The $3.9 trillion fiscal year 2015 budget request sent by President Obama to Congress last week proposes new cuts to EPA and the Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs). The president’s plan would provide EPA with $7.9 billion next year, about $300 million below both its final FY14 appropriation and the amount of funding Obama proposed for the agency last year.
The SRFs would bear the brunt of the cuts, with the DWSRF and CWSRF together reduced by a total of $581 million compared to their FY14 funding levels. The DWSRF would be cut to $757 million (down from $906.9 million this year), while the CWSRF would have its funding cut to $1.018 billion (compared to $1.449 billion this year).
If enacted, the White House’s proposal would provide the DWSRF with its lowest annual appropriation since 1998, while representing the fifth straight year of declining budgets for the program. To justify the cuts, Obama’s budget documents explained the budget would “focus [the SRFs] on communities most in need of assistance” and would “target assistance to small and underserved communities that have a limited ability to repay loans.” According to the White House, even with the reduced levels of funding, the SRFs would finance “approximately $6 billion annually in wastewater and drinking water infrastructure projects.”
These arguments may not be good enough for members of Congress who traditionally support strong water infrastructure investments. One such senator, Water and Wildlife Subcommittee Chairman Ben Cardin (D-Md.), expressed his concerns about proposed reductions in water infrastructure funding. This will be among the issues Sen. Cardin discusses with AMWA members next month at the 2014 Water Policy Conference.
Obama’s EPA budget would continue a requirement that states reserve between 20 and 30 percent of their DWSRF funding to support loan forgiveness in disadvantaged communities, though the percentage of CWSRF funds reserved for such purposes would be reduced to between 10 and 20 percent. States would not be required to set aside a specific portion of DWSRF funding for “green infrastructure” projects, but at least 20 percent of CWSRF dollars would have to be spent for such projects.
AMWA and other water utility and municipal organizations wrote to the White House in January in opposition to any SRF funding cuts. The groups will now turn their attention to Congress in an effort to counter the President’s proposed reductions to the SRFs.