MACo Backs Smarter Water Treatment Infrastructure

On January 28, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic Butchko testified before the Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee in support of SB 265 – Environment – Reservoir Augmentation Permit – Establishment. This bill authorizes the Maryland Department of the Environment to create and administer a Reservoir Augmentation Permit for water treatment infrastructure.

SB 265 is innovative because, instead of relying on a more wasteful linear system, it gives counties a tool to develop more circular systems, reducing both waste and demand for increasingly limited supplies of fresh and usable water.

From MACo Testimony:

As climate change becomes an enduring reality, one of the growing challenges for policymakers is how to establish patterns of smarter and less destructive resource use. One of the most critical resource use patterns to reform is water. Today, water infrastructure primarily operates in a linear fashion, where water is pumped in from a source, cleaned at a water treatment plant, and distributed into the community, after which it enters the wastewater treatment system, and is finally discharged after treatment. This linear process effectively builds in a level of waste as potable water or water which can be easily cleaned into potable water, is discharged instead of being recycled.

SB 265 was heard in the opposite chamber, the Environment and Transportation Committee, on March 26. MACo submitted written testimony in support of this bill.

More on MACo’s Advocacy:

SB 265’s cross-file, HB 25, was heard on January 29 in the Environment and Transportation Committee. Dominic Butchko testified in support of this bill.