Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity, and Reliability Act of 2025
The Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity, and Reliability Act of 2025 is a broad funding and reform bill aimed at expanding and conditioning federal support for water and sewer infrastructure across multiple programs and agencies. It would set explicit annual funding obligations (with significant transfers from the Treasury) for Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act programs, Rural Water Services under the USDA, and Drinking Water programs administered by Indian Health Service. The bill also emphasizes affordability, civil rights, transparency, and reliability by requiring a national study, public participation in regionalization decisions, and new data collection around disconnections and disparities. In addition, it broadens eligible uses of funds (including leadership in private system acquisitions, lead service line replacements, PFAS treatment, and school infrastructure) and imposes labor requirements (such as project labor agreements) on funded projects. It also extends targeted aid to colonias and expands tribal and rural water program funding. In short, the bill would pour substantial, formula-driven funding into water infrastructure with a strong emphasis on affordability, equity, and reliability, while adding governance, labor, and civil-rights safeguards, and expanding the scope of projects and communities that can receive assistance.
Key Points
- 1Comprehensive, mandatory funding stream for water programs: At the start of each fiscal year, the bill caps or limits funding for EPA clean water and SDWA grant programs (including capitalization grants) and requires a large, annual transfer from the Treasury to carry out these obligations, creating predictable, multi-year support for water infrastructure.
- 2Expanded uses and eligibility for funds: The bill broadens how SRF and related funds can be used, including allowing the purchase of privately owned community water systems, financing for canceling management contracts, lead service line replacements with copper lines at no cost to property owners, PFAS treatment and source switching, and assistance for contaminated private wells.
- 3Strong focus on affordability, equity, and civil rights: It requires the EPA to conduct a national study on water affordability, discriminatory practices, and civil rights violations; assess funding effectiveness; evaluate public participation in regionalization; and collect data on disconnections, tax liens, foreclosures, and disparate impacts. A Congress-bound report with recommendations would be due within one year.
- 4Labor standards and regionalization governance: The act preserves prevailing wage requirements and mandates project labor agreements where feasible for funded projects; it also ties SDWA and CWA funding to labor agreement participation where practicable, aiming to improve worker protections and project consistency.
- 5Targeted programs for schools, colonias, tribes, and rural communities: The bill renames and refines school drinking water grants to focus on infrastructure for lead-free facilities; raises tribal funding commitments; and expands colonias assistance and rural water service funding, with specific annual allocations.