Iowa Senate offers new water-quality plan

DES MOINES - Majority Senate Republicans embarked Monday on a revised water quality plan designed to generate about $50 million by 2021 by using proceeds from an existing water metering tax and adding gambling revenue available after the state pays off bonds for community attractions and tourism destinations.

Senators on the Appropriations and Ways and Means committees approved the new funding approach, but opponents argued it was another attempt to cobble together makeshift funding sources when the state needs a long-term, sustainable source of money like the three-eighths of a penny boost in the state sales tax voters approved in 2010 but was never implemented.

However, Sen. Ken Rozenboom, R-Oskaloosa, called Senate File 512 a 'breakthrough” that 'provides a path forward” to address urban wastewater issues and farm runoff pollution.

Senate Republicans propose to convert a portion of a 6 percent tax on tap water annually to an excise tax dedicated to water quality efforts, which would grow to $12 million from 2019 to 2021. Separately, they would capture another $15 million in state gaming revenue for water quality projects in 2021 when bonds for Vision Iowa projects are paid off.

Combined with about $23 million in various programs annually that go toward water quality improvements, Rozenboom said, that would create a pool of about $50 million for water quality initiatives, which could nearly double with matching funds until the package sunsets in 2030.

'Iowans have expressed a strong desire to address the quality of Iowa's surface waters,” Rozenboom told Appropriations Committee members. The committee approved the bill 12-9.

'The Senate and House leadership and the governor have all expressed a desire this year to do something for water quality,” he said. 'I believe it is a priority. This will provide a dedicated stream of funding that does not come from RIIF (the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund) and it does not raise taxes for Iowans.”

However, one Republican, Sen. Rick Bertrand, R-Sioux City, voted against the plan, saying the water quality issue originated with a letter from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and that now 'we have a different EPA and a different president.”

'We just keep putting bills forward like a quilt to try to get something to the governor's desk,” said Bertrand, who co-chairs the House-Senate budget subcommittee on transportation, infrastructure and capitals. He viewed the use of future gaming revenue as 'a money grab.”

Democratic Sens. Matt McCoy of Des Moines and Joe Bolkcom of Iowa City said Republicans identified the right goals with a 'well-intended” bill that missed the mark in using proceeds from local metered water and state-licensed gambling enterprises.

'It's just not a solution that's going to work,” Bolkcom said.

McCoy said diverting existing money to water quality efforts when the state has $350 million to $1 billion in deferred maintenance needs of buildings is just 'kicking the can down the road” with a 'tax shift” he viewed as a mistake.

'This isn't new money in the system. This is just reshuffling money and calling it new money, McCoy said. 'The fact is that if you really want to get after a $4 billion problem of water quality, you're going to need a lot more that what this program will do.”

Sen. Julian Garrett, R-Indianola, said lawmakers understand SF 512 is 'a modest program, but added it was 'a start.”

Rozenboom said he was unsure how the measure would fare in the House in the closing days of the session if the full Senate takes up the bill possibly on Wednesday.

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