DALLAS – A $5 billion water infrastructure bill adopted by the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee does not include the safe drinking water funding for Flint, Mich., and other communities that is in the Senate panel's similar legislation.
The House committee passed the Water Resources Development Act (H.R. 5303) Wednesday on a voice vote after Democrats withdrew amendments that would have increased the Flint-related funding and allowed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to offer construction advice to local drinking water infrastructure projects.
The panel's bill authorizes $5 billion of harbor, dam, and other water projects endorsed by the Army Engineers while removing $5 billion of older projects from the list. The measure would automatically delist projects if no significant work were accomplished within seven years of the authorization.
The $9 billion proposal (S. 2848) adopted by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in late April includes also includes $5 billion of water infrastructure projects.
The Senate committee's bill would fund 25 projects while the House committee's proposal lists 28.
Committee chairman Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and top Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., introduced the measure. Inhofe will lose the committee leadership to term limitations next year, and Boxer is retiring later this year.
The Senate committee's proposal would provide $1.4 billion over five years to help small water utilities comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act and resolve lead contamination issues like the situation in Flint, Mich.
It also includes $1.8 billion of grants over five years to local utilities for projects addressing sewer overflows and $300 million of grants for replacement of lead water lines.
The Inhofe-Boxer bill includes $300 million of federal grants to local utilities for the replacement of lead water service lines and $100 million for a voluntary lead testing program at schools and daycare centers.
But House committee chairman Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., persuaded members to withdraw the Flint-related amendments in the bill in the House that he said dealt with issues beyond the scope of the bill, which covers navigation and flood-control infrastructures.
Congress would be more likely to pass a slimmer, less-costly bill before the seven-week summer recess that begins in mid-July, he said.
"This is out of our jurisdiction," said Shuster of an amendment from Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., which she agreed to withdraw.
The drinking and wastewater provisions are the jurisdiction of the Natural Resources Committee, he said.
"We all know there's a tremendous backlog in water infrastructure systems and a need for more investment in water and wastewater infrastructure," Shuster said. "But I want to keep this bill tight so we can get this to the House floor and then onto the President's desk."
Enactment of the proposal in 2016 would put Congress back on a schedule to produce a water infrastructure bill every two years, Shuster said. The $12.3 billion Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014 was the first of its kind since 2008.
Shuster cited the bill's lack of earmarks – congressional stipulations that provide funding to specific projects – as a virtue but ranking minority member Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said it was bad public policy.
"I don't know why people would prefer to let unelected federal officials, and especially this administration, decide where the money is going rather than the elected officials who understand those needs better than others," he said. "But unfortunately that is the policy of the majority party."
The proposed water measures set guidelines but would not actually allocate any federal funding. The funding ultimately included in a compromise water bill would have to be accomplished through annual appropriations bills.
