***aff

congress wont drain

Congress wont drain the fund twice
Scribner 4/26 Land-use and Transportation Policy Analyst, Competitive Enterprise Institute (Marc, 26 April 2012, The Awful Truth about the
Highway Bills, Competitive Enterprise Institute, http://www.openmarket.org/2012/04/26/the-awful-truth-about-the-highway-bills/) If you ever needed additional proof that the politics of Washington are not just broken, but soaked with gasoline and set ablaze in a ditch near Baltimore, take a look at Congresss recent highway bill dog and pony show. The

Senate passed the obnoxiously titled Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-

21) bill on March 14 in a 74-22 vote. While ostensibly passed in a bipartisan fashion, it soon became clear most of the Senate Republicans who voted for MAP-21s
passage had no clue what was in the bill and how it would be paid for. Gary Hoitsma, a transportation analyst who previously served as a senior aide to Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.), has done yeomans work in his analysis of MAP-21s funding provisions. Despite the bipartisan rhetoric enabled by Sen. Inhofe who admits he is a fiscal conservative on everything other than infrastructure and national defense Hoitsmas analysis shines a much-needed light on some of the jaw-dropping fiscal gimmickry contained in MAP-21. For instance, rather

than attempting to fix the revenue-outlay imbalance that is driving the federal Highway Trust Fund into insolvency, the twoyear, $109-billion MAP-21 relies on a series of one-shot revenue transfers that, once used, cannot be relied upon again. This includes a multi-billion dollar general revenue transfer, redirecting revenue from tariffs on imported foreign automobiles, and nearly emptying the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund of its $3.6 billion. Since this is merely reallocating spending from other federal programs to the Highway Trust Fund, MAP-21 crafters were supposed to find budget neutral offsets. Unfortunately, the bills backers failed not only in finding the necessary offsets, they used every lastditch funding trick available to preserve their excessive level of transportation spending. Again, once these tricks are used, they cannot be used again. Assuming MAP-21 becomes the highway law of the land, this means that finding revenue for outlays beyond FY 2013 will be all the more difficult. The Senates bill, rather than resolving the very serious fiscal issues facing the Highway Trust Fund, merely kicks the can down the road for 18 months.

long term uniqueness

HTF will be empty in 2 years
Lang 12 (CBO reports highway trust fund headed for bankruptcy in 2014, The Hill, http://thehill.com/blogs/transportation-report/highways-bridges-androads/207839-cbo-reports-highway-trust-fund-headed-for-bankruptcy-in-2014) Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Tuesday that a Congressional Budget Office report that the

highway trust fund would be empty by fiscal year 2014 shows President Obama has been right to call for increased funding for transportation projects. The CBO predicted Tuesday that the deficit will rise to $1.08 trillion in 2012. Under the non-partisan agency's calculations, the highway trust fund, which funds road projects using collections from the federal gas tax, will be running on empty just two years after that. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Tuesday that the projection was not a surprise. "We've known for a long time that people are driving less and they are driving more fuel efficient cars," LaHood told reporters after a speech to the Washington Aero Club.

at groundwater kills housing market

Doesnt affect residential property values
Page and Rabinowitz, 93 (G. William, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Planning, University of Buffalo, the State University of New
York *AND Harvey, former professor, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Autumn 1993, Groundwater contamination: Its effects on property values and cities, American Planning Association, Journal of the American Planning Association Volume 59, Issue 4, ProQuest, Hensel)

Groundwater contamination had no measurable effect on property values in the residential property case
studies, in contrast to the commercial property case studies. Figure 2 shows the assessed value of land plus improvements for seven properties in the Town of Barton over an eleven-year period.(Figure 2 omitted) Two of the properties, 227-C and 227-F, had VOC contamination in excess of state standards. The

other five properties had no VOC contamination. The five noncontaminated properties are adjacent to or across the street from the contaminated properties. Figure 2 shows that the assessed value of the contaminated properties and the noncontaminated properties continued to increase at steady rates during the period after the state discovered the groundwater contamination until the municipality provided the home owners access to a public water supply. The tax assessor noted no property improvements in the contaminated properties that might offset a loss in value caused by contamination. The increase in property value in the Barton properties was comparable to average residential increases in
property values in the municipality. During this period, several of these properties in the subdivision, including one of the properties with groundwater contamination, sold and all were reassessed. The contaminated

properties increased in value at the same rate as the noncontaminated properties. The research considered six other detailed case studies of residential properties (see Table 2). (Table 2 omitted) All seven case studies compared properties with contamination in their groundwater sources of drinking water and nearby properties without contamination in their wells. Although the studies all used equalized assessed value as the primary measure, actual sales data were also available for some of the properties. This data confirmed the trend in assessed value. Y1ym In this instance, within two years the value of this
property rebounded to the level of the surrounding properties (Rabinowitz and Page 1991).

