We in St. Louis have very great problems insofar as relief sewers are concerned, not only in separating the waste water, but also in providing relief for these combined sewers. The matter of separating the sanitary from the storm sewers is not just a question of providing another sewer. You have to disconnect all the house connections, you have to disconnect all the laterals which are connected to the sewers and these would have to be connected to the This might entail raising some of the elevations of the house sewers, which could be quite a project. I just wanted to enter that into the record. new sewer. We are most pleased in seeing that the Federal Government is entering into this phase of the business, because frankly, gentlemen, the cost is so prohibitive for any local agency such as ours to try to attempt to do with bond issues or just local funds; it is practically beyond our capabilities of doing it. In the 3 years that I have been executive director of the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, our people have taxed themselves to the tune of $125 million worth of bonds for trunk sewers and treatment plants alone. This does not provide for relief sewers. Now, we do approximately $5 million a year worth of construction on what we call special benefit assessment, better known as tax rolls which are issued directly against the property. This is the way we raise the funds to provide the lateral sewers for each individual home. I might add that in the past 5 or 6 years, we have provided such sewers for about 15,000 homes in St. Louis who previously had no sewers on very small lawns and it was very, very bad. Our sanitary problems are very well under control now. We have either under construction or have passed a bond issue for all the necessary trunk sewers for our area, including all the treatment plants. I might add that we will recommend to our board at their next meeting, which will be in July, that we award engineering contracts for about $80 million worth of construction for the pollution abatement of the Mississippi River. Senator MUSKIE. May I at this point ask you something about your organizational structure? You cover an area of over 94 communities. Mr. MATTEI. Yes, sir. Senator MUSKIE. Are you a public corporation of some kind? Mr. MATTEI. We are, under the charter of the State of Missouri, that provides peculiarly just for the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County. The city of St. Louis is a city and a county both. They have both offices, county offices and city offices. They are not in any way connected with St. Louis County. So consequently, the legislature at Jefferson City recognizes this and they put an amendment in the constitution which permits the residents of both St. Louis and St. Louis County to enter into or set up a layer of government or set up an agency which is empowered to handle mutual srevices, mutual problems. Senator MUSKIE. Not limited to sewage problems? Mr. MATTEI. No; it could be for traffic. As a matter of fact, we were encouraged at one time to take over transportation. In our charter, it provides that we can take over other services. Of course, transportation and sewers are quite divergent and we backed off from that. But certainly there are other fields such as garbage, incineration, and so forth, that we can enter into. We preempt any governmental agency in our area—in other words, no community or agency can pass any legislation or take any act which would be contrary to what we want to do. We have our authority directly from the State constitution. Senator MUSKIE. But that authority is implemented by action of the communities? Mr. MATTEI. That is right. Senator MUSKIE. Once that is done, then the argeement or the charter which you agree upon becomes binding upon the community? Mr. MATTEI. That is right. Senator MUSKIE. They cannot veto any action you take? Senator MUSKIE. It is a compact? Mr. MATTEI. Not exactly, because compacts try to set controls. We have the right to set controls and we do set controls. But we also actually do the work, the operation and maintenance, the construction; we do plans, we do design, we can hold bond issues. The supreme court of the State of Missouri has held that we are a municipality. Senator MUSKIE. So you make the decision as to whether you will seek the bond issue-in referendum? Mr. MATTEI. That is right. Senator MUSKIE. That decision to go to referendum is not subject to veto by the communities? Mr. MATTEI. That is right. Senator MUSKIE. You set your own rates? Mr. MATTEI. That is right. Senator MUSKIE. Those are not subject to veto by the communities? Mr. MATTEI. No. Senator MUSKIE. How are the boards selected? Mr. MATTEI. Three of them are appointed by the mayor of St. Louis and approved by the judges of St. Louis. Three of them are appointed by the supervisor of St. Louis County. Our charter provides that not more than two can be of any given party, which would prevent a wholly partisan board. Senator MUSKIE. Do you have the power of eminent domain? Mr. MATTEI. Yes. We have the rights of condemnation and everything that goes with it. Senator MUSKIE. With respect to the sewage system, treatment plants, and so on; when