Senate leaders have removed a controversial provision from the WRDA bill that would have limited the authority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation to approve reallocations of federal reservoir storage for municipal water supplies.
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 five percent of the reservoir’s conservation storage. Communities would only have been able to receive exemptions from this five percent limit on a case-by-case basis by 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 AWWA wrote to senators last month sharing these concerns. Ultimately, the version of S. 601 sent to the Senate floor removed the original Section 2015 language and replaced it with a non-binding provision urging states involved in cross-border water rights disputes “to reach agreement on an interstate water compact as soon as possible.”