The WRDA legislation approved by the U.S. Senate on May 15 (S. 601) did not include a controversial provision from earlier versions that would have limited the authority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation to approve reallocations of municipal water supplies stored in federal reservoirs.
As approved by the Environment and Public Works Committee in March, Section 2015 of S. 601 would have blocked any modification of an existing federal reservoir’s storage allocation in favor of municipal water supply pursuant to the Water Supply Act of 1958, if the cumulative amount dedicated to local water supply would exceed 5 percent of the reservoir’s conservation storage. Communities would only be able to receive exemptions from this 5 percent limit on a case-by-case basis through an act of Congress.
Numerous drinking water systems from across the country warned that this amendment could complicate their future access to water supplies, and AMWA and the American Water Works Association (AWWA) wrote to senators in April to express these concerns. Not wanting this issue to weaken support for the overall bill, EPW Committee leaders ultimately replaced the original Section 2015 language with a non-binding provision that merely urges states involved in cross-border water rights disputes to “to reach agreement on an interstate water compact as soon as possible.”