Wastewater Visibility News
EPA Contingency Plan Highlights: What does the 2025 Government Shutdown mean for the water and wastewater sector?
October 14, 2025
Wastewater Visibility News
Key Highlights
The EPA contingency plan was updated on September 29, 2025. When the new fiscal year began at 12:01 AM ET on Wednesday, October 1, 2025, without an appropriations bill in place, the government shutdown began. What does this mean for water and wastewater facilities, which often rely on Federal services and programs to maintain operations?
Prior to the shutdown, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contingency plan was updated to keep the public informed of what the agency would do in the event of a shutdown. During the shutdown, only 1,734 of the agency’s stated 15,166 employees are slated to continue working to fulfill duties required by law.
The EPA contingency plan document also contains a summary list of activities that will continue during the funding lapse, and those that will cease. Depending on your state and local needs, any one of these remaining or discontinued services could be heavily impactful to operations. Items likely to be critical to the water and wastewater industry are highlighted below. Read the full contingency document here.
Activities that will continue during a lapse, per the EPA contingency plan1
- Protection of EPA land, buildings, equipment, and protection of research (preserving ongoing experiments).
- Law enforcement and criminal investigations.
- Emergency and disaster assistance.
- Superfund response work, where a failure to maintain operations would pose an imminent threat to human life. Sites are evaluated at the time of shutdown.
- Maintenance of laboratory instrumentation, controlled environments (i.e., freezers), lab animals, plants, and unique organisms necessary to preserve property and ensure critical operating requirements are not impaired.
- EPA’s emergency response readiness operation.
- Legal counseling, litigation and law enforcement activities as required.
- All obligation actions necessary to support excepted and exempted activities.
- Exempted activities funded by unexpired appropriations from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Clean Ports program from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
- Exempted activities funded by Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and Pesticide Registration Improvement Act (PRIA) fees.
- Exempted activities funded by the Superfund Tax.
- Make timely payments to contractor and grantees where available funds were or are obligated for the contract or grant and either: (A) the employees necessary to make such payments are excepted for that purpose because, for example, failing to make the payment would prevent or significantly damage the agency’s execution of a funded function, and/or would imminently threaten the safety of
human life or the protection of property; or (B) where the employees necessary to make such payments are exempted. - Travel associated with excepted and exempted activities.
- Personnel actions needed to support the furlough of employees and support of excepted and exempted personnel.
- Maintain secure operation of Enterprise IT Infrastructure supporting nonmission critical systems and mission critical systems.
- Planning and preparation of the Fiscal Year 2027 President’s Budget.
- Full support of mission critical IT systems (systems necessary for excepted and exempted activities).
- Full support of www.epa.gov/lapse for communicating with furloughed employees and agency stakeholders.
Activities that will cease during a lapse, per the EPA contingency plan
- Issuance of new grants and interagency agreements unless necessary for excepted or exempted activities.
- Distributing of payroll beyond the last full/partial pay period for non-exempted employees.
- Update of the EPA website and other communication activities unless relevant to excepted or exempted activities.
- Conducting research and publication of research results unless necessary for exempted or excepted activities.
- Certain Superfund site activities where there is no imminent threat to human health and property, unless exempted.
- Civil enforcement inspections, unless necessary for excepted or exempted activities.
- Issuance of permits, guidance, regulations, and policies unless necessary for exempted or excepted activities.
- Approvals of pending state requests (i.e., authorized/delegated state-issued EPA permits, SIPs, TMDLs, Water Quality Standards).
In brief, if an activity is mandated by a congressional act that is already funded, or emergency-related, it will continue. Anything else that is not pre-funded or considered a threat to human life is on hold until appropriations can be secured.
If your operations are waiting on a regulatory decision from the EPA, it is likely to be on hold until the shutdown is over, unless it relates to an emergency situation or is covered by one of the acts listed above. Grants, routine inspections, and approvals or reimbursements not previously set up are also likely to face delays. Contractors working directly with the EPA can anticipate delays in new initatives as well, although the plan does include protection for previously approved projects and payments.
The EPA contingency plan includes key funding for water & wastewater infrastructure needs
Still, not everything will be on hold. One of the acts listed above, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 (IIJA), has several specific funding categories that help protect water and wastewater operations, including2:
- $15 billion for lead service line replacement as part of multiple sections in Title I of the IIJA
- $12.7 billion for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, originally established as part of the Water Quality Act of 1987
- $11.7 billion for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (SRF), originally established as part of the 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974
- $4 billion total ($800 million each year for FY2022-FY2026) through the SRF to address emerging contaminants such as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
- Additional appropriations for various projects related to protecting water systems in tribal lands, and in major ecological regions such as the Great Lakes and the Gulf
From the summary of the IIJA bill text, Division E, Title I, reauthorizes support programs and authorizes new initiatives for drinking water infrastructure through FY2026, including those that3:
- address emergencies (e.g., cybersecurity events) affecting drinking water systems;
- protect sources of water (e.g., rivers, lakes, and groundwater);
- assist the public water systems of small and disadvantaged communities;
- assist low-income households located in rural areas to maintain access to drinking water and wastewater treatment;
- reduce lead contamination in drinking water; and
- support drinking water and sanitation projects on Indian reservations.
Title II, Clean Water, revises the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 214, and the clean water state revolving fund. It authorizes and reauthorizes programs to:
- assist publicly owned treatment works (i.e., sewage and wastewater treatment plants commonly known as POTWs) convert waste in water to energy;
- plan and construct POTWs to address municipal combined sewer overflows, sanitary sewer overflows, or stormwater;
- increase the resilience of POTWs to natural hazards or cybersecurity vulnerabilities;
- assist small and medium POTWs;
- construct, repair, or replace decentralized wastewater systems for households with low or moderate incomes;
- assist qualified households with low or moderate incomes connect to POTWs;
- provide alternative sources of water to meet critical water supply needs; or
- develop and construct public water systems and wastewater systems for rural and Native villages in Alaska.
As water and wastewater professionals know, there are many other conservation, administrative, and infrastructure disciplines whose concerns overlap with water management, such as transportation, agriculture, plant and animal conservation, and public health.
Additional EPA Resources
For more information and guidance during this period of uncertainty, the EPA maintains several online resources:
- EPA Office of Water main page – main resource hub that also has high-level contact information
- EPA Regional Offices – programs and contact information specific to your region
- Region 1 – Boston (serving CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, and VT)
- Region 2 – New York City (serving NJ, NY, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and 8 federally recognized Indian Nations)
- Region 3 – Philadelphia (serving DE, DC, MD, PA, VA, WV and 7 federally recognized tribes)
- Region 4 – Atlanta (serving AL, FL, GA, KY, MS, NC, SC, and TN)
- Region 5 – Chicago (serving IL, IN, MI, MN, OH, and WI)
- Region 6 – Dallas (serving AR, LA, NM, OK, and TX)
- Region 7 – Kansas City (serving IA, KS, MO, and NE)
- Region 8 – Denver (serving CO, MT, ND, SD, UT, and WY)
- Region 9 – San Francisco (serving AZ, CA, HI, NV, American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marshall Islands, and Republic of Palau)
- Region 10 – Seattle (serving AK, ID, OR, WA and 271 native tribes)
Additional References
- https://www.epa.gov/lapse/agency-contingency-plans-event-lapse-appropriations ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_Investment_and_Jobs_Act#Water ↩︎
- https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684 ↩︎
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