alt causes to dirty water

Either the squo solves the aff or there are 7<9> alt causes
Duhigg and Roberts, 10 staff writer for the New York Times, winner of the George Polk Award, The Scripps Howard National Journalism
Award, a Loeb Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the National Academies reporting award, the investigative reporting award from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the 2009 Science in Society Journalism Award, and recognition from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Columbia University the Deadline Awards, degree in history at Yale and Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, AND* staff writer for the New York Times, (Charles and Janet, Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Foiling E.P.A., the New York Times, February 28, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/01water.html?_r=1)//JKahn Thousands of the nations largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Acts reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators. As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.

Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years. The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today,
regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nations largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials. We

are, in essence, shutting down our Clean Water programs in some states, said Douglas F. Mundrick, an E.P.A. lawyer in Atlanta. This is a huge step backward. When companies figure out the cops cant operate, they start remembering how much cheaper it is to just dump stuff in a nearby creek. This is a huge deal, James M. Tierney, the New York State assistant commissioner for water resources, said of the new constraints. There are whole watersheds that feed into New Yorks drinking water supply that are, as of now, unprotected. The court rulings causing these problems focused on language in the Clean Water Act that limited it to the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters of the United States. For decades, navigable waters was broadly interpreted by regulators to include many large
wetlands and streams that connected to major rivers. But the two decisions suggested that waterways that are entirely within one state, creeks that sometimes go dry, and lakes unconnected to larger water systems may not be navigable waters and are therefore not covered by the act even though pollution from such waterways can make its way into sources of drinking water. Some argue that such decisions help limit overreaching regulatory efforts. There is no doubt in my mind that when Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972 they intended it to have broad regulatory reach, but they did not intend it to be unlimited, said Don Parrish, the American Farm Bureau Federations senior director of regulatory relations, who has lobbied on Clean Water issues. But for E.P.A. and state regulators, the decisions have created widespread uncertainty. The court did not define which waterways are regulated, and judicial districts have interpreted the courts decisions differently. As regulators have struggled to guess how various courts will rule, some E.P.A. lawyers have established unwritten internal guidelines to avoid cases in which proving jurisdiction is too difficult, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former E.P.A. officials. The decisions reduce E.P.A.s ability to do what the law intends to protect water quality, the environment and public health, wrote Peter S. Silva, the E.P.A.s assistant administrator for the Office of Water, in response to questions. About 117 million Americans get their drinking water from sources fed by waters that are vulnerable to exclusion from the Clean Water Act, according to E.P.A. reports. The E.P.A. said in a statement that it did not automatically concede that any significant water body was outside the authority of the Clean Water Act. Jurisdictional determinations must be made on a case-by-case basis, the agency wrote. Officials added that they believed that even many streams that go dry for long periods were within the acts jurisdiction. But midlevel E.P.A. officials said that internal studies indicated that as many as 45 percent of major polluters might be either outside regulatory reach or in areas where proving jurisdiction is overwhelmingly difficult. And even in situations in which regulators believe they still have jurisdiction, companies have delayed cases for years by arguing that the ambiguity precludes prosecution. In

some instances, regulators have

simply dropped enforcement actions. In the last two years, some members of Congress have tried to limit the impact of the court decisions by
introducing legislation known as the Clean Water Restoration Act. It has been approved by a Senate committee but not yet introduced this session in the House. The legislation tries to resolve these problems by, in part, removing the word navigable from the law and restoring regulators authority over all waters that were regulated before the Supreme Court decisions. But

a broad coalition of industries has often successfully lobbied to prevent the full Congress from voting on such proposals by telling farmers and small-business owners that the new legislation would permit the government to regulate rain puddles and small ponds and layer new regulations on how they dispose of waste. The game plan is to emphasize the scary possibilities, said one member of the Waters Advocacy
Coalition, which has fought the legislation and is supported by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Home Builders and other groups representing industries affected by the Clean Water Act. If you can get Glenn Beck to say that government storm troopers are going to invade your property, farmers in the Midwest will light up their congressmens switchboards, said the coalition member, who asked not to be identified because he thought his descriptions would anger other coalition participants. Mr. Beck, a conservative commentator on Fox News, spoke at length against the Clean Water Restoration Act in December. The American Land Rights Association, another organization opposed to legislation, wrote last June that people should Deluge your senators with calls, faxes and emails. A

news release the same month from the American Farm Bureau Federation warned that even rainwater would be regulated. If you erase the word navigable from the law, it erases any limitation on the federal governments reach, said Mr. Parrish of the American Farm Bureau Federation. It could be a gutter, a roadside ditch or a rain puddle. But under the new law, the
government gets control over it. Legislators say these statements are misleading and intended to create panic. These claims just arent true, said Senator Benjamin

