The Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs) would serve as the inspiration for a new class of SRF loans to be administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under legislation unanimously approved by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on September 19.
Introduced in July by Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), the Resilience Revolving Loan Fund Act (H.R. 3779) would create a new SRF loan program dedicated to helping local communities mitigate the impacts of hazards like drought, floods, severe storms, wildfires, earthquakes, or other catastrophic events. FEMA would administer the new program and would make capitalization grants to states and tribes that meet prescribed requirements for establishing their own revolving loan funds. The bill would authorize spending up to $200 million on the program over two years.
Participating states and tribes would offer loans to local governments to support qualifying hazard mitigation projects. The maximum loan issued to any single project could not exceed $5 million, and loans would be paid back into the state funds within 20 years of a project’s completion. The maximum interest rate would be 1.5 percent. Public drinking water utilities would presumably be eligible to receive the new loans, as the bill would require states to award them to “local governments.” That would, however, exclude privately owned drinking water systems from accessing them.
H.R. 3779 drew bipartisan praise at a September 19 House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee markup, with multiple lawmakers hailing the proposal as a bipartisan measure that would help communities construct disaster-resilient infrastructure.
The next stop for the bill will be the House floor, though there is no official timetable for a House vote. No companion measure has been introduced in the Senate.