Under a revised Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) allocation formula, announced June 24 by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 15 states will get a bigger share of annual capitalization grants over the next four years, with Arizona leading the way with a 150% increase.
The revised formula for allocating DWSRF grants from FY2006 through FY2009, which EPA adjusted based on its newest national needs survey released earlier this month, also reduces percentage allocations for 15 states and maintains the minimum 1% allocation for another 22, including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
While most of the 30 states with revised allocations will see only slight variations up or down, several will see significant gains or losses. Joining Arizona in realizing big gains are Florida (rising from 2.34 to 4.52%), Georgia (rising from 1.58 to 2.81%) and North Carolina (increasing from 1.76 to 3.37%).
States seeing significant losses include New York (dropping to 4.45% from 7.75%), Iowa (going from 1.84 to 1.25%), Massachusetts (dropping to 2.68% from 3.58%) and California (8.15%compared with 10.24%).
EPA also estimated each state's FY2006 grant amount based on the agency's $850 million request, which House and Senate appropriators have approved so far. Minus $14.75 million for set-asides ($12.75 million for American Indian and Alaska native villages and $2 million for unregulated contaminant monitoring), states would share $832.25 million.
Although states divvied up slightly less in FY2005, the new allocation formula would send $23.7 million to Arizona in FY2006 compared with $9.4 million in FY2005 and $37.2 million to New York compared with the $64.2 million it received in FY2005.
EPA's newest every-four-year needs survey, released June 14, reflects data collected in 2003 from 4,000 water systems covering nearly 130,000 allowable projects. It predicts that the nation's 53,000 community water systems and 21,400 not-for-profit noncommunity systems will need $277 billion over the next 20 years to install, upgrade or replace infrastructure to ensure delivery of safe drinking water.
Source: AWWA
