Officials at the nation’s largest drinking-water association called for a new mechanism to fund water infrastructure that is generating buzz on Capitol Hill: a national infrastructure bank. Meeting for their yearly conference June 14-18 in San Diego, American Water Works Association officials announced they would work with lawmakers in Washington, D.C., to push for legislation that would establish a bank to support water infrastructure projects.
The current credit crunch has made it “hard for communities to access capital for critical infrastructure projects,” despite the infusion of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, said Michael Leonard, AWWA’s 2008-2009 president and water operations manager for the city of Roswell, Ga. He said federal stimulus money “just didn’t make much of a dent” in propelling water infrastructure projects and called a federal infrastructure bank “a smart, commonsense solution [that strikes] just the right balance between federal assistance and local responsibility.”