L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland. He helped push the bill through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. This bill, he said, is solely aimed at restoring the law to what it covered before the Supreme Court decisions. The consequences of the Supreme Court decisions are stark. In drier states, some polluters say the act no longer applies to them and are therefore refusing to renew or apply for permits, making it impossible to monitor what they are dumping, say officials. Cannon Air Force Base near Clovis, N.M., for instance, recently informed E.P.A. officials that it no longer considered itself subject to the act. It dumps wastewater containing bacteria and human sewage into a lake on the base. More than 200 oil spill cases were delayed as of 2008, according to a memorandum written by an E.P.A. official and collected by Congressional investigators. And even as the number of facilities violating the Clean Water Act has steadily increased each year, E.P.A. judicial actions against major polluters have fallen by almost half since the Supreme Court rulings, according to an analysis of E.P.A. data by The New York Times. The Clean Water Act does not directly deal with drinking water. Rather, it was meant to regulate the polluters that contaminated the waterways that supplied many towns and cities with tap water. The two Supreme Court decisions at issue Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. United States Army Corps of Engineers in 2001 and Rapanos v. United States in 2006 focused on the federal governments jurisdiction over various wetlands. In both cases, dissenting justices warned that limiting the power of the federal government would weaken its ability to combat water pollution. Cases

now are lost because the company is discharging into a stream that flows into a river, rather than the river itself, said David M. Uhlmann, a
law professor at theUniversity of Michigan who led the environmental crimes section of the Justice Department during the last administration. In 2007, for instance, after a pipe manufacturer in Alabama, a division of McWane Inc., was convicted and fined millions of dollars for dumping oil, lead, zinc and other chemicals into a large creek, an appellate court overturned that conviction and fine, ruling that the Supreme Court precedent exempted the waterway from the Clean Water Act. The company eventually settled by agreeing to pay a smaller amount and submit to probation. Some E.P.A. officials say solutions beyond the Clean Water Restoration Act are available. They argue that the agencys chief, Lisa P. Jackson, could issue regulations that seek to clarify jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. Mrs. Jackson has urged Congress to resolve these issues. But she has not issued new regulations. E.P.A.,

with our federal partners, emphasized to Congress in a May 2009 letter that legislation is the best way to restore the Clean Water Acts effectiveness, wrote Mr. Silva in a statement to The Times. E.P.A. and the Army Corps of Engineers will continue to implement our water programs to
protect the nations waters and the environment as effectively as possible, including consideration of administrative actions to restore the scope of waters protected under the Clean Water Act. In the meantime, both state and federal regulators say they are prevented from protecting important waterways. We need something to fix these gaps, said Mr. Tierney, the New York official. The Clean Water Act worked for over 30 years, and were at risk of losing that if we cant get a new law.

aff is taxes
Transportation investment is distinct from raising taxes
Primmer 11 executive director of the Southern California Transportation Coalition (Marnie OBrien, Why Transportation Investment Doesnt Always
Mean Raising Taxes, 5/16/11, http://mobility21.com/investing-in-transportation-vs-spending/)//EM In the past couple weeks Ive

been speaking to folks about the need to invest in our infrastructure. I think thats pretty straight forward: you put money and effort (i.e. man hours) into fixing and expanding the infrastructure we need to move about the region, and there should be: a) improved traffic flow b) better air quality c) more transit options d) reduced frustration on the part of travelers everywhere
Seems like a win-win-win to me: We create jobs which help get people back to self-sufficiency (and has the added benefit of reducing need for resource-sucking social programs which are creating our huge deficit) We build lasting infrastructure that helps us better move goods and people protecting our global competitive position We provide greater mobility options for 21 million Americans here in the southland. Not bad, right? Well apparently

invest is code for raise taxes to some folks. So lets be clear: Mobility 21 is not about raising taxes, were about doing a better job with the resources we have and directing our precious tax dollars to the best use to keep our economy moving and put people back to work while delivering a long-term benefit to the nation.

