On June 10, President Obama signed a $12.3 billion water projects bill, the nation’s first water bill in seven years.
The new law will pay for 34 new Army Corps of Engineers-recommended water infrastructure projects over the next 10 years, including projects to deepen Boston Harbor and the Port of Savannah, provide flood control in Iowa and North Dakota, and restore the Everglades. Its price tag is half the amount of the last water projects bill.
According to the President, the Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA) will "put Americans to work modernizing our water infrastructure and restoring some of our most vital ecosystems."
WWRDA establishes a five-year pilot program, the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, which provides low-interest federal loans and loan guarantees for major water infrastructure projects.
The bill also creates a separate 15-project pilot program to examine the use of public-private partnerships to expedite the most critical water infrastructure projects.
At the signing of the bill, Obama urged lawmakers to use this same spirit of compromise to act on a massive transportation bill, warning that without action, 100,000 projects could come to a standstill, affecting 700,000 jobs.
