U.S. Rep. C. W. Bill Young Introduces Legislation to Help Save Local Governments Money

Press Release

U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-FL) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) have introduced H.R. 1340, the End Unnecessary Costs Caused by Report Mailing Act, legislation intended to save local governments thousands of dollars per year. H.R. 1340 will remove the requirement that community water systems annually mail a Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) to all the customers in their system and was created after several of Young's constituents, including the Mayors' Council of Pinellas County, brought the mailing requirement to his attention.

In a statement upon introducing the bill in the House, Young stated:

"Every year approximately 53,000 water systems are required to produce a CCR, which contains important information for consumers about the source and quality of their water. However, while the report itself contains important information that should be available, federal law also required all water systems to mail the repost to every household. The exact cost of printing and mailing these reports vary depending on the number of customers in the system and, in 2009, printing and mailing the CCR cost one water system in my district $30,565 and another $6,785.

"At a time when local government budgets are already strained, it is unnecessary to require that our local water systems mail the report to every household when advancements in technology have provided alternative formats to distribute this information," Young said.

"Bilirakis said "Local governments are already struggling financially, so we must eliminate these types of wasteful federal mandates that continue to strain their budgets and consume taxpayer dollars."

Young's legislation would not stop the production of the CCR, it would simply target the costly mailing requirement. Instead of having to mail the report to every customer, water systems that tested safe for the past year could choose to notify their customers of that fact on their monthly bill, while making the full CCR available on their website or by mail upon request. Water systems where the water tested unsafe would still have to mail the CCR to their customers.

More Information on H.R. 1340 [http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d112:1:./temp/~bd10kU:@@@L&summ2=m&|/home/LegislativeData.php|]

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