you came into being, did you take those over? Mr. MATTEI. We took those over. They became the property of the Metropolitan Sewer District. Senator MUSKIE. You can do anything you decide with them? Mr. MATTEI. That is right. We have abandoned 80 percent of the sewage system that was in existence. We have been able to construct outfall sewers or tied them into other lines which enabled us to do away with them. Every one was grossly overloaded. We have a community called Flarson, which in 1950 had less than 30,000 people, and in 1960 had over 40,000. The sewage was built for 3,600. We were voted into existence in 1944. Actually, there was a transition period from that time to 1956. On January 1, 1956, MSD actually went into operation. We took over physical maintenance of all the facilities in the area. Senator MUSKIE. So with respect to this function, you have true metropolitan government? Mr. MATTEI. That is right. Senator MUSKIE. Is this the only function you have? Senator MUSKIE. Any other questions on this organizational point? The reason I asked the question is that the provisions in S. 649 were designed to stimulate this sort of thing, metropolitanwide planning. You have gone far beyond the planning; you actually have in operation a functional service corporation with metropolitan wide authority. Mr. MATTEI. That is right, sir. Senator MUSKIE. Why not proceed? Mr. MATTEI. All right, sir. We are heartily in favor of separation of these combined facilities. No. 1, we feel that both storm and sanitary do not belong in the same sewer line, They are two wholly divergent facilities and functions. Sanitary sewers have to be comparatively deep and storm sewers can be comparatively shallow, but when you put the two together, you have to put the storm sewer to the depth of the sanitary sewer. We have sewers that are 40 or 50 feet into the ground, which if they had just been sanitary would have been a very small line and a very small expense. Senator MUSKIE. Why were they combined in the first instance? Mr. MATTEI. I was born and raised in St. Louis. I can tell you the thinking of the engineers in St. Louis in the late twenties and early thirties, although I was not even in high school. The thinking in those days was that the Mississippi River, being as large as it was and the great body of water it was, could take everything we could possi bly dump into it from now on and never bothered. Of course-this was a statement of an engineer who, unfortunately, died just about 2 weeks ago, a very great man, Mr. Baum. This was his thinking. He at that time was in charge of the sewers, had been for years and years. This was his thinking that we could never do anything that would disturb the great Father of Waters. Well, this is not true; because, if anybody has been in St. Louis, you will know that the boating and the skiing, and everything else you see on the Mississippi River, is done north, not south, of St. Louis. It is not done at the riverfront. If you park your boat along the riverfront in St. Louis, it is only a matter of time that the hull becomes greasy and oily and dirty. The chicken entrails, and the packinghouse wastes and whatnot, which are being dumped in the river, are soon hung on your propeller, and you have to get down and clean them out. It is no longer suitable for recreation in any manner, shape, or form. We used to have long-distance swims on the river. These are no longer held, because you just take your life into your hands--not due to the swimming but due to the pollution. The city of St. Louis takes approximately 50 to 60 percent of its water for the entire community from the Mississippi River. Of course, it is north of the city, but, unfortunately, the community has spread out along the Missouri River. They have been dumping all these wastes into the Missouri River, and it comes into the Mississippi above this water intake. Now we are constructing a treatment plant which will be complete treatment, simply because of the fact that the city of St. Louis takes a large percentage of their water from this particular plant. The water is highly polluted. As a matter of fact, Monsanto Chemical ran some tests for us, and when they got past the limit where they could even count something like 3,000 B coli per cc., they just said it was polluted to the point where there was no sense in discussing it any further. We are asking for bids on July 3 of this year for a $5 million complete-treatment plant, which will serve approximately 110,000 people. We feel that we have moved in the right direction. We have cooperated fully with the enforcement division of the Federal authority. We have found them to be very, very cooperative and understanding of our problem. They have come in and looked at our problem, and they have discussed it with us. Senator MUSKIE. You must have been dealing with different people than some other witnesses we have had. Mr. MATTEL. Well, St. Joe and these other communities had some problems, but I think this is foolish. The Federal Government, after all, is the law of the land. You have to live under it. If this is what we have to do, we just have to do it. Frankly, being an engineer and knowing the pollution problem, I