Brady PieperThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) aimed at protecting small and rural communities’ access to clean drinking water. Through the NOFO, the EPA will make $30.7 million in grant funding available for technical assistance and training to support drinking water and wastewater systems in small and rural communities around the country.
“Dedicated water champions, working at thousands of small drinking water and wastewater systems across the country, ensure that their communities can rely on clean and safe water. Accomplishing this vital mission day-in and day-out with limited resources is challenging,” EPA Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water Bruno Pigott says in a press release. “With $30 million in new EPA funding, technical assistance providers will help achieve public health and safe water goals for small communities.”
The grant funding comes from the EPA’s Training and Technical Assistance to Improve Water Quality and Enable Small PWSs to Provide Safe Drinking Water grant program. The program, established in 2012, has delivered over $170 million in funding to technical assistance and training providers around the country. For this round, each applicant is eligible for grants up to $26 million..
The EPA will competitively administer grants to nonprofit organizations, nonprofit private universities and colleges and public higher education institutions to fund projects that specifically benefit small and rural communities. State and local governments and for-profit entities are ineligible in this round of EPA funding.
The agency plans to award up to five cooperative agreements, totaling up to $30.7 million in federal funds, focusing on one or more of the following initiatives.
- Compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA): Providing support to small public water systems to achieve and maintain compliance with federal standards.
- Managerial and Financial Support: Offering guidance on various managerial and financial topics to help small public water systems meet SDWA requirements.
- Wastewater Management: Assisting small publicly owned wastewater systems and communities with onsite-decentralized wastewater systems to improve water quality.
- Private Well Owners: Helping private well owners enhance water quality through technical assistance and training.
Eligible applicants with questions for the EPA prior to applying may do so on the grant webpage under Frequently Asked Questions before Nov. 11. Applications for this round of funding can be submitted on the EPA’s Training and Technical Assistance Program for Rural, Small, and Tribal Wastewater Systems webpage and are open until Nov. 25.
The EPA’s commitment to protect small, rural and tribal communities’ access to clean drinking water is supported through this NOFO announcement and other previous award announcements.
Recently, Government Market News covered the EPA’s $49 million commitment to fund technical assistance and crucial wastewater and water-quality issues.
Photo by Nicolas COMTE on Unsplash
