Multiple reports from Capitol Hill say House and Senate negotiators are in the final stages of working out a compromise “Water Resources Development Act” (WRDA) and could announce an agreement in the coming days. Recent comments from several members of Congress have raised expectations that some form of an AMWA-backed “Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act” (WIFIA) will find a place in the larger WRDA bill, but less clear is the status of several key provisions AMWA has identified as central to the program’s success.
A conference committee of House and Senate lawmakers has been meeting since October to work out a consensus WRDA bill. The final legislation will focus mostly on U.S. Army Corps policy and project authorizations, but the initial WRDA bill passed by the Senate nearly a year ago also included a WIFIA pilot program that would offer low-cost financing for major drinking water and wastewater projects expected to cost more than $20 million.
While the Senate-approved WIFIA largely reflected AMWA’s goals, senators also included a provision to keep the program budget-neutral by prohibiting the use of tax-exempt financing to help pay for an infrastructure project that also receives WIFIA loans. At the time, Senate staff called this provision a temporary “Band-Aid” that was necessary to move the proposal through the chamber and which could be later removed in conference. However, while the conference committee has been negotiating the larger WRDA bill for nearly six months, congressional staff have not confirmed any agreement to remove the tax-exempt financing restriction.
AMWA and other WIFIA supporters have spent the past several months encouraging Congress to maintain WIFIA in the final WRDA, as well as remove the tax-exempt debt restriction. AMWA has also called on lawmakers to allow WIFIA loans to cover up to 100 percent of a project’s cost, rather than capping WIFIA funding at 49 percent as the Senate-approved version would do.
Several lawmakers who spoke at AMWA’s Water Policy Conference last month said some form of WIFIA would probably appear in the final WRDA, but they would not comment on the status of the tax-exempt debt restriction or the 49-percent cap.