Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) introduced a bill to provide D.C. comprehensive eligibility for EPA’s Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grant program. While D.C. is already eligible for funding at the state level, it is excluded at the municipality level even though the District provides both state- and municipality-level services. “This bill will ensure D.C. is eligible for both grants — both as a state and as a municipality — consistent with the overall intent of the program,” Norton said. “The bill would enable D.C. to develop a comprehensive strategy to improve post-consumer materials management and recycling and implement a specific collection and treatment measures to remove these wastes from the wastewater stream.”
Norton’s introductory statement follows.
Statement of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton on the Introduction of a Bill to Provide Comprehensive Eligibility to the District of Columbia for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling Grant Program
“Today, I introduce a bill to provide the District of Columbia comprehensive eligibility for funding under the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grant program. The program is authorized under the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act.
The program was intended to provide grants to both states and municipalities to ensure the comprehensive management of post-consumer wastes and plastics and to prevent the continued contamination of our nation’s waters by these materials. In its implementation of the program, the EPA created two separate grants—one for states and one for municipalities. The EPA made D.C. eligible for the state program, as required by the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act, but not the municipality program, even though it should have been eligible for the municipality program, too. The EPA has misinterpreted the definition of municipality in the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act and is depriving D.C. of funds to which it is entitled.
Making D.C. eligible for both grants —both as a state and as a municipality—is consistent with the overall intent of the program and would enable D.C. to utilize funding both for the development of a comprehensive strategy to improve post-consumer materials management and recycling, and for implementation of specific collection and treatment measures to remove these wastes from the wastewater stream.
The Save Our Seas 2.0 Act defines the terms “state” and “municipality” for the purposes of the program. Section 2 of the Act defines the term “state” as specifically including D.C. Section 302(c) of the Act utilizes the definition for “municipality” in section 502 of the Clean Water Act, which includes “a city, town, borough, county, parish, district, association, or other public body … having jurisdiction over disposal of sewage, industrial wastes, or other wastes.” D.C. falls under the definitions of both terms and therefore should be eligible for both grants under the program.
Given that D.C. operates as the functional equivalent of a joint city, county and state, D.C. is analogous to a municipality that has jurisdiction over publicly owned treatment works under section 302(c) of the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act, as well as being explicitly defined under section 2 of the Act as a state. Exclusion of D.C. from either portion of the program is inconsistent with the comprehensive nature of post-consumer waste management under the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and would leave D.C. poorly positioned to address the challenges of post-consumer wastes in our nation’s waters.
I urge my colleagues to support this bill.”