The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released a Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Resources for Drinking Water webpage that features resources designed to help states and water systems with the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). Water utilities can access resources regarding underserved communities, building water system capacity, water security, and fact sheets on the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) on the webpage.
The DWSRF Disadvantaged Community Definitions: A Reference for States, highlighted on the page, includes information about how states have historically defined disadvantaged communities, including the socioeconomic, demographic, financial, environmental and other indicators they have used. The handbook also includes information about each state’s historical distribution and use of additional subsidies allocated to disadvantaged communities.
Although EPA produced the handbook as a reference for states, AMWA says utility managers may learn more from the document about DWSRF additional subsidy, which is a tool meant to further improve affordability of DWSRF assistance agreements for disadvantaged communities.
Looking forward to implementing the BIL, EPA says it intends for states to use the handbook as a resource for state DWSRF programs that want to update their underserved community definitions.
Source: Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA)
