Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

A federal audit sharply criticizes the Environmental Protection Agency’s handling of a $300 million grant program designed to provide sewer service for thousands of people living in remote, makeshift communities along the Texas-Mexico border.

The EPA’s inspector general, in a report released last week, found that nearly a decade after the last of the grants was awarded, more than $78 million remains unspent. The money was awarded to the Texas Water Development Board, but the auditors blame the EPA’s lax oversight, noting the agency had no procedures in place to handle delays.

The EPA defends its efforts, pointing out that many of the colonias — Spanish for "community" — are in remote areas with no electricity, making it difficult to build wastewater treatment plants and install sewer lines. Still, the agency has agreed to make a number of procedural changes recommended in the audit.

"We’re already rolling on those recommendations," said Susan Spalding, chief of the local EPA region’s water division assistance programs branch in Dallas. "We hope to be done with everything by 2010."

Until then, thousands of residents in the colonias are forced to wait.

"We are in Third World conditions out here in South Texas," said Lionel Lopez, who founded the South Texas Colonia Initiative to champion the rights of those living in the neighborhoods. "Some of the colonias out here have outhouses. It’s real bad."

Sewage troubles

In the early 1990s, the EPA established the Colonias Wastewater Treatment Assistance Program. Between 1993 and 1998, the program provided five separate grants, totaling $300 million, to pay for 41 projects to build wastewater plants, sewer lines and lift stations for an estimated 150,000 residents in the colonias.

The money, which was awarded to the Texas Water Development Board, can be used only on projects within about 62 miles of the Mexico border. To date, roughly 30 projects have been completed or are in the final stages of completion, said Salvador Gandara, EPA project officer for the assistance program.

The audit

The EPA inspector general’s report found that problems developed early in the process. Project work plans and the operating agreement signed with the Water Development Board failed to identify specific projects to be funded and did not include schedules for completion.

"Without that information, EPA did not have a basis for evaluating progress the Board made in completing projects," the report states.

The audit also found that the EPA has known for years that the project is behind schedule but did not take significant steps "to address noncompliance" until 2006. And while the EPA says it is on schedule to finish all projects by 2010, the audit concludes that the project is on pace to be completed in 2012.

The response

The Texas Water Development Board, in a written response to questions from the Star-Telegram, blames delays on numerous difficulties.

Most notable are problems associated with the remote locations of the projects, wrote Carla Daws, the board’s communications director. Also complicating matters is the fact that in most cases the EPA grants cover a portion of the project’s total cost, with the state and/or local communities pitching in, she wrote.

Sometimes the local money doesn’t materialize. In one instance, a $40 million project had to be scrapped and the money redirected to other projects because a local water utility couldn’t come up with its portion of the project cost, Daws wrote.

As for the $78 million that has yet to be spent, Daws wrote that the money is committed to about 12 projects that are in various stages.

A growing problem

There are more than 2,000 "low-income rural subdivisions” in the state, including in nearby Parker and Hood counties. They have also been found in New Mexico and Arizona. Estimates are that more than 3 million people live in such areas nationwide. Many of these subdivisions are mobile-home parks or other developments with few restrictions on the quality of housing and a lack of basic services.

What’s next

The EPA has committed to establish by September firm deadlines and formal measures to better track project progress and completion.

For a copy of the inspector general’s audit, go to: http://www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2008/20080623-08-P-0184.pdf

Sources: Star-Telegram archives; Environmental Protection Agency