Letter to Lisa Murkowski, Chairwoman and Tom Udall, Ranking Member, Approriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies - Funding for Water Infastructure

Letter

Dear Chairman Murkowski and Ranking Member Udall:

As the Senate Appropriations Committee develops spending priorities for Fiscal Year 2017 (FY17), we strongly urge you to provide significant and robust funding for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) and the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF). We appreciate your continued support for these vital initiatives and urge you to provide no less than the FY 2016 funding level. It is critically important to provide the most robust possible federal investment in our nation's safe and clean water infrastructure. Each dollar invested helps to create jobs, repair crumbling water and wastewater infrastructure, and protect public health and environmental quality in our States.

Additionally, the American Water Works Association (AWWA) estimates that there are 240,000 drinking water main breaks every year. AWWA estimates the cost to replace our nation's crumbling drinking water infrastructure will be more than $1 trillion over the next 25 years. Maintaining a state of good repair of our nation's drinking water infrastructure is critical to protecting public health by ensuring reliable delivery of safe drinking water to millions of Americans. The American Society of Civil Engineers' 2014 infrastructure report card also provides ample evidence of the need for a continued and robust federal commitment to water and wastewater infrastructure. The Society gave the nation's drinking water a "D" and wastewater infrastructure a "D-". Every day, communities face significant losses and damage from broken water and sewer mains, sewage overflows, and other problems due to infrastructure that is reaching the end of its useful life cycle.

The SRFs help address these conditions by investing in short- and long-term improvements to water and wastewater infrastructure in states and communities across the nation, providing significant environmental, economic, and public health benefits.

Given the importance of water and wastewater infrastructure to the health and well-being of the American people as well as to the national economy, it is critical that the federal government continue to be a reliable partner in meeting the nation's clean water and safe drinking water needs. We therefore urge your continued robust investment in the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Funds.

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