House Dems offer water infrastructure proposals

A pair of bills introduced by House Democrats in March would seek to pump billions of additional dollars into water infrastructure repair efforts, but neither proposal is expected to gain the necessary bipartisan support to advance.

One of the measures offered was H.R. 1647, the latest iteration of Rep. Earl Blumenauer’s (D-Ore.) proposal to establish a national water infrastructure trust fund. Similar to earlier versions of the bill, the measure would establish a voluntary program through which consumer product manufacturers could place a small label on their products explaining that the company is “contributing to America’s clean water.” For each unit that displayed such a label, companies would contribute $0.03 to the trust fund. Resulting revenues would then be split between the Drinking Water and Clean Water SRFs.