With the holiday recess fast approaching, congressional staffers say House and Senate negotiators are unlikely to publicly release a final “Water Resources Development Act” (WRDA) conference report before the end of the year. As a result, a final decision on whether to include a “Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act” (WIFIA) pilot program within the WRDA bill will probably be punted to next year as well.
Though both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill had hoped to craft a compromise WRDA bill before departing for the holidays, the congressional schedule made that task challenging. This is scheduled to be the House of Representatives’ last week of votes in 2013, and the Senate is planning to wrap up its business next week. And without a guarantee of floor time for the final bill before recess, the conferees’ preference is to return to the bill early next year.
The delay provides the water utility community another opportunity to contact lawmakers in support of including the WIFIA pilot program in the final WRDA bill. AMWA and other WIFIA supporters have spent the last several weeks briefing Capitol Hill staff on the value of WIFIA and urging fixes to provisions that would cap WIFIA loans at 49 percent of a project’s total cost and bar the use of tax-exempt debt to finance the balance. These efforts will continue through the holiday break.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also joined the effort last week, calling on conferees to include WIFIA in the final bill and also to fix the provision limiting the use of tax-exempt debt.
Individual AMWA members are encouraged to contact their representatives and senators in support of WIFIA and the tax-exempt debt fix. Utility representatives should contact AMWA’s Dan Hartnett ([email protected]) for information to use when contacting lawmakers on these topics.