President Obama’s proposal to trim millions of dollars from EPA’s Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs) in the 2014 fiscal year has drawn a cool reception on Capitol Hill, with congressional appropriators using EPA budget hearings to question the logic of cutting water infrastructure funding in the face of well-documented needs.
Under President Obama’s FY14 budget plan, funding for the DWSRF would be reduced to $817 million, from $908.7 million in 2013. The CWSRF would be reduced from $1.452 billion to $1.095 billion. If enacted, this would represent the DWSRF’s lowest annual appropriation since 1999, and its fourth-straight year of declining budgets.
The proposed cuts have drawn largely negative reviews on Capitol Hill. For example, earlier this month Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Id.) of the House Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee complained the budget would effectively shift dollars from the SRFs to EPA compliance and monitoring activities. Ranking Democrat Jim Moran (D-Va.), meanwhile, labeled the SRF cuts “unacceptable.”
AMWA has also weighed in against the proposed SRF cuts. In testimony submitted jointly with a coalition of water and wastewater organizations in late April, the association highlighted EPA studies identifying more than $600 million in water infrastructure funding needs over the next 20 years, as well as a wider report from AWWA estimating actual drinking water infrastructure repair costs could exceed $1 trillion over 25 years. To minimize harm to infrastructure rebuilding and replacement efforts, the water groups asked Congress to fund the DW and CW SRFs at $918 million and $1.466 billion, respectively, equal to their FY12 funding levels.
House and Senate appropriators could circulate their own drafts of FY14 EPA spending bills as early as next month.