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	Fast Facts

The economy shed jobs in September for the first time in five months, the government said today in a report that highlighted the uneven pace of the economic recovery. But the Labor Department's latest jobs data offered just enough bright spots to dampen speculation in the financial markets about an imminent cut in interest rates. DOL has said that the unemployment rate fell to 5.6% in September from 5.7% in August, as the struggling economy produced more than enough new jobs to offset the payroll-cutting by businesses. Bonds prices declined as investors zeroed in on the lower unemployment rate as a factor that might keep the Federal Reserve from reacting with a near-term cut in interest rates. Stock prices rose initially but later succumbed to yet another wave of selling. September marked the first payroll decline since a 21,000 job loss in April. Offsetting some of the gloomy news in the September figure, however, was a sharp upward revision in August payrolls to a 107,000 gain from a previously reported increase. Additional information may be found at www.washingtonpost.com

NASA has selected 45 consortia in the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program (Space Grant) to receive funding for aerospace workforce development. A total of $3.56 million is being awarded in response to proposals submitted by the state organizations to NASA's Education Division. The consortia were selected based on a competitive evaluation of their plans to enlarge and enhance the pipeline, or resource pool, of higher education graduates and faculty who stay connected to or have become involved with NASA as employees, contractors or principal investigators. Additional information may be found at www.nasa.gov

Association News

ASCE President-Elect Testifies at Senate Hearing on Federal Highway Program

ASCE president-elect Thomas L. Jackson testified Monday before the Transportation, Infrastructure and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on the conditions and performance of the federal highway system and ways to improve it. In his testimony, Jackson outlined ASCE's concerns with the present state of the nation's highways and provided recommendations regarding the reauthorization of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) including raising the user fee on gasoline by six cents per gallon to increase funding for highway and transit related projects.

Our nation's highways and transit systems have benefited greatly from federal and local funding prompted from the enactment of 1998's TEA-21 program, said Jackson. The only way to meet the continuing demand for improved highways and transit is to increase in the motor fuels user fee.

A six-cent increase in the motor fuels user fee would greatly close the gap on the surface road program's annual shortfall of $27 billion. In the ASCE proposal, one cent of the increase would be dedicated to infrastructure safety and security measures to protect highways and transit systems from potential terrorist attacks. Furthermore, the user fee should be indexed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in order to preserve the purchasing power of the fee. ASCE also urges congress to stop diverting two-and-a-half cents of the ethanol user fee from the Highway Trust Fund.

Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) acknowledged that while he would lament increasing costs to motorists in the form of a user fee increase, the current state of the nation's highway system necessitates an increase in revenue to prevent any adverse impact on the country's economy.

The full text of Jackson's testimony is available at www.asce.org/govrel/tea3 .

Environmental Streamlining for Highway Projects Boosted

Rep. Don Young (R-AK), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has introduced legislation that would force the Department of Transportation and federal resource agencies to expedite environmental reviews of highway and transit projects.

Like President Bush upon issuing his executive order earlier this month, Young said the goal of his bill is to expedite the completion of highway and transit projects without amending environmental laws or sacrificing citizen involvement in transportation planning and development processes.

"Studies have clearly outlined the problems associated with America's growing highway congestion crisis, which in 1999 alone cost the nation $78 billion and led to the waste of 6.8 billion gallons of gas," Young said.

Under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration must conduct environmental assessments before approving or undertaking federally backed projects such as highway construction or commuter rail projects. The road construction lobby has long argued that under current DOT environmental review practices, it can sometimes take 10 or more years to build a new road -- even if the new road would ease congestion or make traveling or moving goods safer.

Bush's order directs DOT and other federal agencies to take actions enabling each of them to conduct environmental reviews required by law concurrently and "in a timely and environmentally responsible manner." The order doesn't state any specific deadlines under which environmental reviews would have to be complete for individual projects, leaving it up to the secretary of Transportation to coordinate the effort and to "designate ... a list of high-priority transportation infrastructure projects that should receive expedited agency reviews" that can be amended from time to time. Young's bill would basically codify that.

But Bush's order explicitly states that it is not intended to create any new legal rights or benefits, meaning, for example, that the order does not improve the chances that a construction company will win a lawsuit filed over delays related to the environmental review process. Young's bill, on the other hand, limits the time groups, companies or individuals have to mount legal challenges to DOT decisions.

