For several hours on September 27 it briefly appeared that an AMWA-backed amendment to improve the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) program would overcome long odds to be added to the House’s Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) bill. But while the House ultimately did not consider the amendment, the provision still stands a strong chance of earning support in the House-Senate conference committee that will write the final WRDA legislation.
The series of events began on the evening of September 26, when the House Rules Committee met to determine which of dozens of amendments would be made in order for consideration when the House began debate on its WRDA bill (H.R. 5303) the following day. Among the amendments before the committee was a proposal from Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) to give all WIFIA applicants the option to amortize the program’s application fee over the life of their loan – language that was identical to a provision in the WRDA earlier approved by the Senate (S. 2848). The Rules Committee voted to allow the full House to consider the amendment, a surprising decision because H.R. 5303 dealt exclusively with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers policy and Rep. Crawford’s amendment would alter a program administered by EPA. House rules typically require any accepted amendments to be related to the underlying text of the base bill.
However, the following day the Rules Committee apparently realized that the amendment was not germane to the rest of H.R. 5303 and advised Rep. Crawford to refrain from offering it on the House floor. In its place, they helped him craft an alternate amendment that did not address WIFIA fees, but instead would make Army Corps-administered aquifer restoration projects eligible for funding through EPA’s WIFIA program. This revised language was determined to be in accordance with House rules.
AMWA supports allowing WIFIA recipients to finance their application fees, so having this provision in both the House and Senate-approved WRDA bills would have aided efforts to include it in the final WRDA legislation. But WRDA conferees will still consider the provision due to its presence in the Senate-approved bill, and staff to Rep. Crawford have said he will call for it to be part of the final conference report as well.