A $1.01 trillion “CRomnibus” spending bill signed into law on December 16 rejects $581 million worth of cuts to EPA’s State Revolving Fund (SRF) programs President Obama proposed earlier this year, and also includes seed money that will allow the agency to continue building the framework of the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA).
The CRomnibus earned its name due to its combination of a full-year omnibus appropriations measure (which funds EPA and most other federal departments and agencies for the remainder of the 2015 fiscal year) with a shorter-term continuing resolution (CR) that extends current funding for the Department of Homeland Security only through the end of February.
Overall, the CRomnibus provides $8.14 billion for EPA, $60 million less than the agency received in FY14 but $250 million more than President Obama’s request for FY15. The bill incudes $906.9 million and $1.449 billion, respectively, for the Drinking Water and Clean Water SRFs, each equal to their FY14 funding levels. President Obama had proposed cutting the two programs by a combined $581 million, but this met strong resistance from AMWA and other water utility groups that urged Congress to maintain level funding for the programs.
Lawmakers also accepted calls from the water utility community to allow EPA to continue building the new WIFIA program in 2015. While the CRomnibus does not include funding for WIFIA loans in 2015, it does appropriate $2.2 million – the maximum authorized amount – for EPA’s “hiring and staffing needs to implement” WIFIA. In a letter to appropriators last month, AMWA and other WIFIA supporters said this $2.2 million was “essential . . . so EPA does not fall behind in its development of the WIFIA framework – and further delay the distribution of these critical water infrastructure loans.” Assuming the funding allows EPA to complete its design of the WIFIA rules next year, the program could be ready to begin offering low-interest loans to communities in the 2016 fiscal year.