Federal tax acts prove investment and taxes are not directly related
Bosworth et. al 85 - former presidential advisor on fiscal and monetary policy, economic growth, capital formation, and Social Security (Barry, John
Shoven, Lawrence Summers, Taxes and the Investment Recovery, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Vol. 1985, No. 1 (1985), pp. 1-45, JSTOR)//EM

There has been no shortage of explanations for the surge in investment spending. Most prominently mentioned is the 1981-82 tax act, which sharply reduced the tax rate on income from new investments. '
Other explanations include the lower rate of inflation, which has improved the outlook for sustained economic growth in the United States, and the acceleration of technological change, reflected in the replacement of capital stock made obsolete by energy price changes during the 1970s and in the increasing use of computers in production. A few analysts even link the rise in the value of the dollar to increased investment. Their argument, which departs from the conventional view that a rise in the exchange rate increases the cost of domestic production and reduces investment incentives, is that a higher exchange rate presses American firms to invest to maintain a competitive position in world markets. This

paper investigates the investment expansion in recent years with an emphasis on the effect of tax changes. The issue is important, because the United States is engaged in another debate over tax reform, and the
impact on capital formation is again emerging as a major criterion on which all tax proposals will be judged. My analysis considers the composition as well as the level of investment spending. The 1981-82 tax act had widely different effects on tax rates for different types of capital assets. While the tax

rates on

income from investments in structures all declined substantially, rates for income from some types of equipment, such as trucks and office equipment (computers), actually increased. The range of tax rate changes offers an opportunity to explore further the link between taxes and investment decisions by examining the changes in the composition of investment spending since 1981 and relating these changes to changes in relative rates of taxation.

Investment and tax raising are not the same theres an opposite correlation
Bosworth et. al 85 - former presidential advisor on fiscal and monetary policy, economic growth, capital formation, and Social Security (Barry, John
Shoven, Lawrence Summers, Taxes and the Investment Recovery, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Vol. 1985, No. 1 (1985), pp. 1-45, JSTOR)//EM

Finally, the explanation for the lack of correlation between changes in the pattern of investment and changes in relative tax rates may be that the tax rate measures are wrong. Specifically, the commonly cited calculations of
relative tax burdens ignore variations by asset in the reliance on debt financing. It is, however, demonstrable that some types of assets-those with low variance of future incomes and well-developed resale markets-are inherently more compatible than others with a high degree of debt leverage, and that the use of debt finance for such assets provides tax benefits. On the basis of plausible parameters it

is possible to conclude that assets such as commercial real estate have low or even negative rates of taxation, even though the standard conclusion of the investment

literature is that they are heavily taxed. That standard conclusion seems more appropriate for assets such as industrial structures, which have a
limited value in resale markets.

warming alt cause

Nitrates are an alt cause
Nolan et al, 88 (Bernard T., USGS, *AND Barbara C. Ruddy, USGS, *AND Kerie J. Hitt, USGS*AND Dennis R. Helsel, PhD in environment, USGS,
January 1988, A National Look at Nitrate Contamination of Ground Water, Water Conditioning and Purification, Volume 39, Number 12, pp. 76-79, http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/nutrients/pubs/wcp_v39_no12/, Hensel)

A variety of chemicals, including nitrate, can pass through the soil and potentially contaminate ground water. Nitrate comes from nitrogen, a plant nutrient supplied by inorganic fertilizer and animal manure. Additionally, airborne nitrogen compounds given off by industry and automobiles are deposited on the land in precipitation and dry particles. Other nonagricultural sources of nitrate include lawn fertilizers, septic systems, and domestic animals in residential areas. Beneath agricultural lands, nitrate is the primary form of nitrogen. It is soluble in water and can easily pass through soil to the ground-water table. Nitrate can persist in ground water for decades and accumulate to high levels as more nitrogen is applied to the land
surface every year. Knowing where and what type of risks to ground water exist can alert water-resource managers and private users of the need to protect water supplies. Although nitrate generally is not an adult public-health threat, ingestion

in drinking water by infants can cause low oxygen

levels in the blood, a potentially fatal condition (Spalding and Exner, 1993). For this reason, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) has established a drinking-water standard of 10 milligrams per liter (mg/L) nitrate as nitrogen (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1995). Nitrate concentrations in natural ground waters are usually less than 2 mg/L (Mueller and others, 1995).

contamination inevitable
The counterplan cant engender legislative action which means contamination is inevitable despite preventing LUSTs
Duhigg, 09 staff writer for the New York Times, winner of the George Polk Award, The Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, a Loeb Award, the
Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the National Academies reporting award, the investigative reporting award from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the 2009 Science in Society Journalism Award, and recognition from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Columbia University the Deadline Awards, degree in history at Yale and Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, (Charles, That Tap Water Is Legal but May Be Unhealthy, the New York Times, December 16, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/us/17water.html?pagewanted=5)//JKahn

