Senate Releases 2025 Appropriations Bill for the State Revolving Funds (SRFs)

On Thursday, July 25th, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted 28 – 1 to advance the appropriations bill for the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies for fiscal year 2025 (S. 4802), which funds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) including the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs). The bill maintains topline funding – $1,638,861,000 for the clean water capitalization grant and $1,126,101,000 for the drinking water capitalization grant – but diverts more than $600 million for congressional earmarks – $362,500,000 from the Clean Water SRFs and $242,391,000 from the Drinking Water SRFs. Committee Report and Senate earmarks.

The next step in the appropriations process is that the House and Senate will “conference” to reconcile differences in their respective appropriations bills. In theory, this should happen before the end of the Federal fiscal year on September 30th, and it’s challenging to predict how things will sort out with the annual appropriations cycle for the next couple of months, given all of the ongoing politics. If the Senate prevails on topline funding and all earmarks are paid using the SRF capitalization grant, 59% of the SRF capitalization grants will be diverted to congressional earmarks.