School House Rock: How a Bill becomes a Law and then Fully Defined

I’m just a bill, sitting here on Capitol Hill… While almost everyone 45 years old or older knows the refrain, we rarely consider the linkage between environmental regulations that shape wastewater-treatment operations/projects and the legislated authority that Congress must create to frame that structure. Instead, questions like: “Doesn’t the United States (US) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) understand that making all co-digestion biogas renewable identification numbers (RINs) only Advanced (or “D5”) instead of Cellulosic (or “D3”; that are worth 2 to 2.5 times the value of D5s) discourages water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) from recovering more resources?”; or “Why doesn’t the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) fairly provide for electric RINs (e-RINS)?” are heard all too often. This paper is less about how Congress creates laws – and more about what happens afterwards to make federal policy and programs that deliver benefits to the public at-large and the environment.