The 35-year-old federal law regulating tap water is so out of date that the water Americans drink can pose what scientists say are serious health risks and still be legal. Only 91 contaminants are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, yet more than 60,000 chemicals are used within the United States, according toEnvironmental Protection Agencyestimates.
Government and independent scientists have scrutinized thousands of those chemicals in recent decades, and identified hundreds associated with a risk of cancer and other diseases at small concentrations in drinking water, according to an analysis of government records by The New York Times. But

not one chemical has been added to the list of those regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2000. Other recent studies have found that even some chemicals regulated by that law pose risks at much smaller concentrations than previously known. However, many of the acts standards for those chemicals have not been updated since the 1980s, and some remain essentially unchanged since the law was passed in 1974. All told, more than 62 million Americans have been exposed since 2004 to drinking water that did not meet at least one commonly used government health guideline intended to help protect people from cancer or serious disease, according to an analysis by The Times of more than 19 million drinking-water test results from the District of Columbia and the 45 states that made data available. In some cases, people have been exposed for years to water that did not meet those guidelines. But because such guidelines were never
incorporated into the Safe Drinking Water Act, the vast majority of that water never violated the law. Some officials overseeing local water systems have tried to go above and beyond what is legally required. But

they have encountered resistance, sometimes from the very residents they are trying to protect, who say that if their water is legal it must be safe. Dr. Pankaj Parekh, director of the water quality
division for the City of Los Angeles, has faced such criticism. The water in some city reservoirs has contained contaminants that become likely cancer-causing compounds when exposed to sunlight. To stop the carcinogens from forming, the city covered the surface of reservoirs, including one in the upscale neighborhood of Silver Lake, with a blanket of black plastic balls that blocked the sun. Then complaints started from owners of expensive houses around the reservoir. They supposedly discovered these chemicals, and then they ruined the reservoir by putting black pimples all over it, said Laurie Pepper, whose home overlooks the manmade lake. If the water is so dangerous, why cant they tell us what laws its violated? Dr. Parekh has struggled to make his case. People dont understand that just because water is technically legal, it can still present health risks, he said. And so we encounter opposition that can become very personal.

defense contamination
Their authors massively over exaggerate their disease claims not only is their impact non-unique but low dosage means concentrations remain low
Duhigg, 09 staff writer for the New York Times, winner of the George Polk Award, The Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, a Loeb Award, the
Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the National Academies reporting award, the investigative reporting award from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the 2009 Science in Society Journalism Award, and recognition from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Columbia University the Deadline Awards, degree in history at Yale and Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, (Charles, That Tap Water Is Legal but May Be Unhealthy, the New York Times, December 16, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/us/17water.html?pagewanted=5)//JKahn Some federal regulators have tried to help officials like Dr. Parekh by pushing to tighten drinking water standards for chemicals like industrial solvents, as well as a rocket fuel additive that has polluted drinking water sources in Southern California and elsewhere. But those efforts have often been blocked by industry lobbying.

