Sponsors (3)
The bill increases federal support and guidance to help states and localities detect and address water contamination more quickly—improving public health—but does so with uncertain funding, potential costs and burdens for property owners, small businesses, and smaller jurisdictions, and modest administrative impacts for EPA.
State and local governments (and the communities they serve, including urban and rural residents and children) will be better able to identify specific contamination sources using newer, more sensitive testing methods and share that information with EPA, enabling faster, targeted remediation and improved beach/water-use advisories that reduce public exposure.
The bill reauthorizes monitoring-and-notification grants at $30 million per year through FY2029, allowing continued federal support for state and local water-quality monitoring programs.
Updated grant guidance that incorporates modern testing technologies should help grant-funded projects use more effective tools, improving program effectiveness and more efficient use of federal funds.
Identifying and reporting specific contamination sources and encouraging newer testing methods could raise compliance, cleanup, procurement, and technology-adoption costs for small businesses, homeowners, and some state/local governments—costs that may not be fully covered by grant funding.
Authorizing $30M per year does not guarantee Congress will appropriate those funds, creating uncertainty for states and localities that may plan programs assuming continued federal support.
Requiring submission of source-identification and monitoring data to EPA may raise privacy and liability concerns for property owners and local entities that provide monitoring data.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Allows state/local beach monitoring grants to fund source identification, updates authorization to FY2025–FY2029, and requires EPA guidance to include new testing technologies.
Introduced February 11, 2025 by Ronald Lee Wyden · Last progress February 11, 2025
Allows states and local governments that receive beach monitoring and public-notification grants to use those funds to identify specific sources of contamination (for example, nearby shallow upstream waters or contamination on beaches and public access points) and to share related data with the EPA when they do so. It also updates the authorized funding window for those grants to fiscal years 2025–2029 and directs the EPA Administrator to include new testing technology innovations in grant guidance.