A bipartisan group of 18 House representatives went on record this month in support of including a “Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act” (WIFIA) within larger “Water Resources Development Act” (WRDA) legislation.
The House lawmakers all signed a “Dear Colleague” letter that was circulated in late February by Reps. Tim Murphy (R-Penn.) and Mike Doyle (D-Penn.), and sent to leaders of the WRDA conference on March 7. The letter explained how WIFIA would provide low-interest loans to supplement existing federal water infrastructure assistance programs, and asked WRDA conferees to include “a robust WIFIA pilot program” in the final WRDA legislation.
A WIFIA pilot program was included in the WRDA legislation approved by the U.S. Senate last year, but was omitted from the House’s own WRDA bill last fall. House and Senate negotiators are currently engaged in talks to reach a compromise bill, and hope to complete their work sometime this spring.
AMWA has supported a WIFIA program that would offer low-interest loans for major water infrastructure projects expected to cost at least $20 million – projects that are generally too large to benefit from meaningful assistance through the existing Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Fund (SRF) programs. The Senate-approved WRDA bill meets these objectives, but remains imperfect; the Senate measure would, for example, bar the use of tax-exempt debt to supplement any WIFIA loans obtained for a particular water infrastructure project.
AMWA members are encouraged to contact their U.S. senators and representatives in the coming weeks to reiterate support for WIFIA, and also to call for a fix to allow tax-exempt debt to finance projects also receiving WIFIA loans. Interested AMWA members should contact Dan Hartnett ([email protected]) for a draft letter to Congress on this issue.