Sponsors (6)
Official title: Provide adequate funding for water and sewer infrastructure, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 13, 2025 by Bernard Sanders · Last progress May 13, 2025
The bill delivers a large, sustained federal investment to expand and modernize water infrastructure and protect public health—especially for tribal, rural, and disadvantaged communities—but does so by locking in substantial mandatory spending, reducing annual Congressional discretion, and creating distributional, administrative, and cost risks that may leave some small or under-resourced communities behind.
State and local water programs, utilities, and communities get predictable, mandatory funding (roughly tens of billions annually) for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure, enabling more projects to be financed without annual appropriations uncertainty.
Households, students, and small water systems gain expanded health protections: grants and subsidized loans to replace lead service lines at no cost to owners, PFAS treatment and household filtration support, and school lead-testing and remediation funding.
Tribal communities receive substantially increased, mandatory drinking water and sanitation funding (including both a dedicated annual IHS transfer and stronger tribal SRF support), improving sanitation and water infrastructure on reservations.
Taxpayers broadly face substantially higher and recurring federal outlays (tens of billions annually), increasing deficits or the need for offsets, which could translate into higher taxes or cuts elsewhere.
Making large water transfers mandatory and available without annual appropriation reduces Congressional annual oversight and flexibility, locking in priorities and limiting lawmakers' ability to reallocate funds as needs change.
Communities and small systems with limited administrative or grant-writing capacity may be left behind, concentrating benefits with larger states, utilities, or districts that can absorb and manage expanded funding.
Based on analysis of 16 sections of legislative text.
Creates permanent annual mandatory Treasury transfers to fund water and sanitation SRFs and grants, expands eligible uses (lead line replacement, PFAS response, purchases of private systems), and adds affordability, accounting, and labor rules.
Creates new, permanent annual mandatory funding streams from the Treasury to the EPA, USDA, and HHS to pay for Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs) and related grants, and expands how those funds can be used. It directs large, recurring transfers (multi‑billion dollar totals) to cover capitalization grants, requires states to provide greater loan subsidies to disadvantaged communities when eligible, authorizes lead service line replacement and PFAS response grants, allows government purchase of privately owned treatment systems, strengthens consumer protections and accounting guidance, and adds project labor agreement requirements for construction projects funded by the SRFs. It also requires a one‑year EPA study on affordability, equity, disconnections, and civil rights issues in water and sewer service.