The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee recently advanced a proposed law that would update how Americans get their drinking water.
Americans currently get drinking water through a system of 1 million pipes owned by private and public water authorities, according to a press release. Many of the pipes were put in place during the middle of the 20th century, and they were intended to only last 75 to 100 years.
Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Mississippi) wrote the Drinking Water System Improvement Act, H.R. 3887.
The bill proposes to give $8 billion in a five-year span to the Drinking Water Revolving Loan Fund, allows for money from the fund to cover expenses prior to building the new pipes and constructing new or rehabilitating water treatment facilities.
The proposed law would also put in place an electronic system water companies to submit compliance reports to their states, which will pass on that information to the Environmental Protection Agency. In addition, the bill would allow money to once again go toward voluntary source water protection initiatives and aims to make consumer confidence reports easier to understand and allow those to be shared electronically.
