The American Water Works Association, the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies and the Water Environment Federation came out swinging Thursday against the Securing Required Funding for Water Infrastructure Now Act, a bill that would blend elements of two federally-backed water and wastewater lending programs.
But the water groups, in a letter to the committee’s leadership, called the SRF WIN Act a "fundamentally flawed proposal."
They also threatened to withdraw support for the broader water infrastructure legislation that the committee is working on if the SRF WIN Act is included in it.
Central to the SRF WIN Act are the clean water and drinking water state revolving funds, and the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, or WIFIA.
States contribute a 20 percent match, and then use the funds to provide low-cost loans and other financing assistance for water and sewer utilities to complete projects.
The legislation would effectively extend WIFIA lending terms to the state revolving funds, so that states could offer revolving fund loans, with Treasury interest rates, for water and wastewater projects that they’ve determined to be priorities.
It would also authorize $200 million in funding annually for five years to support state revolving fund projects, for a total of $1 billion.
He said the SRF WIN Act would "allow the WIFIA program to be much more helpful to some of the rural communities."
They say it’s unnecessary because WIFIA already allows state agencies that administer revolving funds to combine multiple, smaller-scale water and wastewater projects into larger, individual WIFIA loan applications.
And they make a case that the SRF WIN Act would undermine WIFIA’s ability to "leverage" federal investment because it would offer borrowers under the new framework it sets up even lower interest rates than it provides to current applicants.