Earlier this month, John Bowman, legislative counsel at Environmental Defense, said the group would vehemently oppose any bill that limited judicial review of the environmental review process.

The House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit plans a hearing on the Young bill on October 8.

House Appropriators Approve Highway Spending Bill

House appropriators this week approved a transportation spending bill that included funding the nation's highway program at $27.7 billion for FY 2003, $4.4 billion more than President Bush's original budget request and $4.1 billion less than a Senate spending bill. (Last week's This Week in Washington erroneously reported the committee approved the measure in its markup on Thursday September 26th. The Committee completed action on the measure Tuesday, October 1st. While a Democratic amendment to increase the spending level approved by the Senate was defeated, several committee members indicated the amount ultimately would be increased. Ranking minority member David Obey (D-WI) warned the bill would be defeated by the full House if the level is not increased to satisfy the concerns of Democrats and moderate Republicans.

EPA Estimates $565 Billion Water Funding Gap' Over 20 Years

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report this week that places the total funding need for clean water -- in capital and operations and maintenance -- at $270 billion over 20 years. For drinking water, the gap approaches $265 billion for the same period. The total gap of $535 billion can be reduced substantially if a real growth in revenues is projected over the same period, according to EPA.

But the final report concludes that the capital investment gap for sewer systems over 20 years could be in the range of $331 billion to $450 billion. And the capital needs for drinking-water systems could total between $154 billion and $446 billion through 2019.

Using the high end of the estimates, that's nearly a trillion dollars over the next 20 years just to preserve the country's existing water infrastructure. The operating and maintenance costs will add greatly to the final bill.

The administration apparently considers the entire funding gap to be a local problem.

The analysis finds that a significant funding gap could develop if the nation's clean water and drinking water systems maintain current spending and operations practices, says the EPA report. However, this gap largely disappears if municipalities increase clean water and drinking water spending at a real growth rate of three percent per year.

This appears to be shifting the entire trillion-dollar problem onto local units of government. The principal source of water revenue at the local level is water rates. Taken literally, the report means the nation faces a trillion-dollar increase in water rates over the next 20 years, with no help in sight from Washington.

The case for federal investment is compelling when you consider that failing to meet the investment needs for water infrastructure over the next 20 years puts the public health, environmental and economic gains of the last three decades in peril, said ASCE President H. Gerard Schwartz, Jr., P.E., Ph.D., F.ASCE. This report's assertion that state and local government can shoulder the burden of offsetting the shortfall in water infrastructure funding is unacceptable.

For a copy of the "Gap Analysis" log on www.epa.gov/owm/featinfo.htm .

EPA Report Says Water Pollution Increases

A national assessment of water quality released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this week found a greater proportion of polluted waters than the previous survey, which was released two years ago.

EPA's biennial National Water Quality Inventory shows that between 1998 and 2000, the percentage of rivers considered "polluted" increased from 35 percent to 39 percent and the percentage of polluted estuaries increased from 44 percent to 51 percent. The percentage of polluted lakes held steady at 45 percent.

Robert Wayland, director of EPA's Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds, says the report does not sample a statistically significant portion of the nation's waterways. Only 19 percent of rivers, 43 percent of lakes and 36 percent of estuaries were studied for the survey. "The information in this report applies only to the waters assessed," he said.

Nor does the report indicate a decline in water quality, Wayland said. "You can't really do a direct comparison between the last report that looked at waters at a different time period," he said. "Most states don't have a program design that allows them to extrapolate from waters that were assessed to their water quality in general. Therefore, you can't compare overall water quality from year to year. The changes could simply be statistical aberrations."

Moreover, Wayland said the waters assessed in the latest report are generally not the same ones that were included in the previous study. "States move their monitoring stations around geographically," he said. "Some states are trying to get a complete picture of their water quality over a five-year period. In other cases, they use a more random process, or they look at waters where they think there are problems."

The latter monitoring practice could lead to data that's skewed toward more polluted waters. "A lot of states do emphasize waters that are expected to be polluted," he said.