Drinking water that does not meet a federal health guideline will not necessarily make someone ill. Many contaminants are hazardous only if consumed for years. And some researchers argue that even toxic chemicals, when consumed at extremely low doses over long periods, pose few risks. Others argue that the cost of removing minute concentrations of chemicals from drinking water does not equal the benefits. Moreover, many of the thousands of chemicals that have not been analyzed may be harmless. And
researchers caution that such science is complicated, often based on extrapolations from animal studies, and sometimes hard to apply nationwide, particularly given that more than 57,400 water systems in this country each deliver, essentially, a different glass of water every day. Government scientists now generally agree, however, that many chemicals commonly found in drinking water pose serious risks at low concentrations. And independent studies in such journals as Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology; Environmental Health Perspectives; American Journal of Public Health; and Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health, as well as reports published by the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that millions of Americans become sick each year from drinking contaminated water, with maladies from upset stomachs to cancer and birth defects. Those studies have tracked hospital admissions and disease patterns after chemicals were detected in water supplies. They found that various contaminants were often associated with increased incidents of disease. That research like all large-scale studies of human illnesses sometimes cannot definitively say that chemicals in drinking water were the sole cause of disease. But even the E.P.A., which has ultimate responsibility for the Safe Drinking Water Act, has concluded that millions of Americans have been exposed to drinking water that fails to meet a federal health benchmark, according to records analyzed by The Times. (Studies and E.P.A. summaries can be found in the Resources section of nytimes.com/water.) Communities where the drinking water has contained chemicals that are associated with health risks include Scottsdale, Ariz.; El Paso, Tex., and Reno, Nev. Test results analyzed by The Times show their drinking water has contained arsenic at concentrations that have been associated with cancer. But that contamination did not violate the Safe Drinking Water Act. In Millville, N.J., Pleasantville, N.J., and Edmond, Okla., drinking water has contained traces of uranium, which can cause kidney damage. Those concentrations also did not violate the law. (Contaminant records for each of the 47,500 water systems that provided data are atnytimes.com/contaminants.) If it doesnt violate the law, I dont really pay much attention to it, said Stephen Sorrell, executive director of Emerald Coast Utilities Authority, which serves Pensacola, Fla. Data show that his system has delivered water containing multiple chemicals at concentrations that research indicates are associated with health risks. The system has not violated the Safe Drinking Water Act during the last half-decade. The Times analysis was based on water test data collected by an advocacy organization, the Environmental Working Group. The data, which contain samples from 2004 to this year, are from water systems that were required by law to test for certain contaminants and report findings to regulators. The data were verified by comparing a randomly selected sample against millions of state records obtained by The Times through public records requests. The Times examined concentrations of 335 chemicals that government agencies have determined were associated with serious health risks. The analysis counted only instances in which the same chemical was detected at least 10 times for a single water system since 2004, at a concentration that the government has said poses at least a 1-in-10,000 risk of causing disease. That is roughly equivalent to the cancer risk posed by undergoing 100 X-rays. (More information on data sources is atnytimes.com/water-data.) Some local regulators say gaps in the Safe Drinking Water Act can put them in almost untenable positions. Los Angeles regulators, for instance, test more than 25,000 samples a year looking for poisons, industrial chemicals and radioactive elements. The water that the system delivers to more than four million residents is cleaner than required by law, according to state data. Dr. Parekh has lobbied for millions of dollars to build reservoirs and buy new treatment systems. But some residents doubt his motives. People affiliated with groups protesting water rate hikes have printed leaflets accusing him and other officials of fooling us into thinking that our citys water is not safe to drink! Though the citys water rates are among the lowest in the state the average household pays $41 a month other residents have included Dr. Parekhs name on a poster naming water officials who want to steal your money. In a statement, the E.P.A. said that a top priority of Lisa P. Jackson, who took over the agency in January, was improving how regulators assessed and managed chemical hazards. Since chemicals are ubiquitous in our economy, our environment, our water resources and our bodies, we need better authority so we can assure the public that any unacceptable risks have been eliminated, the E.P.A. wrote. But, under existing law, we cannot give that assurance. Ms. Jackson has asked Congress to amend laws governing how the E.P.A. assesses chemicals, and has issued policies to insulate the agencys scientific reviews from outside pressures. But for now, significant risks remain, say former regulators. For years, people said that America has the cleanest drinking water in the world, said William K. Reilly, the E.P.A. administrator under President George H. W. Bush. That

was true 20 years ago. But people dont realize how many new chemicals have emerged and how much more pollution has occurred. If they did, we would see very different attitudes. Accumulating Threats The Safe Drinking Water Act was passed in 1974 after tests discovered carcinogens,
lead and dangerous bacteria flowing from faucets in New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Boston and elsewhere. At the time, so little was known about the chemicals in American waters that the law required local systems to monitor only 20 substances. (Private wells are not regulated by the act.) Over the next two decades, researchers at the E.P.A. began testing hundreds of chemicals, and Congress passed amendments strengthening the act. Eventually, the list of regulated substances increased to 91. In 2000, the list stopped growing. Since then, the rate at which companies and other workplaces have dumped pollutants into lakes and rivers has significantly accelerated, according to an earlier analysis by The Times of the Clean Water Act. Government scientists have evaluated 830 of the contaminants most often found in water supplies, according to a review of records from the E.P.A. and theUnited States Geological Survey. They have determined that many of them are associated with

cancer or other diseases, even at small concentrations. Yet almost none of those assessments have been incorporated into the Safe Drinking Water Act or other federal laws. (A complete list of drinking water standards and health guidelines is at nytimes.com/water-data.) For instance, the drinking water standard for arsenic, a naturally occurring chemical used in semiconductor manufacturing and treated wood, is at a level where a community could drink perfectly legal water, and roughly one in every 600 residents would likely develop bladder cancer over their lifetimes, according to studies commissioned by the E.P.A. and analyzed by The Times. Many of those studies can be found in the Resources section of nytimes.com/water. That level of exposure is roughly equivalent to the risk the community would face if every person received 1,664 X-rays. And in some places, tap water contains not just one contaminant, but dozens. More than half of the systems analyzed by The Times had at least seven chemicals in their water. But there is nothing in the law that addresses the cumulative risks of multiple pollutants in a single glass of water, as some public health advocates have urged. In a statement, the E.P.A. said that a 2003 review of Safe Drinking Water Act standards found that advances in science or technology had made it possible to tighten regulations of some chemicals. However, at the time, the agency decided that changes to these standards would not provide a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction. Another review of drinking water standards is under way, and results will be released soon, the agency says. Because

