VWWAA October 2022 Newsletter

October 2022
Newsletter
Check out all our latest updates

Promoting and defending the interests of Virginia's water and waste authorities

 DEQ Seeks Additional WQIF Funds 
All state agencies are in the process of making budget requests to the Governor’s office for the upcoming fiscal year and beyond. The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has submitted its Water Quality Improvement Fund (WQIF) budget requests to ensure it meets current cost-share obligations and those projected in the future.
 
DEQ has requested WQIF deposits of $37 million in FY23 and $192 million in FY24 to meet cost-share obligations on existing grant agreements. The agency projects its contractual obligations – to meet current anticipated eligible point-source project reimbursements – to be $552 million over the next five years.
 
More broadly, the 2022 WQIF Needs Assessment, which includes point-source projects known to be on the horizon and for which there is preliminary cost projections, suggests the fund will need $559 million through FY27.
 
The WQIF’s current balance is $140 million. DEQ is working with six active WQIF grant agreements, totaling nearly $126 million in obligated funds. Another 11 grant agreements are currently being considered, which are estimated to carry $136 million in WQIF cost-share obligations, though final construction bids for many have not yet been submitted.
 
Governor Youngkin will present his proposed budget amendments to the General Assembly in mid-December 2022.

 VDH Seeks State Funds to Meet Federal Match for Infrastructure Projects 
The federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) provides funds to help states and localities improve aging water infrastructure. States must provide a match to get annual BIL awards.
 
VDH is asking Governor Youngkin to include in proposed budget amendments some $3.4 million in FY 24 so that the state can receive $92 million from the federal government for drinking water infrastructure projects. Its estimated that in FY25, VDH will need $7.4 million in state matching funds to receive another $94 million in federal BIL funds.
 
According to VDH, the U.S. EPA estimated in 2015 that Virginia has an estimated $8 billion in water infrastructure needs through 2025 (that estimate has, no doubt, gone up). In 2022, VDH’s Office of Drinking Water received 131 applications for more than $1 billion in infrastructure funding requests.
 
Governor Younkin will submit his proposed budget amendments to the General Assembly in mid-December.

CBF: States Will Miss 2025 Bay Cleanup Deadline—In Virginia, wastewater sector is meeting its pollution-reduction targets —
 
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation released a report showing that the three states producing the vast majority of pollution to streams and rivers that feed the Chesapeake Bay will miss their overall 2025 pollution-reduction targets.
 
Among the three major targeted sectors – agriculture, stormwater, and wastewater – it’s the wastewater sector that is the bright spot in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, with all three states expected to meet their 2025 wastewater pollution reduction goals. Agricultural runoff and stormwater runoff in suburban and urban areas continue to lag in pollution-reduction efforts in all three states.
 
In Virginia, the wastewater sector has been over-performing for a number of years, which has helped to some extent cover for slower pollution-reduction progress in agricultural runoff and suburban and urban stormwater runoff.
 
The CBF report updates progress made since 2010, when all Bay watershed states – New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, plus DC – signed an agreement to meet targeted nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment reductions, measured in two-year milestones, by 2025.
 
The CBF report is based on projections in the U.S. EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program’s Bay TMDL and model. The Bay states and EPA are currently deciding what a revised deadline might be.

Gov. Youngkin Releases 2022 Energy Plan 
Each new Virginia governor must prepare a Virginia Energy Plan by October of his first year in office. Governor Youngkin set energy policy direction to the Virginia Department of Energy, which has worked for many months to prepare the 2022 Virginia Energy Plan.
 
Governor Youngkin’s plan takes an “all of the above” approach in promoting conventional and renewable energy generation. However, it clearly deemphasizes recent governors’ push to boost renewable energy (solar and wind) and promotes natural gas and emerging nuclear technologies.
 
The 2022 Virginia Energy Plan can be read here.