The infrastructure act gives the EPA a once-in-a-generation opportunity to correct decades of underinvestment.
Currently, up to 10M households and 400K schools and child care centers lack safe drinking water.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal will invest $55B to expand access to clean drinking water for households, businesses, schools, and child care centers across the country.When water systems that serve low-income communities borrow money from state programs, even at low interest rates, they have to pay the loans off by raising rates on customers who already struggle to pay their bills.
Mississippi appears to have responded by using a new standard for funds coming from the infrastructure law. Beginning this year, communities whose median household income is lower than the state median household income — including Jackson — will be awardedAdditionally, the EPA discourages using population as a factor to define “disadvantaged communities.” Communities with smaller populations struggle to cover water systems’ operating costs, so that challenge is important to consider.
For example, in 2021, when determining principal forgiveness, Wisconsin awarded a higher financial need score to communities with populations below 10,000. This penalized Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, with almost a quarter of its people experiencing poverty., such as county unemployment rate and family poverty percentage. With these changes, Milwaukee now qualifies for the maximum principal forgiveness.
Mississippi and Wisconsin previously relied on factors too narrow to reach many disadvantaged communities. We hope the steps they have taken to update their programs will inspire similar actions from other states.
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