NACWA says EPA’s FCA Guidance fails to affect low-income affordability

The National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) expressed its disappointment this week at the outcome of a nearly five-year process to significantly overhaul the U.S. EPA's Financial Capability Assessment (FCA) Guidance and 'meaningfully address' the growing ratepayer affordability gap.

First issued in 1997, the initial FCA Guidance is a critical document designed to gauge how much a community can afford to pay to meet increasing compliance requirements under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Over the decades the sector has found the 1997 Guidance to be outdated and seriously flawed in how it determines the impact of CWA spending on individual low-income households, and multiple entities including Congress have called for meaningful revisions.