I am tired of hearing public officials like Enterprise Mayor Kenneth Boswell whine about unfunded mandates for things like wastewater treatment infrastructure. Things like proper wastewater treatment are, frankly, something society must do unless we want to be like a Third-world country. Given the attitudes of some of some public officials, we would still have raw sewage going into our rivers, lakes and bays and the Birmingham sky would be dark at mid-day if it were not for the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts.
Neither the Alabama Department of Environmental Management nor the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency created an unfunded mandate for the City of Enterprise. Rather the City of Enterprise created the unfunded mandate.
If municipalities want to avoid unfunded mandates they would act responsibly. They would do two things to avoid creating their own unfunded mandates.
First, they would collect and set aside until needed all connection fees adequate to cover the cost of adding new wastewater treatment capacity for new residential and industrial connections to their sewer system. Second, sewer bills would include an amount sufficient to fully cover maintenance costs with an allowance for anticipated inflation.
Why are these public officials at the local and state level always looking to the federal government for handouts or blaming the state or federal government when their failure to manage creates a problem? If our local and state politicians were true conservatives they would seek to have folks pay for the services that they use and invest as needed for the future instead of seeking handouts or blaming others for failure to plan!
Michael William Mullen
Choctawhatchee Riverkeeper
Banks
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