was only too anxious to try to clean it up, and the board felt the same way. Senator MUSKIE. So, in answer to the question on combined sewers, they are a symbol of the philosophy that was current at one time, and may still be, in some areas of the country-that all you have to do is throw this stuff into our streams or water sources, and you do not have to worry about the impact of storm waters on treatment plants, because you do not need the treatment plant. Mr. MATTEI. That is true. Another way to look at it is-they started the sewer system in the city of St. Louis back in the 1850's, or before that. If you stop to analyze it, in those days, maybe, they had 10,000 or 20,000 people in the community and no one downstream, so there was really no problem. But now, suddenly, we have, as I explained, 1,350,000 of our people dumping directly into the Mississippi River. And the industrial wastes today are not what they were years ago. A little tannic acid was about all you ever got in the water in those days, when deer hide or something like that would be cured. But today, when you have these great complexes which are constantly dumping into the river, why, you have to do something about them. The river just will not take it. We have abused the river. Senator MUSKIE. Have you done any thinking about the combined sewer problems in the St. Louis Sewer District? Mr. MATTEI. Yes; quite a bit. As I say, we have to provide some relief sewers, and I have some figures here which show that we need better than $100 million, right now, just to provide us with adequacy. You must realize, when the sewers were originally designed a hundred years ago, they did not worry about extending them 15 miles away. There was nothing up there but woods, and it took a week or more for the water, in case of rain, to get down to the river. Now, suddenly, this stuff is in sewers and gets down to the river in a matter of minutes, and the lines cannot handle it. It backs up into the streets. We have waste up in the streets. You see toilet paper, and other fecal matter, out in the street itself. This is certainly not sanitary. We have to get our crews out and hose down the streets, and we do not like to do this either. Senator MUSKIE. Is separation of the sewers the only answer to this problem? Mr. MATTEI. Enlargement is one of the answers. But, as I said before, to try to provide just the relief for the existing facilities is just too costly for us even to consider. We figure that our storm-water problem in relief sewers, and actually closing some of the openings we have, is better than a billion dollars. Frankly, we have not a prayer of raising $1 billion. Senator MUSKIE. A billion dollars to solve this one problem? Mr. MATTEI. That is right, sir. There was an article in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat about 3 weeks ago on this very matter. It actually is frightening when you read the article, and they tell you it is going to cost you a billion dollars. I know my friends say. "You used to talk about a $10 night; now you are talking about billion dollar sewers." Senator MUSKIE. Could you send us a copy of that? Mr. MATTEI. I will be happy to. Actually, the answer in our area, a part of the answer, would be and we have not been able to sell thisthat, if the people would accept a sewer as a utility, and publicity on this at the Federal level certainly would be helpful to us-if they would accept the sewer as a utility, why, we could then say put a charge on it, like the telephone company does. An individual does not mind paying $11 a month for a phone, but he will not pay $11 a month for the sewer hauling the waste away from his house. The answer I always get is, "What would you rather have-a toilet or a telephone?" Unfortunately, this is not true. If we could just make half the charge that the phone company does, the problem of raising funds would be over, because we could then raise some $50 million a year. You cannot spend the money much faster than that, anyway, when you have to design the sewer, let the contracts, supervise, and actually do the construction. You cannot spend it at much better than $50 million a year, anyway. So, that being the case, if we could levy or get the public to accept sewers as a utility-and let's face it. it is a utility. (Mr. Mattei subsequently submitted the following newspaper article in response to the Senator Muskie's request. Also submitted is a previously written pertinent newspaper article.) [From Globe-Democrat, May 24, 1963] COUNTY DRAINAGE INADEQUATE MORE MONEY NEEDED, METROPOLITAN (By Jerry Barach, Globe-Democrat Staff Writer) Storm water drainage and erosion in the St. Louis metropolitan area cannot be solved until the people accept the fact this area needs a system of adequate sewers just as it needs adequate roads. Charles B. Kaiser, general counsel for the metropolitan sewer district, makes this point in the face of an avalanche of complaints following recent heavy rains. The complaints come from people whose homes abut storm drainage ditches and who see their fences, yards, and even detached garages likely to be swept away. Everyone wants something done now, or even earlier. And everyone has the same story. |