2019 GWU Study Clean Water Act Implementation Revisiting State Resource Needs

2019 GWU Study Clean Water Act Implementation Revisiting State Resource Needs

Clean Water Act Implementation: Revisiting State Resource Needs

Over the last 4 months, post-graduate study students at the George Washington University Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration have been working on an ambitious research project that analyzes funding for state Clean Water Act programs. Excerpts from the Executive Summary from this report can be found below.

“If we used medians to extrapolate to the national level, our data suggested a national gap of approximately $280 million between federal spending and Actual spending; in other words, states were hundreds of millions of dollars short of what they needed to meet their minimum obligations under the CWA. Extrapolating to the national level also suggested a national gap of approximately $210 million between Actual and Ideal spending. Together, these approximations totaled a national gap of $490 million between what states actually spent and what they needed to meet their CWA goals.”

“Our analysis demonstrated that a funding gap persists nearly two decades after the EPA conducted its resource needs assessment. Surprisingly, our results showed a smaller gap between funding availability and needs than the EPA found in 2002. This may have been influenced by our respondent states being more arid— in other words, our respondents may have smaller CWA programs than other states. This finding would seem to conflict with anecdotal and quantitative evidence recounted in our literature review that suggested a widening needs gap.”