Democratic members of the House and Senate introduced a pair of bills in late April that together propose spending tens of billions of dollars on new grants to states and communities to fund drinking water and wastewater infrastructure. But neither proposal is expected to receive much attention from Republican congressional leaders.
One bill offered by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and cosponsored by 36 House Democrats (H.R. 5609), would create a new Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity, and Reliability Trust Fund. The fund would receive nearly $35 billion per year from revenue generated by increasing the federal corporate tax rate by 3.5 percentage points. Trust fund dollars would be distributed to support the State Revolving Funds (SRF) and other Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Water Act programs. The bill would further require EPA to complete a report on water affordability, discrimination and civil rights violations, public participation in regionalization discussions, and data collection in relation to water service disconnections experienced by vulnerable populations. The bill would also amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to generally limit DWSRF loan eligibility to “publicly owned, operated, and managed” water systems.
Also introduced was S. 2727, the Protecting Infrastructure and Promoting the Economy (PIPE) Act. Sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), the bill would direct EPA to create a competitive grant program that would offer funding to communities, states, and tribes to fully cover the cost of eligible drinking water and wastewater infrastructure projects, as defined by EPA. EPA would be authorized to spend up to $500 million per year on the new grant program.
Over the past year congressional Democrats have offered a series of bills and proposals to spend billions of additional dollars on water infrastructure, but none are thought to have a serious chance of gaining traction in the Republican-controlled Congress.