Monday, September 10, 2018

Rural water group lobbies for rural-friendly Senate language to stay in reconciled water-funding bill

As House and Senate committees reconcile their versions of a water infrastructure legislation, rural and urban water utilities are jockeying to come out on top in the finished bill. The National Rural Water Association, a lobbying group for rural water utilities, is pressuring lawmakers to keep rural-friendly provisions for water and wastewater financing programs included in the Senate version of the Water Resources Development Act. Larger and more urban utilities are opposed.

The Senate version includes provisions from a bipartisan bill, the Securing Required Funding for Water Infrastructure Now (SRF-WIN) Act, that blends two federally backed lending programs: grants from revolving federal funds, and loans from the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA), Bill Lucia reports for Route Fifty.

Under the revolving-loan program, the Environmental Protection Agency awards grants to states, which contribute a 20 percent match. The funds are used for low-cost loans and other project assistance to water and sewer systems. Under WIFIA, the other program, EPA provides low-interest direct loans for projects of at least $5 million in communities of 25,000 or fewer people, and at least $20 million in larger communities.

The rural-water lobby argues that WIFIA doesn't help rural areas enough because rural projects tend to cost less than $5 million and the program doesn't put enough emphasis on "need" in choosing which projects to fund. The SRF-WIN bill, they say, would give rural areas more access to WIFIA's benefits. "But groups like the American Water Works Association, which says that it represents almost 4,000 utilities that supply 80 percent of the nation's drinking water, have opposed the SRF-WIN Act, saying that it would undermine WIFIA and its ability to support large projects," Lucia reports.

The NRWA sent an advisory this week alerting its members to the committee discussions and inviting them to send a form letter to House lawmakers urging them to keep the provisions in the final bill. The Senate is friendlier to rural areas because every state has two senators regardless of population.

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