EPA declares State Water Board, Drinking Water Revolving Fund now in compliance with Safe Drinking Water Act

The California State Water Resources Control Board (CSWCB) has recently completed a Corrective Action Plan (CAP) imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) imposed in 2013 for non-compliance for not utilizing funds in a timely manner.

The EPA had issued a Notice of Non-Compliance to the California Department of Public Health on April 19, 2013, then the home of the drinking water program, and the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF), for failing to meet certain requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act.  The preeminent issue was $455 million in unspent federal capitalization funds, the “largest unliquidated obligation of any state in the nation.”

The state’s Department of Public Health developed the CAP, in accordance with the non-compliance notice, and subsequently completed approximately half of the action items within the CAP.  In July 2014, the drinking water program and the DWSRF combined operations and moved to the State Water Board effectively creating the Division of Drinking Water.

Following the reestablishment of the drinking water division and its fund, the Division of Financial Assistance (DFA) focused on meeting and completing CAP action items.  These tasks were completed earlier this month the largest of which was reducing the unliquidated obligations from $455 million in October 2012 to less than $102 million in early May.  The DFA is now set up to consistently meet the EPA’s unliquidated reduction strategy in part due to DFA’s upgraded financial management practices.

“Several factors, such as drinking water project prioritization, consolidating the staff assignments to focus them on implementing the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, and updated methods of cash-flow monitoring has allowed the State Water Board to get more funds out the door to do the good they were intended for – supplying safe and reliable drinking water to the residents of California,” said Darrin Polhemus, deputy director for the State Water Board’s Division of Financial Assistance. “Since putting in place measures to better expedite funding, we are hitting our goals for this fiscal year and the next as we get money to shovel-ready projects.”

The EPA stated in a letter to the State Water Board on May 17 that DWSRF had been successfully restored to compliance and that it was closing the CAP, given that the State Water Board has met the full intent of the CAP.

Over the last four years California has more than doubled the amount of money disbursed through the DWSRF, issuing $738 million compared to $366 million the previous four years. Due to this two-fold increase, EPA’s Water Division Director Tomás Torres said that California “demonstrates that it has adequately addressed the obstacles and inefficiencies in its disbursement process.”

“The state of California has made great progress in accelerating projects that deliver safe and reliable drinking water to communities,” said Alexis Strauss, the EPA Acting Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest. “EPA appreciates the work of the State Water Resources Control Board to streamline the delivery of critical federal and state funding for drinking water infrastructure in California.”