By Noah Zucker

MILFORD — U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., was in Milford on Friday to support a bill focused on improving access to safe water sources nationwide.

“We’re going to authorize $15 billion in the drinking-water fund and another $15 billion in the water-sanitation fund,” he said of the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021. “There’s going to be another $5 billion we’re going to put into grants.”

Sen. Carper is joined by a bipartisan slate of congresspeople in supporting this element of the infrastructure plan, which was introduced into the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last month.

“From Blades to the city of Wilmington, every Delawarean — and every American — regardless of ZIP code, deserves clean drinking water,” the senator said. “This forward-thinking legislation will make investments into our nation’s much-needed water-infrastructure projects, so that our communities have reliable, clean water and the means to pay for it.”

The senator gave his speech at the Delaware Rural Water Association facility in Milford because nonprofits like it, which are focused on rural water infrastructure, will be carrying out much of the plan if the bill passes.

“There are tens of thousands of rural water associations. I think about half of them have one employee,” Sen. Carper said. “A lot of folks need more training. We have a lot of technology that could be used and improved around the country. We’re going to be able to do that.”

Both Sen. Carper and David Baird, a longtime member of the DRWA who now sits on the national group’s executive board, agreed that the bill will have the greatest impact on rural communities, where people are struggling the most.

“The one big takeaway that everyone should remember is that the grant dollars outlined in this legislation are meant to go to the communities most in need,” Mr. Baird said.

He said the funding will help DRWA and its counterparts nationwide “(provide) that support, which is so often needed, to small, disadvantaged rural communities.”

This support for rural water organizations often comes in the form of technical assistance, training and other education.

“There are still a lot of needs out here in rural America,” Mr. Baird said. “Those dollars are going to go to help advance those (rural water) systems in the form of their operations, their managerial capacity, as well as their technical capacity and keeping up with a lot of the modern technologies.”

He added that the bill is flexible when it comes to local implementation.
“It does provide a great bit of flexibility to each of the states in administering the dollars, so states can get creative in working with your systems on what your needs are and making sure those needs can be met,” Mr. Baird said.

But the bill will also do a lot for ballooning communities, whose water infrastructure needs to grow with their populations. Middletown’s Mayor Kenneth Branner, a longtime friend of Sen. Carper’s, was at the event Friday to testify to that.

“Middletown (would) get $11.7 million,” he said. “We’ve already earmarked it for wastewater infrastructure, in addition to water infrastructure.”

In Middletown, he said those systems are over 70 years old.

“That will support economic development and growth when we’re targeting future companies coming to Delaware,” Mayor Branner said.

He said that all 57 municipalities in Delaware’s League of Local Governments, for which he’s on the executive committee, are slated to receive some amount of funding through the bill.

“Every single one of them will get part of the pie, from $100,000 all the way up to $55 million for the city of Wilmington,” Mayor Branner said.

“It’s a godsend for the municipalities,” which he said struggled greatly through 2020. “It’s free.”

Mayor Branner is not the only local official focused on water.

Delaware Rep. Bryan Shupe, R-Milford, was also at the event and got a shout-out from Sen. Carper. He’s currently promoting Delaware House Bill 69, which recently moved out of committee and would also promote access to clean water on a local level.

The legislation sets out to help two categories of people.

“One is (people who are) on the lower end of the economic scale, and two is (the residents) that have unsafe drinking water in the state of Delaware,” Rep. Shupe said. “It helps them get a water-filtration system in their home.”

There’s another bill being considered, HB 200, which would make changes to the Delaware code to raise water standards in the long term.

“HB 200 is a great step forward toward getting allocation of money for larger infrastructure,” Rep. Shupe said.

“It’s also going to take years to get those pipes to people’s houses,” he said, but “HB 69 allows those individuals to start getting water-filtration systems in their homes within months and access a stopgap, a short-term solution, while they have to wait for that long-term solution that may take five to 10 years.”

He thinks the problem is bigger than it seems, both locally and nationally.

“There’s a lot more need out there than we see at the ground level right now,” Rep. Shupe said.

“I would look to any communities that have major health problems, and you could probably draw most of it back to not having clean water,” he said. “Clean water, clean air and clean soil are three things that we need for life. If that foundation is not set, then people start to develop health problems as small children, and it just continues on.”

Mr. Baird agreed.

“We’re leaders in public health by providing safe, affordable, clean drinking water,” he said of rural water organizations. “It’s just a basic provision that we should all have.”

Rep. Shupe greatly appreciated Sen. Carper’s bipartisan sentiment.

“Sen. Carper said that this is not a challenge for one political party or another. It really is a challenge we as Americans need to meet,” Rep. Shupe said.

“It won’t be just a Democratic victory or a Republican victory,” Sen. Carper said. “It’ll be good for everyone.”