The Senate is likely to pass a Water Resources bill this week that would send $100 million to Flint, Michigan to resolve that community’s drinking water crisis. But the bill could be a plum for rural Alaska, too.
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said the bill includes a new grant program he championed to help small and disadvantaged communities build water projects. Towns without household drinking water or wastewater services would be at the head of the line. Sullivan said those communities are primarily in Alaska.
“There are other communities throughout the country but I think a lot of it is centered in Alaska,” Sullivan said. “So this is going to be a five year program, $1.4 billion. So significant sums of money authorized.”
The pending bill would establish the program with $20 million, but the big money would have to come from annual appropriation bills. Those are the spending bills that are often bundled into a giant omnibus package. They are fiercely contested in Congress. Still, Sullivan says he thinks it’s possible Congress WILL appropriate the money for the water grant program, starting with the $230 million the bill authorizes for 2017.
“I think there’s a good chance, because A. this is infrastruction and there has been bipartisan consensus in the Congress on the importance of infrastructure,” Sullivan said.
The grants would require a 45 percent match from non-federal sources. The bill also says that if Flint can’t spend all its water money in 18 months, the balance would be reallocated to the new grant program.
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