some of the diseases associated with drinking water contamination take so long to emerge, people who become ill from their water might never realize the source, say public health experts. These chemicals accumulate in body tissue. They affect developmental and hormonal systems in ways we dont understand, said Linda S. Birnbaum, who as
director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is the governments top official for evaluating environmental health effects.

squo solve contamination

The squo solves the EPA solves and regulations are coming now
Duhigg, 09 staff writer for the New York Times, winner of the George Polk Award, The Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, a Loeb Award, the
Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the National Academies reporting award, the investigative reporting award from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the 2009 Science in Society Journalism Award, and recognition from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Columbia University the Deadline Awards, degree in history at Yale and Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, (Charles, That Tap Water Is Legal but May Be Unhealthy, the New York Times, December 16, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/us/17water.html?pagewanted=5)//JKahn

Earlier this decade, scientists at the E.P.A. began telling top agency officials that more needed to be done. Dr. Peter W. Preuss, who in 2004 became head of the E.P.A.s division analyzing environmental risks, was particularly concerned. So his department started assessing a variety of contaminants often found in drinking water, including perchlorate, an
unregulated rocket fuel additive, as well as two regulated compounds, trichloroethylene, a degreaser used in manufacturing, and perchloroethylene or perc, a drycleaning solvent. Research indicated that those chemicals posed risks at smaller concentrations than previously known. Links to that research can be found in the Resources section of nytimes.com/water. But

when E.P.A. scientists produced assessments indicating those chemicals were more toxic the first step in setting a standard for perchlorate and tougher standards for the other two substances businesses fought back by lobbying lawmakers and regulators and making public attacks. Military contractors, for example, said that regulations on perchlorate, which has been associated with stunted central nervous system development, would cost them billions of dollars in cleanup costs. In 2003, an Air Force colonel, Daniel Rogers, called an E.P.A. assessment of the chemical biased, unrealistic and scientifically imbalanced.

link uniqueness
Transportation bill just stole money from LUST they do this all the time and nothings happened
NACS, 7/2/12 (NACS, July 2, 2012, Washington Report: President Obama to Sign Transportation Bill,
http://www.nacsonline.com/NACS/News/Daily/Pages/ND0702121.aspx, Hensel) WASHINGTON It was down to the wire on Friday, as both the U.S. House

and Senate passed a 2-year extension of federal highway and transit funding, which President Obama is likely going to sign into law this week. One of the major hurdles toward final passage, approval of the
Keystone XL pipeline, was ultimately removed from the bill final during conference negotiations. During conference negotiations to hammer out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill, conferees

agreed to steal $2.4 billion from the Leaking Underground

Storage Tank (LUST) Trust Fund as opposed to the proposed $3 billion. The conferees also decided not to divert one-third of future revenues collected
for the LUST Trust Fund to offset the Highway Trust Fund, which was originally proposed in the Senate bill.

contaminated water now

Current tap water is deadly LUSTs already contaminate water
Duhigg, 09 staff writer for the New York Times, winner of the George Polk Award, The Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, a Loeb Award, the
Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the National Academies reporting award, the investigative reporting award from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the 2009 Science in Society Journalism Award, and recognition from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Columbia University the Deadline Awards, degree in history at Yale and Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, (Charles, Millions in U.S. Drink Dirty Water, Records Show, the New York Times, December 7, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/business/energy-environment/08water.html)//JKahn

More than 20 percent of the nations water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data. That
law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage. Regulators were informed of each of those violations as they occurred. But regulatory records show that fewer than 6 percent of the water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials, including those at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing standards. Studies indicate that drinking water contaminants are linked to millions of instances of illness within the United States each year. In some instances, drinking water violations were onetime events, and probably posed little risk. But for hundreds of other systems, illegal contamination persisted for years, records show. On Tuesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works committee will question a high-ranking E.P.A. official about the agencys enforcement of drinking-water safety laws.

