Throughout FY 2021, OCS launched and participated in a number of new initiatives. Here are four of our team’s favorite highlights:
Standing Up a New Water Assistance Program: The Launch of LIHWAP Individuals and families with low incomes often face difficult trade-offs when it comes to paying for necessities, including water—one of our most essential utilities. With appropriations of $638M in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 and $500M in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) of 2021, for the first time in 30 years, OCS launched a brand-new program to serve families and communities in a crucial way. The Low Income Household Water Assistance Program (LIHWAP) provides emergency water and wastewater assistance to struggling families. Grants were awarded to states, territories, and tribes starting in May 2021 to provide funds to owners or operators of public water systems or treatment works to reduce arrearages and rates charged to households with low incomes and to prevent the disconnection of water services. The development of the program was a true collaboration across multiple programs to model procedures and requirements on existing OCS programs, leverage lessons learned across OCS programs and local and federal water programs, and lift up the unique water needs of key populations, such as Native and rural communities.
Blog Alert: Water is Life: Spotlighting OCS’ New Emergency Water Assistance Program
OCS Celebrated World Water Week for the First Time
OCS hosted Building Resilience Faster: Partnering to Increase Availability, Affordability, and Access to Quality Water and Wastewater Services, a series of virtual events in observance of World Water Week 2021.
The week of learning focused on water and wastewater needs across America and addressed the economic, racial, and geographic disparities that impact access to water and wastewater resources by low-income individuals and communities. Thousands of federal, state, and local water equity stakeholders attended five days of interactive events.
Representative Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) provided opening remarks and participants were able to hear from water and wastewater experts from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Water Alliance, Indian Health Service, the National Association of Water Companies, the United States Department of Agriculture, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, and more. Federal, state, and local RCD, CSBG, and LIHEAP administrators also participated in this convening and shared their expertise.
RCD Grant Recipient Spotlights
In August, OCS launched an initiative to create video spotlights to showcase the incredible work and efforts of OCS grant recipients. We started by releasing the following four Rural Community Development (RCD) videos to illustrate how RCD is filling gaps and helping to ensure safe water and wastewater services for very small, rural, low-income communities that are not addressed by other federal programs.
Improving New Boston, Ohio’s Ancient Combined Sewer System
Great Lakes Community Action Partnership helped the Village of New Boston, Ohio, obtain funding and develop the expertise needed to improve its sewer system. RCD grant funding helped the community decrease the inflow of excess water into the sewer system, remove combined sewer overflow violations and work toward EPA compliance, and negotiate principal forgiveness and low interest loans to manage fines associated with non-compliance.
Technical Assistance Brings Reliable Public Drinking Water to Hobson Village, Virginia
Due to unsafe drinking water with extremely high levels of fluoride, residents of Hobson Village, Virginia, could not rely on their community’s water source. With an RCD grant, the Southeast Rural Community Assistance Project provided technical assistance to help the community understand options available for connecting to safe water, leverage funding for construction, and guide the community through a project to finally connect safe water to the Village.
Training Certification for the Colorado River Indian Tribes to Ensure the Health of the River
For the Colorado River Indian Tribes, located along the Colorado River on the Arizona-Colorado state border, “the health of the people depends on the health of the river.” With RCD funding, the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona helped the tribe establish a water system on the reservation and implemented the tribal operator training and certification program, which uniquely meets the tribe’s need for sustained career development opportunities in the water and wastewater field.
Extending Sewer Service to over 30 Households in Magnolia, Mississippi.
With an RCD grant, Communities Unlimited, Inc. provided technical assistance to help the City of Magnolia, Mississippi, extend sewer service to the North Street area that the city annexed. About 34 households were connected to the sanitary sewer system with this extension project, which helped with not only environmental health and sanitation but residents’ overall quality of life and value of their properties.
CSBG’s Project Impact Initiative: Increasing Opportunities to Support COVID-19 Relief Efforts in Low-Income Communities
OCS released over $3.7M in Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act grants to CSBG-eligible entities and other community-based organizations to scale innovations developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to support low-income individuals, families, and communities. With this funding, 16 non-profit agencies—representing various states and urban and rural communities—will spend 15 months exploring how the service models they used to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic can be strengthened and scaled to meet ongoing and future community needs. Training and technical assistance for these initiatives, known as Project Impact: CSBG Rapid-Cycle Projects, will be provided by both OCS and Mathematica, a policy and research think tank.
Blog Alert: Scaling Innovations Developed by Community-Based Organizations During the COVID-19 Pandemic
