NRWA White Paper Part Of Proposed Affordability Criteria 

The Environmental Protection Agency has published for comment, its criteria for determining affordability for compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act.  The proposed options take into consideration National Rural Water Association’s Partnership Fund White Paper on Affordability and the NRWA minority report submitted to the National Drinking Water Advisory Council entitled, Small and Rural Community Affordability Consensus Report.

The criterion currently used is 2.5% of the Medium Household income on a national basis (equates to over $1,100 per house for drinking water).  In the past, NRWA has expressed concerns that this baseline did not reflect what was affordable to rural and small communities and commissioned the “Affordability White Paper” to research the alternatives. 

In addition, NRWA also issued a minority view in conjunction with the National Drinking Water Work Group Report stating, “The fact that a certain level of expenditure is affordable to the median income household in a community tells us very little about the ability of the low-income households in the community to afford the same levels of expenditures” and “ the Work Group’s recommended affordability level was designed to avoid requiring EPA to determine a variance technology policy, which incidentally is the Congressionally prescribed solution to unaffordable EPA rules.”

The report which will soon be published in the Federal Register for comment will make compliance with the SDWA more reasonable, practical, and affordable for the majority of water utilities in the nation.  Currently, NRWA is reviewing the proposed criteria and will issue comments to ensure the policy provides affordable options for the nations rural and small community drinking water utilities.