The E.P.A. is expected to announce a new policy for how it polices the nations 54,700 water systems. This administration has made it clear that clean water is a top priority, said an E.P.A. spokeswoman, Adora Andy, in response to
questions regarding the agencys drinking water enforcement. The E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, this year announced a wide-ranging overhaul of enforcement of the Clean Water Act, which regulates pollution into waterways. The

previous eight years provide a perfect example of what happens when political leadership fails to act to protect our health and the environment , Ms. Andy added. Water
pollution has become a growing concern for some lawmakers as government oversight of polluters has waned. Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, in 2007 asked the E.P.A. for data on Americans exposure to some contaminants in drinking water. The New York Times has compiled and analyzed millions of records from water systems and regulators around the nation, as part of a series of articles about worsening pollution in American waters, and regulators response. An analysis of E.P.A. data shows that Safe Drinking Water Act violations have occurred in parts of every state. In

the prosperous town of Ramsey, N.J., for instance, drinking water tests since 2004 have detected illegal concentrations of arsenic, a carcinogen, and the dry cleaning solvent tetrachloroethylene, which has also been linked to cancer. In New York state, 205 water systems have broken the law by delivering tap water that contained illegal amounts of bacteria since 2004. However, almost none of those systems were ever punished. Ramsey was not fined for its water violations, for
example, though a Ramsey official said that filtration systems have been installed since then. In New York, only three water systems were penalized for bacteria violations, according to federal data. The problem, say current and former government officials, is that enforcing the Safe Drinking Water Act has not been a federal priority. There is significant reluctance within the E.P.A. and Justice Department to bring actions against municipalities, because theres a view that they are often cash-strapped, and fines would ultimately be paid by local taxpayers, said David Uhlmann, who headed the environmental crimes division at the Justice Department until 2007. But some systems wont come into compliance unless they are forced to, added Mr. Uhlmann, who now teaches at the University of Michigan law school. And sometimes a court order is the only way to get local governments to spend what is needed. A half-dozen current and former E.P.A. officials said in interviews that they tried to prod the agency to enforce the drinking-water law, but found little support. I proposed drinking water cases, but they got shut down so fast that Ive pretty much stopped even looking at the violations, said one longtime E.P.A. enforcement official who, like others, requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. The top people want big headlines and million-dollar settlements. Thats not drinking-water cases. The majority of drinking water violations since 2004 have occurred at water systems serving fewer than 20,000 residents, where resources and managerial expertise are often in short supply.

Either theres no internal link or contamination is inevitable

Duhigg, 09 staff writer for the New York Times, winner of the George Polk Award, The Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, a Loeb Award, the
Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the National Academies reporting award, the investigative reporting award from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the 2009 Science in Society Journalism Award, and recognition from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Columbia University the Deadline Awards, degree in history at Yale and Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, (Charles, Millions in U.S. Drink Dirty Water, Records Show, the New York Times, December 7, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/business/energy-environment/08water.html)//JKahn

It is unclear precisely how many American illnesses are linked to contaminated drinking water. Many of the
most dangerous contaminants regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act have been tied to diseases like cancer that can take years to develop. But scientific research indicates that as many as 19 million Americans may become ill each year due to just the parasites, viruses and bacteria in drinking water. Certain types of cancer such as breast and prostate cancer have risen over the past 30 years, and research indicates they are likely tied to pollutants like those found in drinking water. The violations counted by the Times analysis include only situations where residents were exposed to dangerous contaminants, and exclude violations that involved paperwork or other minor problems. In response to inquiries submitted by Senator Boxer, the E.P.A. has reported that more than three million Americans have been exposed since 2005 to drinking water with illegal concentrations of arsenic and radioactive elements, both of which have been linked to cancer at small doses. In some areas, the amount of radium detected in drinking water was 2,000 percent higher than the legal limit, according to E.P.A. data. But

federal regulators

fined or punished fewer than 8 percent of water systems that violated the arsenic and radioactive standards. The E.P.A., in a statement, said that in a majority of situations, state regulators used informal methods like providing technical assistance to help systems that had violated the rules. But many systems remained out of compliance, even after aid was offered, according to E.P.A. data. And for over a quarter of systems that violated the arsenic or radioactivity standards, there is no record that they were ever
contacted by a regulator, even after they sent in paperwork revealing their violations. Those figures are particularly worrisome, say researchers, because the Safe Drinking Water Acts limits on arsenic are so weak to begin with. A

system could deliver tap water that puts residents at a 1-in600 risk of developing bladder cancer from arsenic, and still comply with the law. Despite the expected announcement
of reforms, some mid-level E.P.A. regulators say they are skeptical that any change will occur. The same people who told us to ignore Safe Drinking Water Act violations are still running the divisions, said one mid-level E.P.A. official. Theres no accountability, and so nothings going to change.