Letter to the Hon. John Barrasso, Chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, the Hon. Thomas R. Carper, Ranking Member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, the Hon. Peter A. DeFazio, Chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and the Hon. Sam Graves, Ranking Member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure - Representative TJ Cox Sends Letter Urging for Inclusion of the WIFIA Improvement Act in Bicameral Water Resources Package

Letter

Dear Chairmen Barrasso and DeFazio and Ranking Members Carper and Graves:
We urge you to include our "WIFIA Improvement Act of 2020" (H.R.8217) in any final Water
Resources Development Act negotiated by you this year. This bipartisan House bill, of which
we are cosponsors, would make two crucial amendments to the Water Infrastructure Finance
and Innovation Act of 2014 (WIFIA).
First, our bill would make the existing WIFIA program more appealing to public water projects
with longer useful lifecycles. Specifically, Section 2 of the bill would authorize the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, at the discretion of the Administrator, to approve WIFIA
financing with up to 55-year loan terms instead of the current 35-year loan term. This change
would make the WIFIA program more workable for water supply and storage projects in
drought-prone western states.
Second, our bill includes Section 2014(a) from the "America's Water Infrastructure Act of
2020" (S.3591) regarding the budgetary treatment of WIFIA applications for Congressionally
authorized projects or projects to which legal title remains held by the federal government but
are operated and maintained at local expense: so-called "transferred works." We were pleased to
see this provision restoring WIFIA eligibility for water projects in California and Washington
State included in the bill reported by the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
It is also our understating that this provision is needed for the USEPA to approve WIFIA
applications for projects championed by the North Dakota (Fargo-Moorhead Metropolitan Area
Flood Risk Management Project) and Utah (Deer Creek Reservoir Raw Water Intake Project)
delegations. Given the bipartisan and bicameral support, we expect this Senate provision to
remain in any final Water Resources Development Act brought to the floor.
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We hope that the House and Senate will enact a Water Resources Development Act into law this
year. Again, we urge you to include our bipartisan "WIFIA Improvement Act of 2020"
(H.R.8217) in any final bill. Thank you for your leadership and consideration.
Sincerely

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