Water authorities and local governments are leaning into congressional policy discussions looking for stability in reauthorizing the Water Resources Development Act and the possibility of raising state revolving funds.
"We are looking for vehicles to tag SRF reauthorization onto, because it can't really move on its own," said Scott Berry, senior advisor on policy and external affairs for the US Water Alliance.
"That's why we're most interested in things like WRDA, largely because in the past it's been the more attractive vehicle to put SRF policy changes in."
The end of the fiscal year in September and the shifting balance of power in Congress is supplying the deadline clock for finalizing infrastructure spending decisions.
"The chairman (Rep. Sam Graves) on the House side is retiring," said Barry. "There's a little bit more opportunity to potentially get some stuff to the finish line on the Senate side."
"The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee covers both drinking water and wastewater, whereas in the House they're split between two different committees."
Water infrastructure projects are financed through a complex public finance system that includes the WRDA, SRFs, water revenue bonds, Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loans, and the appropriations process, which kicked off earlier this month.
WRDA functions as the rulebook for the appropriations committees and moves through the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on a two-year schedule.
T&I has just completed its part of
WRDA authorizes the Army Corp of Engineers to launch projects that encompass ports, harbors, flood mitigation, and other water resource infrastructure.
Industry groups and local governments would like to see a rise in SRF's, which function as a joint federal and state financing program that provides low interest loans through the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Water and Drinking Water programs.
The federal money requires the states to kick in a 20% matching fund.
In April, the National Association of Counties began lobbying the leadership of House and Senate Appropriations Committees by requesting that "any SRF spending through congressionally directed spending be in addition to base annual appropriations."
The Trump administration kicked off the process in February with a budget proposal that would effectively
SRFs are administered by the states they are awarded to and function as a flexible financing tool, which the Trump administration characterizes as earmarks dispensed to the districts of individual lawmakers.
Earlier this month the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee marked up their version of the 2027 Interior-EPA appropriations bill which cuts the EPAs overall budget by 20% and includes a 23% cut to the SRFs.
A long list of water industry groups are responding via a
They are looking to "strengthen local financing capacity by increasing community tools for water infrastructure funding and financing, by raising the cap on private activity bonds and maintaining the tax-exempt status for municipal bonds."
The toolbox includes Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loans which can be used to finance 49% of project cost and can be combined with munis.
The program has attracted
Earlier this
Echoing the proposed overall cuts to the EPA, President Trump's budget proposal also called for slicing WIFIA.
"The latest Senate markup did restore WIFIA funding back to the $65 million," said John Ryan, principal at InRecap LLC.
"WIFIA got cut like the SRFs did in the latest budget, but it's sort of like a replay of last year. The SRFs get cut down to a minimal amount, and then the appropriations bill just put in the same amount as before and it gets through."
