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By
KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
WASHINGTON, May 26, 2003 The computer system used by the
Environmental Protection Agency to track and control water
pollution is obsolete, full of faulty data and does not take
into account thousands of significant pollution sources,
according to a new government report.
Efforts to modernize the program have been mismanaged for
several years, said the report, issued last week by the
E.P.A.'s inspector general. While the cost to fix the
problem has been soaring, the amount of money dedicated to
the project has been shrinking. The new system was supposed
to come online this month, but because of its many problems
it will be at least three years before the agency and the
states can properly manage the enormous system of permits
that is the basic tool for enforcing the Clean Water Act.
The report is the latest in a series of investigations over
the years into the law's enforcement, many of them severely
critical of the E.P.A. This time, the inspector general's
office found that because of continuing mismanagement, "the
future viability" of the system of permits "may be
endangered."
J. P. Suarez, the agency's associate administrator for
enforcement, disagreed with the report's characterization of
the system as endangered but acknowledged that it faced
serious financing problems.
"The project design and cost are getting more expensive,"
Mr. Suarez said in a telephone interview. "In our most
recent budget, we asked for $5 million more to speed up the
modernization effort, but costs continue to increase."
The permit system, known as the National Pollution Discharge
Elimination System, was created decades ago in an effort to
make the nation's waterways clean enough for fishing,
swimming and other essential purposes. Despite some
progress, the states have consistently fallen far short of
that goal.
The computer system is supposed to allow the federal and
state governments to check a facility's monthly discharge
against its allowable amounts. Critics say the computer
flaws could allow the mining and oil industries and
developers to discharge vast quantities of pollutants into
waterways undetected.
The permits are supposed to control discharge from more than
64,000 facilities, a number that has been increasing as new
categories of runoff, like pollution from overflowing sewers
and from large livestock operations, have been brought under
the Clean Water Act.
But thousands of permits expire every year without being
renewed, the backlog of permits to be issued has been
reduced slowly, and tens of thousands of pollution sources
have not been listed in the agency's database, rendering it
largely useless.
"If these new areas are not included in the modernized
system," the report warned, "information for hundreds of
thousands of permittees will not be included."
The flaws in the system and the delays in fixing it are
jeopardizing one of the E.P.A.'s main new water pollution
control strategies, which calls for granting new permits
only after considering how much pollution is already flowing
into a watershed. Without comprehensive data, that approach
is next to impossible.
"Delaying the project's rollout or reducing its
functionality will hamper E.P.A.'s ability to achieve its
goal of managing pollution sources on a watershed basis,"
the new report said. "The growth, variety and complexity of
the regulated community has greatly outstripped the system's
capabilities."
Critics of the agency said the faulty system undermined
efforts to enforce the Clean Water Act.
"The deliberate neglect of this project is a perfect example
of the Bush administration's effort to dismantle the Clean
Water Act with as little public awareness as possible," said
Daniel Rosenberg, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense
Council.
"Rather than investing in modernizing the system for
tracking compliance and enforcing the law," Mr. Rosenberg
said, "they are wasting money and resources on rewriting the
rules to eliminate protections for tens of thousands of
streams and wetlands, weakening essential programs and
promoting various initiatives that range from useless to
harmful."
Eighteen states use the system as their primary tool for
enforcing the federal law, a responsibility that is often
handled by state governments.
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