Assistance program
Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Small and Underserved Communities Emerging Contaminants Grant Program
$3.1 Billion committed in FY2020–FY2026
- Agency
- Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Protection Agency
- Assistance
- Not Applicable
- CFDA number
- 66.442
- What it does
- The objective is to assist small and underserved communities to comply with the Safe Water Drinking Act (SDWA). Funding is awarded to states and territories, including a tribal allotment, for projects/activities that are necessary for public water systems to comply with national drinking water standards established by SDWA. Funding will continue to support projects and activities that benefit underserved communities. Underserved communities include those communities that do not have household drinking water or wastewater services; or are served by a public water system that violates or exceeds a requirement of a national primary drinking water regulation issued under SDWA section 1412, including a maximum contaminant level; a treatment technique; or an action level. The objective is to assist small or disadvantaged communities in addressing emerging contaminants in drinking water. Awards are funded by appropriations established by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). Funding is awarded to states and territories, including a tribal allotment, for: 1) programs to provide household water quality testing, including testing for unregulated contaminants, and 2) activities necessary for a state to respond to a contaminant. Projects/activities are to assist public water systems in small and disadvantaged communities to provide support towards reduction and remediation of emerging contaminants. The funding priority will continue to be projects and activities that benefit small or disadvantaged communities. Small communities include those will populations less than 10,000 individuals. Disadvantaged communities are those that meet affordability criteria established by the state in which the project takes place.
- Who benefits
- Not Applicable
- Who applies
- Eligibility is limited to the governments of the fifty states; the District of Columbia; the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; the Northern Mariana Islands; the Virgin Islands; Guam; American Samoa; and public water systems serving federally recognized Tribes.
- Authorized by
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments