The EPA’s FY 2027 budget just dropped and, unsurprisingly, it’s shit. I’m still working my way through it, but their absolute gutting of funding for clean drinking water is worth highlighting.
Like everything else coming out of this administration, they say one thing, and/or mean or do the opposite.
Take the State Revolving Funds (SRFs) - a circulating pool of low-interest loans to states for water infrastructure projects like wastewater treatment, drinking water treatment, and more. I.e., this money allows states to make the necessary updates to water systems so they can comply with the requirements under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
In the budget, they emphasize that EPA is still proposing $305 million. Okay, not bad, not bad.
Except that this is an 89% DECREASE in funding from the 2024 budget. In FY 2024, the budget for this was roughly $2.766 billion. So yeah, this is a near-total gutting of state assistance to update water infrastructure, which is already on the struggle bus.
Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers publishes the Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, essentially grading the current status of everything from roads and bridges to wastewater and drinking water. In 2013, the first year I learned about the ASCE report cards, the drinking water infrastructure in the US got a D grade. In 2017, still a D. By 2021, we’d eeked out a little improvement, coming in at a C-, the same grade we had for the 2025 report.
Stripping funding for infrastructure improvements to drinking water will not help push this grade higher. It will, undoubtedly, lower it.
In fact, the ASCE found that we need $625 billion over the next 20 years to reach a state of good repair.
As I read through the rest of this budget, I’ll share what else I find. While I’d love to say I am optimistic about what I’ll find, it would be a bald-faced lie.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.