Pennsylvania has failed on clean water

Failed on its promised to citizens that the commonwealth will protect access to clean air and clean water.

Among states, Pennsylvania stands nearly alone in making an explicit promise to its citizens that the Commonwealth will protect their access to clean air and clean water, and guarantee “the preservation of natural, scenic, historic and aesthetic values of the environment.”

That unambiguous promise, enshrined in Article I, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, further states that “Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”

Yet, since that language was adopted in 1971, state lawmakers have been steadily backsliding on that promise in the most critical of areas: public access to clean and safe drinking water.

PennLive’s Wallace McKelvey details in a harrowing but utterly necessary report, how years of budget cuts have depleted the ranks of water inspectors at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, putting your safety, and that of your family, at risk.

Between 2008 and 2012, state funding for the DEP was nearly halved, dropping from $229 million to $125 million. In recent years, that figure crept upward again to $148 million. Had the agency’s 2008 budget kept pace with inflation, however, it would now be $271 million.

During that drop, the DEP lost 750 inspectors, who are carrying an average inspection workload of 149 water systems each. A 2012 survey by the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators showed a national average of 67.

The increased workload has led to a reduction of in the number of inspections. According to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data, inspectors completed 3,177 surveys in fiscal year 2009. By 2015, that number dropped to 1,847.

The same budget cuts that hit the inspection side also impacted enforcement. Currently, the DEP employs 68 attorneys who represent its various regulatory programs. Lawyers play an important role in crafting formal enforcement actions that must be defended in court.

Meanwhile, the number of violations that inspectors identified but were never resolved spiked from 4,298 to 7,922, even with fewer inspectors on the ground. In fiscal year 2017, state inspectors visited about 19 percent of the state’s water systems, well below the national average of 37 percent, McKelvey wrote.

If there is any bright spot, it’s that the 2018-19 budget that Gov. Tom Wolf signed into law last week includes a $5.6 million funding increase for this fiscal year.

That money, in turn, would help underwrite the hiring of 33 new employees, including 17 trainee inspectors, as well as compliance specialists, engineers and geologists who are badly needed to fill the ranks of Pennsylvania’s drained drinking water program. Like anything else, it’s a start.

But it’s still inexcusable. And it doesn’t have to be that way. The solution lies within lawmakers’ reach, if they are brave enough to do so.

It won’t take a tax hike. It won’t take a fee hike. All lawmakers have to do is reach for their own wallets.

Right now, Pennsylvania lawmakers contribute a scant 1 to 3 percent of their total salary, a base of $87,180 (for leaders, salaries can run $99,410 to $136,094) toward the total cost of their healthcare.

Private sector employees pay far more. And unlike the politicians who lead them, the average cubicle dweller doesn’t get lifetime health and prescription benefits for themselves, their spouses and their children up to age 26, upon leaving office.

The total cost of that Cadillac suite of benefits came to $825.5 million in 2017.

The DEP needs at least 85 more inspectors to reach its ideal complement of 67 water systems per-inspector. At an average cost of $40,000 per inspector, lawmakers would need cough up an extra $3.4 million a year. Or if that’s too much, the General Assembly could always dip into its surplus, $95 million last year.

That might sting a bit. But it would go a long way toward making sure that lawmakers fulfill the promise to citizens.

There is no more sacred a trust than the health and safety of the citizenry. It’s time for Harrisburg to live up to that trust.