Proposed Revisions to OMB Circular A-76 Expected

Office of Federal Procurement Policy Administrator Angela Styles told a House subcommittee on September 27 that the Office of Management and Budget expects to release by the end of October a revised version of the A-76 Circular which governs the way competitions for commercial-type activities are conducted between the public and private sectors. The document is based on recommendations of the General Accounting Office Commercial Activities Panel and will include a one-step integrated approach for certain functions that follows the existing Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 15 rules, including the use of cost/technical tradeoffs.

State Legislative Update

The following bills were recently introduced in state legislatures across the country. If you have any questions, please contact Austin Fulk. These bills affect the civil engineering profession, but ASCE National has not taken a position on them unless otherwise stated.

California On Monday, September 30, California Governor Gray Davis vetoed A.B. 2853, which was designed to bring about pay parity between state engineers and their counterparts employed by municipalities and public authorities. In his veto message, Gov. Davis emphasized the cost of the measure during tough fiscal times for the state. The bill was supported by both Professional Engineers in California Government (the union representing state engineers) and Consulting Engineers and Land Surveyors of California, representing private sector engineers.

New Jersey A.B. 2801 increases the state and local penalties for unlawful solid waste disposal.

North Carolina H.B. 1564 modifies state law concerning civil penalties for environmental remediation.

ASME GROUP ISSUES MODEL BILL FOR K-12 STEM EDUCATION

The Council on Education has issued a model bill on K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education for state legislatures.

The bill focuses on increasing the number and quality of math, science, technology, and pre-engineering teachers; establishing partnerships that strengthen and promote the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics continuum; encouraging students to consider science, engineering, and technology careers; and building 21st Century educational infrastructure, organizations, and communities.

For the past couple of years, ASME has been active in the K-12 STEM education debate at the federal level. Because of the recently passed Administration bill that directs block grants to the states, the model bill is intended to assist states in strengthening their STEM education. The model bill can be found at: www.asme.org/gric/ps/2002/02-32.html

For more information on the model bill, contact Melissa Murray at murraym@asme.org .

SENATE INITIATIVE WOULD BOLSTER NATION'S AVIATION CAPABILITIES

Emphasizing the impact on national security and economic stability, Senators Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT) and George Allen (R-VA) have introduced the "Aeronautics Research and Development Revitalization Act of 2002" (S.2966) to "establish comprehensive goals to strengthen America's aeronautics and aviation research and development (R&D) abilities and maintain America's competitive leadership in aviation."

The legislation would reverse the trend of declining federal investments in aeronautics and aviation R&D by doubling the authorization of funding over five years. Funding for NASA would increase to $900 million in 2005, which is approximately the level it was in 1998, and would increase to $1.15 billion in 2007. The legislation would also double funding for the FAA to more than $550 million in 2007.

The bill focuses on improving fuel-efficiency for commercial standard airliners, as well as noise reduction, improved emissions, wake turbulence, more stringent safety and security standards, a more efficient air-traffic control system, and supersonic transport. Universities will also be given resources to develop training methods for people who will make use of these technologies and individual engineering graduate students studying aeronautics would be eligible for scholarships through specific funding in this legislation.

Rep. John B. Larson (D-CT) introduced similar legislation (H.R. 4563) in the House of Representatives earlier this year. Both bills are available to review online at thomas.loc.gov .

For the past few years, the Aerospace Division has worked with an Aviation Coalition of ten engineering, professional and industry organizations to call attention to the continuing decline in federal support for advanced aeronautics research and long-term investment in aviation related research and technology programs. The Coalition's statement, "The Crisis in U.S. Aviation Research and Technology" is available to review online at www.asme.org/gric/ps/2002/02-06.html .

For more information about this issue, contact Kathryn Holmes, Government Relations Representative at holmesk@asme.org .

ASME RELEASES STATEMENT ON AIR TRANSPORTATION

The Board of Governors has issued a general position statement on air transportation entitled, A World Class Domestic and Global Air Transportation System: Responding to a 21st Century Imperative.

To ensure the availability of a world class global air transportation system, the statement recommends: promoting a well-structured and vigorously funded national, multi-agency investment across the entire spectrum of key aerospace technologies and systems in both the commercial and military sectors, andsupporting research in technologies in aeronautics and aviation that promote challenging and socially beneficial goals and reinvigorate the human capital needed for the next generation of engineers and scientists.

To view the statement in its entirety, go to the ASME Government Relations web page at: www.asme.org/gric/. For further information, contact Kathryn Holmes at holmesk@asme.org .