SNAPSHOTS
A little help from their friends:
Under the New Federalism, political control is supposed to move
from Washington to the states to communities. That's
not as simple as it sounds.
Drinking water:
Small towns get help to upgrade treatment plants
by Steve Rhodes
C
ity officials in Rushville, 30 miles south of Macomb, have wanted to do something about their drinking water for years.
It wasn't just the troubling excess of iron and manganese, which tend to darken the water, but an aging treatment plant that would make it difficult to remain in compliance with changing federal standards in the years to come.
But small towns like Rushville, population 3,348, have small budgets. And borrowing the money to upgrade the community's water, which currently suffers from a cosmetic problem but not a health-related one, would spike residents' monthly bills.
Enter the Public Water Supply Loan Program, designed to ease the burden on communities like Rushville while nudging the nation's 55,000 community water systems into the future.
"For several years we had been trying to figure out a way we could do this," says Rushville Mayor Dennis Yates. "We would have had to do something; I don't know what. Our water treatment plant wouldn't have made it for many more years."
The program is seeded by the federal government through 2003 to the tune of a billion dollars annually. (States also are required to provide a 20 percent matching contribution.) Illinois' share of those federal dollars is $30 million to $40 million each year. Loans made from the revolving fund will carry an interest rate half that of the bond market. And that will save Rushville about half a million dollars in interest over 20 years on its new full-cost $1.4 million loan, one of 19 that have been approved by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
This is good news for each of these communities, though their residents can expect to see an increase in their water bills. Rushville's citizens, for instance, currently pay an average monthly water bill of $6.85. To pay back the loan, the monthly average will have to rise to $13.35. Still, the increase would have been higher without state and federal help.
Meanwhile, the loan program is essential to the federal government's efforts to modernize community water systems. In a January 1997 report to Congress, the federal Environmental Protection Agency concluded that an investment of $12.1 billion was needed just to meet the current standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act, originally passed by Congress in 1974 and amended in 1986 and 1996. A total investment of $138.4 billion is needed over the next 20 years to maintain safe drinking water for 249 million users of community water systems, according to that report.
Yet the agency recognizes the unique challenge of small systems like Rushville's, which lack economies of scale and already have significantly higher average household costs than medium and large systems. In January 1995 dollars, the report states, the average 20-year need per household is $3,300 for users in small systems, compared with $1,200 in medium systems and $970 in large systems.
Don Wilkin, utilities manager of Pinckneyville, 60 miles southeast of St. Louis, understands that calculation. Much like Rushville, Pinckneyville knew it had to replace its water system-not only to comply with federal standards, but to cope with residential and commercial growth, and the construction of a new state prison.
"The existing plant doesn't have the capacity to handle any growth," Wilkin says. "Replacing that plant gives us larger capacity as well as allowing us to meet the federal requirements. But there are many regulations we see coming in the future that we know our existing facility would not be able to accommodate."
That's because many of Illinois' public water systems were built as public works projects in the 1930s and 1940s, according to Charles Bell of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. As a result, according to the federal agency report, only four states have greater public water needs than Illinois over the next 20 years, though in immediate needs ($330 million to meet current federal drinking water standards), Illinois ranks 10th.
Indeed, federal requirements on contaminants are constantly changing. "They're looking a lot more carefully at some of the contaminants that may be a problem that we weren't aware of before," says Bell. A good example is radium, which can lead to bone cancer. The federal environmental agency downplayed radium's risk in 1991, and hasn't strongly enforced the radium standard. But the agency is now warning communities that its latest research
22 | November 1998 Illinois Issues
has caused a shift in view-now the agency intends to crack down on radium scofflaws, and that means costly fixes for the nearly 80 Illinois towns now exceeding radium limits.
And that's 80 more towns that could soon turn to the Public Water Supply Loan Program. "It's definitely more affordable this way," says Yates, the Rushville mayor who, by the way, will at least enjoy clean, clear water by the end of the year.
Steve Rhodes' last piece for Illinois Issues was about municipal electric systems.
Sewer lines:
Cities want the state's say in territorial fights
by James Webb
I
t sounds like the kind of state interference that makes local officials grind their teeth in frustration: Springfield bureaucrats poring over maps, deciding who gets to control economic development in Boone County some 200 miles north of the capital.
