Intergovernmental responsibilities for water supply and sewage disposal in metropolitan areas. Page: 48
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Political Realities and Metropolitan Approaches
Comprehensive planning, policy coordination, and the development
and operation of water and sewer utilities on a metropolitan
basis can provide most urban areas with more efficient and more
economical water service. In addition, regional approaches
promise greater safeguards for health, more effective conservation
of recreation areas, and the planning and provision of utilities
so that they have a more beneficial impact on community development.
However, in most metropolitan areas, political realities rather than
engineering, planning, and public administration doctrine are the
crucial factors affecting the possibility of altering the structural
base for planning, allocating and applying resources. The chances
of achieving structural changes in a particular metropolitan area
depend primarily on attitudes, timing, and the pattern of interests
and groups as they conflict, compete, and cooperate.
Building support for a metropolitan approach to water supply
or sewage disposal is greatly complicated because the impact of a
particular problem or deficiency varies greatly in different parts
of the metropolitan area. This variety of attitudes was evident
in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in the reaction of various groups
and communities to the proposal for the creation of a regional
sewer district. Supporters included the planners, technicians
and civic groups, whose attitudes were shaped by the general advantages
of regional approaches. Opposition was a product of a wide
variety of perceptions. The two central cities had solved their
basic sewage problems in the 1930's with the creation of the
Minneapolis-St. Paul Sanitary District. Each city had profitably
contracted over the years for the sale of its excess capacity.
Both were desirous of maintaining the contract system and neither
had any great interest in increasing the overall capacity of the
system since population in both central cities is static or
declining. However, to meet the standards of the State Board of
Health and the Water Pollution Control Commission, major capital
investments in the existing facilities were required to provide
secondary treatment. The central cities were much more concerned
with upgrading treatment and maintaining a profitable contracting
arrangement than in creating a regional system which would involve
central city investments in facilities from which they would derive
no direct return. South St. Paul's large sewage treatment facilities
are maintained primarily by their principal user, the packing
industry. The city opposed the district because it was already
giving a higher degree of treatment than that proposed for the
metropolitan system; and because a 350 percent increase in the
total cost to the community and the packing industry would result
from the creation of a metropolitan district.
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United States. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. Intergovernmental responsibilities for water supply and sewage disposal in metropolitan areas., book, October 1962; Washington, D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1424/m1/60/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.