Sponsors (2)
The bill preserves a smaller, predictable federal aquifer-assessment program and legal clarity for states, but it sharply reduces funding and omits the Yuma basin—trading program continuity for much-reduced scale and geographic coverage.
Border communities and state/local water managers gain a renewed, predictable federal program (authorized at $500,000 per year from 2026–2033) to assess and plan for transboundary aquifers, preserving ongoing data collection and planning capacity.
State governments receive clearer statutory sunset language, reducing legal ambiguity about the program's termination date and improving program predictability for planning and coordination.
State and local water managers and border communities face a large reduction in available funding compared with prior authorizations (from ~$50 million total previously to $500,000 per year), limiting capacity for large-scale, multi-year, or binational aquifer studies and slowing infrastructure and management decisions.
Border communities in the Yuma area are excluded from the program's assessments, leaving that aquifer basin and its users without federal assessment support despite cross-border groundwater concerns.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Adds Arizona (with a Yuma-area exclusion) as a priority State and authorizes $500,000 annually for FY2026–2033 for the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program, replacing a prior $50M multi-year authorization.
Official title: To amend the United States-Mexico Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Act to reauthorize the United States-Mexico transboundary aquifer assessment program.
Introduced October 8, 2025 by Juan Ciscomani · Last progress October 8, 2025
Amends the United States–Mexico Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Act to add Arizona (with a specific exclusion around the Yuma groundwater basin) as a priority State, to authorize $500,000 per year for fiscal years 2026–2033 for the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program, and to revise the sunset-language reference to name the program act. It replaces an earlier multi-year $50 million authorization (FY2007–2016) with a much smaller annual authorization over eight years and narrows/expands the geographic scope by adding Arizona but explicitly excluding a specified Yuma-area aquifer.