Proposal

Proposal

The proposed Virginia Clean Streams Law is designed to be simple, equitable and fair, yet generate the funding needed to meet the majority of Virginia’s legal and moral commitments to improve water quality significantly by 2010.

The key components of the legislation are:

• Some $52 per year fee assessed to each household statewide (localities may choose how to collect);

• Some $1200 per year fee assessed to industrial facilities that discharge to a municipal sewage treatment plant and engage in the mechanical or chemical transformation of materials/substances;

• Total anticipated revenue is approximately $160 million per year for deposit into the Water Quality Improvement Fund;

• Seventy percent of the funds collected will be distributed statewide as grants through the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) or the Virginia Resources Authority to cover ninety percent of the capital costs to design and install state-ofthe-art nutrient removal technologies at sewage treatment plants;

• Funding may be increased to 100 percent for facilities that utilize the Public Private Education Facilities and Infrastructure Act;

• Thirty percent of the collected funds will be distributed statewide by the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) for implementing best management practices that reduce nutrient pollution for agricultural lands;