February 2021
The water sector’s best legislative, regulatory, and administrative policy ideas to inform and shape early policy conversations and help policymakers understand where they specifically might be able to effect change.
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A renewed federal partnership is needed to help the water sector recover stronger. Many environmental statutes have not been updated in decades, and the laws governing water predate modern challenges like climate change and growing income disparity.
In response to this reality combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, the US Water Alliance published Recovering Stronger: A Federal Policy Blueprint to address the structural problems that have led to decades of sub-optimal and inequitable outcomes in water. Our federal policy agenda aims to serve as a blueprint for Congress and the current administration to employ water investments and policies to set the country on a transformational path to recovery.
The report is organized around the following themes:
- Make the Water Sector More Stable addresses the structural and funding issues facing the water sector.
- Make the Water Sector Safer addresses the problem of emerging and legacy contaminants in the water sector.
- Make the Water Sector More Affordable and Accessible tackles the policy barriers that limit solutions to make water affordable and to ensure everyone has access to safe, reliable water services.
- Make the Water Sector Smarter outlines ways the federal government can incentivize utility modernization and research in the water sector.
- Make the Water Sector More Resilient addresses how water can be a force for combating the climate crisis.
- Take a Whole-Government Approach to Federal Water Management discusses a cross-agency water management strategy to coordinate the more than twenty federal agencies responsible for some component of water management.
