July 12, 2018
Testimony on B22-662,
The DC Water Consumer Protection Amendment Act of 2018 before the
DC Council Committee on Transportation & the Environment
Presented by Larry Martin
I am Larry Martin, today representing the DC Chapter of the Sierra Club as chair of the Clean Water Committee. The Sierra Club is the nation’s oldest and largest environmental advocacy group. We have more than 3,000 active, dues-paying members here in the District of Columbia and more than 10,000 supporters. We are testifying today in support for the objectives of the DC Water Consumer Protection Amendment Act of 2018.
The Act is a needed initiative to bring some measure of oversight to the water utility, which operates under its own appointed board with no other oversight other than this council committee. OPC is a logical place to place oversight on behalf of ratepayers. They have demonstrated long term capacity to represent ratepayers’ interests. Sec. 2 (b) (I observe there is not Sec. 1 identified in the bill) notes that OPC may investigate complaints pertaining to 5 areas of concern. Environmental quality is not among them. Sierra Club respectfully requests that it should be identified among the listed issues of concern, or it may be interpreted that environmental issues are outside the range of issues allowed to be addressed by the OPC. As you will recall, this Committee expressly included environmental protection within the mission of OPC in the Clean and Affordable Energy Act of 2007.
We have concern that the responsibility proposed to be placed with OPC is not matched by the capacity granted. OPC is requested to represent ratepayers before the utility but not grated commensurate oversight to resolve identified issues short of appearing in judicial proceedings. The section of the Act that allows for OPC (at its discretion apparently) to represent and appear for petitioners in judicial proceedings seems open to interpretation whether OPC might initiate those proceedings on behalf of District residents. We observe that the Act as written could lead to one District Office – OPC, placed in legal conflict with another – DC Water. It might be constructive to seek the opinion of the DC Office of the Attorney General on this matter.
We recommend that the bill could be strengthened by providing OPC a non-judicial path for holding DC Water accountable to all ratepayers. We suggest that the Committee could explore a provision for arbitration when there is not a simple resolution to ratepayer's complaints. This would create a formal process for resolving disputes that does not rely solely on legal procedures.
Sierra Club strongly supports the goals of the District’s Clean River program but recognizes that there are affordability issues that need to be addressed. We would hope that with passage of this Act, OPC could take a leadership role in helping to sort out equity and environmental justice issues for the protection of DC's surface waters. This is an example of where facilitation and arbitration could be preferable to judicial proceedings.