Clean Watersheds Needs Survey 2000: Report to Congress

This report, the Clean Watersheds Needs Survey 2000 Report to Congress, presents the results of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) survey of water quality programs and project eligible for funding under the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF). EPA prepared this report to meet the requirements set forth in section 516 of the Clean Water Act (CWA). Because of water quality problems associated with nonpoint source (NPS) pollution, EPA has elected to include NPS pollution control projects as well. The Clean Watersheds Needs Sruvey (CWNS) 2000 is a collaborative effort between 48 states and the District of Columbia, and EPA. States entered data into the CWNS database over a 21-month period to be evaluated and analyzed by EPA. The results of the data entry are presented in this report. The name of survey was recently changed from the Clean Water Needs Survey to the Clean Watersheds Needs Survey to recognize the increasing number of water pollution control activities, such as developing Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) and setting certain Safe Drinking Water Act objectives, that are managed on a watershed basis. Among other benefits, identifying needs by watershed promotes water pollution control strategies that optimize water quality investments in a watershed. This report presents the capital costs for publicly owned municipal wastewater collection and treatment, combined sewer overflow (CSO) correction, municipal storm water management, and NPS pollution control. This report presents the cost data in the CWNS database as "needs". A need is a water quality or public health problem and an associated abatement cost that is eligible for funding under the CWSRF. The needs must have existed as of January 1, 2000, to be included in the CWNS 2000. In addition, technical data, such as population, flow, and effluent, are summarized and presented in this report. The CWNS 2000 Report to Congress presents the total needs estimates in two ways. The first methods is based entirely on documented needs. These documented needs are entered by a State and validated by appropriate documentation. This is the first time, since the beginning of the CWNS, that the report to Congress presents only the documented total need for the Nation. In past surveys, EPA used a second method of determining needs estimates. That method modeled needs data to supplement the survey results. For this report EPA believes that the data entered into the CWNS adequately represent the Nation's needs for wastewater treatment and collection. For diffuse sources of pollution (such as nonpoint sources, sanitary sewer overflows [SSOs}, and municipal storm water), however, data limitations preclude complete reliance at this time on a documented needs approach. Therefore, this report includes a modeled national needs estimate for these diffuse sources. (See Chapter 4 and Appendices D and E for details.) EPA expects that during the next decade, as improved information is derived in the course of developing TMDLs and other watershed plans, the States' and EPA's ability to document needs for all source categories will improve. EPA expects, therefore, that its estimates of documented needs will continue to be improved, ultimately enabling complete replacement of the modeled needs estimates by documented needs.