In the USA, the federal government is responsible for contributing about $3 billion to complete several rural water projects around the country.
This amount is tiny compared to the estimated $600 billion needed to address the nation’s water and wastewater needs in the next 20 years.
Many small communities have invested in expensive infrastructure projects solely because of the promised federal funding.
In New Mexico, a pipeline project intended to bring countless gallons of water to drought-stricken residents in eastern areas of the state is a lifeline to communities that are fast running out of water.
However, due to the non-appearance of federal funds, this lifeline may not be completed for at least a decade – too late for many of these communities, whose wells will be dry long before that.
Micro Cap Observer reports:
“Red Arndt, chairman of the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System said that $570 million project is designed to supply drinking water to 300,000 people in more than a dozen cities in South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa. The states and local water authorities have contributed their share of close to $154 million. Some customers are getting water now, but the pipeline comes to a dead end in a field near the Minnesota border.
Arndt said the Obama administration talks about improving the nation’s infrastructure and boosting economic development but hasn’t followed through with any meaningful investment. If a business comes to the area, local leaders must ask how much water they’re going to use. If it’s too much, Arndt said the businesses are told to move on.
“They want infrastructure and they want economic growth and what’s more important than anything? Water. If you don’t have water, you don’t have growth of anything,” he said.”
It is hard for these communities, who have planned thinking that they will receive the funds they need, to then not get them once the projects are already started.
Inframanage.com observes that the layers of funding approvals around US federal programmes can have the effect of delaying appropriations, and subsequent grants for approved infrastructure.
The issues around security of funding need to be addressed in infrastructure management planning and form part of the decision-making around the delivery of specific projects.
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