WASHINGTON — The $3.9 trillion fiscal year 2015 budget request sent by President Obama to Congress last week proposes new cuts to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs), according to a press release.
The president’s plan would provide EPA with $7.9 billion next year, about $300 million below both its final FY14 appropriation and the amount of funding Obama proposed for the agency last year, noted the release.
The SRFs would bear the brunt of the cuts, the release reported, with the DWSRF and CWSRF together reduced by a total of $581 million compared to their FY14 funding levels.
To justify the cuts, continued the release, Obama’s budget documents explained the budget would “focus [the SRFs] on communities most in need of assistance” and would “target assistance to small and underserved communities that have a limited ability to repay loans.”
According to the release, the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA) and other water utility and municipal organizations wrote to the White House in January in opposition to any SRF funding cuts, and will now turn their attention to Congress in an effort to counter the President’s proposed reductions to the SRFs.
Read the full release here.
