By Rich Anderson
April 6, 2009

EPA Releases Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Gap Information

By Rich Anderson

EPA completed and released its Drinking Water Needs Gap information recently, indicating a nationwide need of $334.8 billion over the 20'year period from 2007 to 2026. The 2007 Gap information is based on a survey conducted every four years on the 20'year capital investment needs of public water systems that are eligible to receive financial assistance from the Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) loan program. EPA estimates this population is comprised of 52,000 community water systems and 21,400 nonprofit, non'community water systems. EPA uses the results of the survey to allocate Congressionally appropriated capitalization grants to the various state loan programs.

By comparison, local government spent over $47 billion in FY2006 on water utilities, and Congress provided $837 million in capitalization grants for drinking water that same year. The Stimulus bill (ARRA) provided an additional $2 billion of federal assistance for “shovel'ready” priority projects under the DWSRF program.

The largest category of need in the 2007 Gap survey was $200.8 billion for water transmission and distribution infrastructure. Only 16 percent, according to EPA, of the overall investment is needed to achieve regulatory compliance ($52 billion). The cost to comply with federal regulatory mandates is broken down as follows: $45 billion to comply with existing regulations; the remaining $7 billion is related to recently promulgated rules and/or proposed rules' $2.2 billion for the Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule, $1 billion for the Stage 2 Disinfectants/Disinfection Byproducts Rule, $0.4 billion for Ground Water Rule and $3.3 billion for the Radon Rule.

To obtain a copy of the EPA report visit the website www.epa.gov/safewater, US EPA, Office of Water (4606M) EPA 816'F'09'003, February 2009.