Local leaders are complaining all right, but their protests are aimed at keeping the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency smack in the middle of their business. And in this upside-down drama, the state agency is playing the role of weary parent, trying to persuade squabbling cities to settle their fights among themselves.
The debate centers on the agency's little-known but important job of designating so-called "facility planning areas," boundaries within which one local government has the exclusive right to build and operate a sanitary sewer system.
Insiders call them FPAs for short, but don't be fooled by that dry-sounding bit of bureaucratese. This acronym makes local officials salivate. Controlling sewer lines underground is a key first step in controlling development above ground. And that makes FPAs powerful weapons in the territorial disputes that flare up in suburban Chicago and in smaller metropolitan areas experiencing rapid growth.
A remnant of the 1972 federal Clean Water Act, the FPA was originally designed so states could ensure the viability and reliability of wastewater treatment systems built with federal grants. But even as the federal grants dried up, local governments were learning they could use the FPA to lock in control of property that might not be developed for years, or to protect a vulnerable area in their community from an aggressive neighboring government eager to develop it.
A case in point is the battle between Belvidere and Rockford for control of roughly 250 acres of prime, undeveloped land along U.S. Business Route 20 near the Interstate 90 toll road, where Boone and Winnebago counties meet.
Rockford is eyeing the territory as its next conquest in an eastward expansion that has brought a flood of retail development-and sales tax dollars-into the city of 143,000. Belvidere, population 18,000, is trying to guarantee slower, more residential growth in western Boone County. In 1995, Belvidere got the Environmental Protection Agency's approval to expand its FPA boundary into the targeted territory, although it didn't have a plan for developing the land until earlier this year.
Rockford officials challenged the agency's decision, arguing their city is better equipped to more quickly provide sewer service to the region than their smaller neighbor. That led to a state hearings process that is still underway. The state may not issue a final decision on the appeal until December. And the loser is almost certain to challenge the results in court.
So after deciding dozens of such disputes over the last 25 years or so, state environmental officials want out. The agency is devoting the equivalent of two full-time employees just to review FPA boundaries, with more time and money involved when challenges are made, says Joel Cross, manager of planning in the agency's bureau of water. More important, the process has little to do with ensuring clean water, the agency argues.
"Our bottom line is environmental benefits. And we don't see environmental benefits," water bureau chief James Park told city and county leaders from northern Illinois at a stormy informational meeting in August.
Under proposed changes outlined early this year, the agency would still issue permits for sewer construction, to ensure the local watershed is protected by an adequate system. But it wouldn't guarantee priority sewer
23 | November 1998 Illinois Issues
service in an area. Local governments would have to rely on more traditional methods for controlling territory, such as annexation, zoning and negotiation.
But city, county and regional planning officials have attacked the plan, with some suggesting the state is abandoning its duty.
"FPAs are not a land management tool," Algonquin Village Manager William J. Ganek told agency officials at the August meeting in Chicago. "But rightly or wrongly we use it as one, and it's been effective in a rapidly growing area.''
Local leaders say a first-come, first-served approach could lead to local bidding wars in which competing governments charge taxpayers to build redundant sewer systems in an effort to lure lucrative commercial development.
"The development community is very sophisticated. They will take advantage of the system,'' says Sam Santell, Kane County's planning director. "They will play one community off another.''
Agency officials were caught off guard by the depth of the reaction.
"It's kind of unique in the current political times of having more and more control over issues at the lowest level possible,'' Cross says. "I really think that what we're trying to do here is in the spirit of that concept.''
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency has not set a timetable for dissolving the FPA. Agency officials are nevertheless considering options for phasing it out, as well as the possibility of implementing a grandfather clause to protect decisions like the one pending in the Boone County case.
James Webb is a reporter for The Associated Press.
Cable television:
Deregulation opens the window on competition
by Howard Wolinsky
L
ike most municipalities, Arlington Heights has gotten a lot of complaints about the cable company.
Residents of the village of 76,700 northwest of Chicago griped about outages, slow responses in restoring service and rising rates from TCI Great Lakes, a subsidiary of the Denver-based cable giant, Tele-Communications Inc. More to the point, says Nancy Kluz, Arlington Heights' public information officer, cable users complained they had no choice in providers.
