Sponsors (89)
Introduced May 13, 2025 by Bonnie Watson Coleman · Last progress May 13, 2025
The bill channels substantial, more predictable federal funding and targeted protections to improve drinking water safety and access—especially for rural, tribal, and disadvantaged communities—while increasing federal spending and taxes, narrowing state flexibility, adding labor and administrative requirements, and creating legal and implementation risks.
Millions of Americans benefit from substantially expanded, more reliable federal funding for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure (including Trust Fund access without further appropriation), enabling more projects and faster starts for state, local, tribal, and rural systems.
Households—particularly in rural, low-income, colonia, and small-system communities—gain access to grants and loans for household wells, decentralized wastewater, PFAS treatment, and other capital improvements that improve drinking water safety.
Lead service lines and school drinking water receive targeted investment: lead service lines can be replaced at no cost to households and schools can fund lead-free fountains, bottle fillers, and monitoring to reduce exposure for students and staff.
Federal taxpayers and ratepayers face materially higher costs—both from large new/expanded authorizations and explicit tax changes (including a corporate tax rate increase)—which could translate into higher taxes, higher utility rates, or redirected spending.
Garbled or unclear statutory language and substitutions in the bill create legal and implementation uncertainty that could delay grant awards, confuse eligibility, and provoke litigation.
The bill reduces state and local flexibility by directing funding into many designated shares and capping transfers via an EPA-need formula, which can limit a state's ability to prioritize urgent local projects and may slow timely funding.
Based on analysis of 18 sections of legislative text.
Creates a corporate-tax-funded water trust fund and directs major new investments and program changes for drinking and clean water, SRF flexibility, worker training, and affordability measures.
Creates a dedicated Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity, and Reliability Trust Fund financed by an increase in the corporate tax rate, and directs those funds to large-scale clean water and drinking water investments. The bill expands how State Revolving Funds (SRFs) and other federal water programs may be used (including buying private systems, replacing lead service lines, PFAS treatment, and household well remediation), requires an EPA nationwide study on affordability and discrimination, establishes water operator job-training grants, and sets new program rules such as minimum subsidy shares and optional use of project labor agreements for construction.