AMWA is investigating a provision in S. 601, the “Water Resources Development Act of 2013” (WRDA), that could make it more difficult for community water systems to utilize federal reservoirs for water supply needs.
As approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last month, Section 2015 of WRDA would impose new limits on the ability of the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation to allow communities to draw municipal water from federal reservoirs. Specifically, Section 2015 would block any modification to an existing reservoir’s storage allocation in favor of municipal water supply if the cumulative amount dedicated to local water supply would exceed five percent of the reservoir’s conservation storage. Communities would be able to receive exemptions from this arbitrary five percent limit only by an act of Congress on a case-by-case basis.
AMWA is developing a letter to the Senate expressing strong concerns with Section 2015 and is encouraging individual utilities that could be impacted by this proposal to contact their senators as well. The Senate could consider S. 601 within the next several weeks.
Section 2015 is unrelated to Title X of the WRDA legislation, which would establish a WIFIA pilot program for major water infrastructure projects.