nonfiscal (ranking) measures of state environmental effort. Respecting the debate surrounding state policy outputs and fiscal versus nonfiscal measures, we evaluate comprehensive state environmental management comparing spending and ranking measures in our analysis. Though pronounced differences do exist between the two models, we find pollution and state size to be the primary factors affecting a state's environmental effort no matter which measure is used.
The Uneasy Hierarchy of Federal and State Water Laws and Policies
… Water Research and …, 2011
Water allocation in the West is regulated by a volcanic hierarchy of federal and state laws and policies. Eruptions have increased in frequency as states and their citizens lament the increasing control that the federal government has begun to exert over several western river basins pursuant to federal statutes such as the Endangered Species Act. 1 For example, at a recent conference investigating how Columbia and Snake River irrigators can improve habitat for endangered and threatened anadromous fish species, Washington Senator Marilyn Rasmussen, chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture and Rural Economic Development Committee, bluntly asserted that "[t]he federal government needs to butt out-this is our state." 2 Such assertions deserve profound scrutiny because of the frequency with which they are expressed in regional public water policy meetings; the influential positions of state officials who adhere to them; and most importantly, the barriers they create between federal and state officials in several ongoing cooperative attempts to resolve the serious environmental problems vexing the region. Accordingly, we consider why the federal government has intervened in water policy (an area typically perceived to be within the purview of states), and explore the parameters of actual and potential federal intervention. We also examine the problems with relying on traditional state policy to allocate water among competing private and public uses in the modern era without continued federal intervention. FEDERAL INTERVENTION IN STATE WATER ALLOCATION POLICY The federal government has intervened in state water policy to finance large-scale water projects, secure water legislatively earmarked for Indian reservations, protect public water uses, determine the constitutionality of state restrictions on interstate water transfers, and resolve interstate water disputes. These functions often have been undertaken in response to either a state request or a federal obligation to protect public interests neglected in state water allocations. Federal Water Development States traditionally accommodated increased demands for water by expanding supplies (Gould 1988). Water development took the form of dams, associated water impoundment reservoirs, and long-distance canal systems. The expense of such major development went beyond the financial capabilities of individual farmers, cooperative associations of farmers, and the governments of small western states and territories. Moreover, private investment companies generally viewed such projects as overly risky and capital-intensive. Consequently, western brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk