Water is blue, right, but maybe it's also red. Today on Parts Pavilion, why water infrastructure is a partisan issue. Hello, and welcome once again to Parts per Billion, your environmental policy podcast from Bloomberg BNA. I'm your host, David Schultz. You know, infrastructure is one of those things that people like to say shouldn't be a part is an issue all of us Democrats and Republicans, we all want good roads, bridges, pipes, etc. Etc. Etc.
That's the usual refrain. But maybe the secret of infrastructure is that it actually is partisan. Democrats and Republicans have very different ideas about how to pay for it. That's the highlight of our conversation with Representative John Shimkiss, a Republican from Illinois and the chairman of a key environmental
subcommittee in the House. Shimkiss is working on a big drinking water funding bill with his Democratic counterpart in the subcommittee, Representative Paul Tonko of New York, and you might remember we spoke with him a few weeks ago about this very time. The biggest difference between these two congressmen was in who they think should pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars in water infrastructure. Upgrades that are desperately
needed across the country. Tonko wants the federal government to contribute more, while Shimkis thinks the issue is best left to local government. Would be great for the country to be able to just pay and fix every system. Well, the federal govern's still nineteen trillion dollars in debt. So when I used to teach government history, there are things that fall upon the responsibility local government, local roads, police, fire, sewer, water,
trash management. And so that's the way we've evolved. That's why we're always that's the way we're going to continue to be because we can't assume that whole response. But can we be good partners and help and assist. And I think we've tried to find the fine line of when because we want local communities to come and show us their plan, right, we want it. If we're going to be help helpful, we want to be able to do leverage federal help so that we know it's managed
well versus just showering entities with money. And we never Republican conservatives never believe that's a good way to manage the tax responds. So you believe, you know that upgrading water infrastructure is really sort of more of a local responsibility. The federal government plays some role, but it should be primarily the locality, either the state or the municipality or maybe a county that should be responsible for, you know, replacing the pipes and buying the new treatment facility and
things like that. Oh. Absolutely. I think where there is a cause for concern in the evolution of communities is when communities have been around for a long time and have had large populations and then because of economics or problems, there's been a huge loss of population. We're talking communities like Flint. I could argue you could pick a whole bunch of communities like that. I mean, I have a community. I have a community that had fifty thousand people and
now has thirty five thousand. You look close to my home. You can look at East Saint Louis as an example of it used to be a huge metropolis. Now it's a lot smaller. So how do they manage this extended system that they had built up. They have no tax base to pay for these and it keeps declining, and then the burden keeps falling on the residents of that stuff. So we can be helpful, but we can't solve their problem for him because we've got a whole national scope
of trying to deliver. And when you hear cases like Flint, there's failure across the board, and the failure was at the local level. Well, I guess it actually got to the region five and you know, then the state as well. Yeah, and the water person resigned and the state took over. I mean, yeah, there's problems across the board and that's unfortunate. So it's it's interesting because to sort of compare and contrast, I spoke a couple of weeks ago with your counterpart
on the subcommittee, Representative Tonco. He has his own bill that you know, would allocate quite a bit of money to for this issue through the revolving fund that you mentioned earlier. And he said, you know, I asked him, you know, where would that money come from. Would it mean raising taxes? You know? And he said that the way that we can get the money for that is to reallocate money from other priorities within the federal budget.
In terms of you know, he mentioned, why are we spending money on a wall, you know, across the Mexican border. Why are you giving the defense. This huge increase, why don't we spend it on issues like water? How would you respond to that? Do you think that that that's something that's a realistic thing to do. None of these issues are a surprise to me. I mean, he's he's passionate.
Of of course, he's from New York. You know, if you understand the development country, of course we have communities developed in the north East New England area along before even the country was expanded. So I think he's acutely aware of challenges of keeping infrastructure up. But I believe in the adage that as a budget goes, it really
tells your priorities. And you know, Republicans are always going to be about less government, lower taxes, individual responsibility, strong defense, and we understand there's a role to play to assist, but we were not going to take over local responsibilities. If communities have challenges, we want to be there to help them, and we pass legislation to make sure that they can share with science. And we passed that water
kind of build last Congress. It was small, but it's very important to rule and poor systems that wanted to get assistance and help, and there was some money involved. With that for the for the states to provide that. It's just a different view of how we should be involved. And Republicans are always going to look at the founding documents and what's our real response. Familiary responsible with the
national governments, protector citizen against all enemies, bign, domestic. And it's always been a local responsibility, uh to deal with roads and police and fire and water and sewer and trash and stuff like that. Uh And and I think that's the way we'll stay. So finally, though, if the the you know, this is a local responsibility, do you see,
you know, any federal role in this? I mean, there obviously is some federal role because we have the Revolving Fund, we have these federal standards that are set by the e PA for drinking water. But other than that, what role do you see the federal government? What role do you think the federal government should play in, uh, you know, maintaining and improving drinking water in the country. I don't think we have a big role. I think the role
is for the local communities. My my hometown of Columns, well, it's we have a city system, and you know, and it we claim that it's some of the best water in their alry right so we're very proud of it. They're expanding it right now. There's federal and state help that they have to learn to leverage. But again it's prioritizing what is our role, on what is in our role, and expanding our role on the things that we think
our states and local community issues. That was Republican John Shimkiss speaking with us about who should fund water infrastructure upgrades. For more of our reporting on water, visit our website at BNA dot com. This week's episode was produced by myself, with help from Jessica Combs and Rachel Daegel, and special help this week from Marissa Horne and music for Parts per Billion is a message by Jaaar. It was used
under a Creative Commons Attribution share like license. More information can be found at Better with Music dot com