Biden's $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Package Includes Major Water Provisions
The framework for an eight-year, $1.2 trillion infrastructure package agreed upon by President Joe Biden and bipartisan members of the U.S. Senate would pave the way for major investment into the country’s water systems.
“$266 billion would go to water infrastructure, broadband, environmental remediation, power infrastructure and other areas,” The Hill reported of the framework.
While Biden’s ambition to dedicate significant funding to infrastructure has been clear for some time, recent dialogue with legislators on both sides of the aisle has propelled this package forward, with both sides reportedly making significant concessions. Regardless of what he may have had to concede, Biden was apparently able to secure funding to remediate a key drinking water issue: the large number of buried, lead-based pipelines throughout the country.
“Biden’s push to replace the nation’s lead service lines was also included in the bipartisan deal, with the White House statement saying it will ‘eliminate the nation’s lead service lines and pipes, delivering clean drinking water to up to ten million American families and more than 400,000 schools and child care facilities that currently don’t have it,’” according to a subsequent report from The Hill.
But the proposed package still needs formal Senate approval, then to pass in the U.S. House, before it will arrive on Biden’s desk for final signature. And following the initial announcement that a deal had been reached, Biden was reportedly forced to walk back a comment about how this package could be tied to additional spending in order to keep the agreement alive.
The snafu made it clear that, while it appears there is bipartisan consensus around the need to protect critical infrastructure, such as drinking water systems, there might not be much else upon which both political sides can agree.
“The comment alarmed Republicans who spent days talking with the White House and Democrats on an infrastructure deal covering roads and bridges, rail travel, clean energy and replacing lead water pipes in schools and houses,” per CNN. “They were left exposed to claims from the right that they were acquiescing in a massive ‘socialist’ Democratic plan to raise taxes.”
To read more about how utilities pay for infrastructure improvements, visit Water Online’s Funding Solutions Center.