EPA Administrator Michael Regan wrote to governors last week to outline the agency’s plans for distributing nearly $50 billion worth of drinking water and wastewater infrastructure dollars that will flow from a bipartisan infrastructure bill that was signed into law last month.
Regan called the legislation “nothing short of transformational … the single largest investment in water that the federal government has ever made.” The legislation provides a total of $48.4 billion for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure over five years, minus funding allocated to EPA to administer the programs. EPA said last week that nearly $44 billion will remain available to states, territories, and tribes via the State Revolving Fund (SRF) programs after the agency takes its cut. He said EPA’s Office of Water will soon issue guidance to state primacy agencies to guide the use of the funds. Reflecting objectives included in the legislation, EPA will urge states to prioritize the distribution of grant funds to certain communities, such as those that have historically struggled to access federal infrastructure funding and that are disproportionately impacted or challenged by contaminants like lead and PFAS.
The letter also announced the state and territorial allocations of the bill’s drinking water and wastewater funding for FY22 – a sum of more than $7.42 billion. The allocations are based on the existing Drinking Water and Clean Water SRF allocation formulas. Additional funds from the infrastructure bill will be made available annually through the 2026 fiscal year.
As WaterISAC discussed in its November 11 Security and Resilience Update, just before President Biden signed the bill into law on November 15, the law includes provisions for resilience and cybersecurity grants and programs. For example, the law establishes the Midsize and Large Drinking Water System Resilience and Sustainability Program at EPA at $50 million over five years and the Clean Water Infrastructure Resiliency and Sustainability Program at $25 million per year over the same period. As part of the cybersecurity provisions, the law requires EPA and CISA to develop a “prioritization framework” for public water systems that "if degraded or rendered inoperable due to an incident, would lead to significant impacts on the health and safety of the public" and a Technical Cybersecurity Support Plan that would identify public water systems in need of prioritized cybersecurity support.