But federal deregulation and a new state law easing competition-as well as improvements in TCI's infrastructure-opened a small window in Arlington Heights on the so-called Brave New World of telecommunications competition.
In fact, the village is among a handful of communities in the country where there are no longer monopolies in cable or local phone service. So far, complaints are down. And other Illinois municipalities are watching to see what the future could bring.
Indeed, Arlington Heights' residents might criticize the quality of programs available to them on hundreds of television channels, but they can no longer argue they haven't got a choice in service providers. The phone company (Ameritech Corp.) now also offers cable TV and dial-up Internet service. And the cable company (TCI) also offers phone service and high-speed cable modem Internet connections.
Ameritech, the "Baby Bell" spun off from AT&T Corp. in 1984, has taken on the role of the "second" cable TV company throughout the Midwest. It has 85 franchises overall and 13 in the Chicago suburbs and one in the city, though none downstate. And the company, which is going through a merger with Texas-based SBC Communications Inc., another Baby Bell, has been making headway in attracting cable customers. It competes with TCI for cable subscribers in Prospect Heights and Schaumburg and eventually will compete in Chicago, Des Plaines, Elgin, Glen Ellyn, Naperville, South Holland and Streamwood.
But nowhere is the competition between these two companies so
24 | November 1998 Illinois Issues
multifaceted as it is in Arlington Heights.
TCI upgraded its cable infrastructure in that community with broadband capabilities that allowed it to roll out Digital Cable with enhanced pictures and sound, PeopleLink, a local telephone service, and @Home high-speed Internet service.
In Illinois, @Home is currently available only in Arlington Heights and Prospect Heights, though it will be available in Chicago in December.
At the same time, Arlington Heights is one of only three markets nationally where the telephone service PeopleLink is available. Expansion of that service to other communities is on hold as federal regulators deal with the proposed merger of TCI and AT&T, Ameritech's old parent, which has been fighting hard to offer local phone service.
Meanwhile, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened the door for Ameritech to offer its New Media cable service. The company's pitch is that cable competition results in market expansion, boosting cable franchise fees for local government and improving service.
Geoff Potter, spokesman for Ameritech New Media, says when his company competes for cable customers, there's a growth of 10 percent to 15 percent in the local market.
Thus far, this does not appear to have happened in Arlington Heights.
Neither Ameritech nor TCI will release figures on their subscribers, but village spokeswoman Kluz says, "They promised to grow the pie. My own theory is that the pie can only be sliced so many ways. Maybe some consumers changed companies."
Franchise fees collected from Ameritech and TCI for cable and phone service have remained about the same.
But Ameritech's Potter says, "It is early in the franchise in Arlington Heights for the market to grow noticeably. As more and more former and never-have-been cable subscribers hear from neighbors and friends about the quality and value of our service, we expect Arlington Heights to follow our other franchises in experiencing more subscribers-and thus more franchise fees."
Nevertheless, Kluz says, competition has brought a healthy change. Both companies offer customer service operations 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And TCI now handles complaints from a call center in suburban Mount Prospect. Previously, service came from a hard-to-reach call center in Denver. "This seems to help," Kluz says. "The representatives truly seem to know what is going on."
Further, Ameritech's Potter says that while TCI raised rates in suburbs where there is no competition, they have remained stable in Arlington Heights. TCI charges $27.72 per month for 63 channels, for example. Expanded basic cable from Ameritech costs $27.95 a month for 62 channels.
Kluz says that with the arrival of Ameritech, TCI subscribers started receiving new channels as part of basic service at no additional charge. Officials at TCI say changes in basic service resulted from customer feedback, rather than from the competition. In any case, expanded basic service now includes the Disney Channel, Comedy Central and the History Channel.
Of course, there have been a few bumps in the road to open competition.
Kluz says the actual location of TCI's cables sometimes differed slightly from the recorded location. So, as Ameritech crews began laying that company's TV infrastructure, they sometimes-inadvertently-cut TCI's lines, causing outages.
"TCI was very understanding," she says. "After all, they are in the same business."
Howard Wolinsky reports on technology for the Chicago Sun-Times.
25 | November 1998 Illinois Issues
|
Sam S. Manivong, Illinois Periodicals Online Coordinator Illinois Periodicals Online (IPO) is a digital imaging project at the Northern Illinois University Libraries funded by the Illinois State Library |