EPA Provides More than $50 Million for Small, Underserved, and Disadvantaged Communities to Access Safe Drinking Water

On June 26, EPA announced $50.4 million in annual funding to states and territories for communities to support projects and activities in underserved, small, and disadvantaged communities to access and invest in water infrastructure. The Small, Underserved, and Disadvantaged Community grant program awards funding to states and territories on a non-competitive basis. The Agency awards funding to states based on an allocation formula that includes factors for population below the poverty level, small water systems, and underserved communities. The funding can support a wide range of activities to help communities address drinking water issues, including household water quality testing to monitoring for unregulated drinking water contaminants, increasing the technical, financial, and managerial abilities of a water system’s operations and staff, and infrastructure projects, such as drinking water transmission, distribution, and storage.