Guest Columns

The American Water Works Association’s (AWWA) Executive Director of Government Affairs Tracy Mehan testified Thursday before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Environment to stress the importance of the “polluter pays” approach in PFAS cleanup. The hearing was titled Examining the ImpactRead More

In November, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives introduced the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) Amendments of 2025 aimed at broadening funding provided by WIFIA loan program at U.S. EPA. The amendments were introduced by U.S. Reps. Kim SchrierRead More

A coalition of national water sector leaders hosted an informational briefing on Dec. 10 for Congress to highlight the urgency of investing in America’s aging water infrastructure systems and the critical role of the Clean Water and Drinking Water state revolving funds (SRFs). Titled, “StrongRead More

By John Ryan The first part of this article concluded that the most likely cause of the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) loan program’s dramatic decline from 2022 to 2024 was displacement by two other federally subsidized sources of U.S. water infrastructure finance,Read More

By Gilad Horn Across North America, water utilities face a difficult financial and operational reality: unplanned repairs on aging infrastructure run anywhere from two to five times the cost of scheduled maintenance. And those emergency bills keep climbing as labor and materials grow more expensive.Read More

By John Ryan What is happening at EPA’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) loan program? The mysterious issue is not the near-complete cessation of loan closings under Trump 2.0. The reason for that is clearer: the Office of Management and Budget’s pause on federal grantsRead More

On Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the availability of $6.5 billion in Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) funding for water systems, with an additional $550 million available to states. The agency also announced the approval of five WIFIA new loans.Read More

The director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Water Infrastructure Finance & Innovation Authority (WIFIA) program Jorianne Jernberg is leaving the agency, according to a colleague. The news was acknowledged in a Nov. 13 LinkedIn post from Tracy Mehan, AWWA’s executive director of governmentRead More

On Monday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a proposal designed to improve the scope of its perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) reporting regulations under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The changes, EPA said, are aimed at making the rules more implementable and toRead More

By Ken Sansone & Kyla Tengdin Disbursements from the landmark Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) Products Liability Litigation settlements with 3M and DuPont began this past summer for eligible water systems that submitted claims documentation on time. For many systems, awards from these settlements willRead More