2025 In Review: Water

In 2025, our Water team focused on turning ambitious ideas into real-world results. Through research, insights, convenings, and hands-on engagement with state and federal agencies, utilities, municipal associations, advocates, and other technical assistance providers, we worked to move water infrastructure investments from intention to implementation.

This work is unfolding in the context of deep public skepticism toward government. Utilities and government agencies are being asked to deliver faster, explain more, and operate under heightened scrutiny– often with fewer resources and less room for error. In this environment, progress depends not just on sound policy, but on trusted relationships. In 2025, we built momentum by showing up consistently with well-founded insights, understanding the constraints our partners face, and adapting as conditions changed. Sometimes that meant advancing big ideas. Sometimes that meant chasing down documentation or finding the one person in a state agency or municipal department who could help unblock a project. 

So what made this work so effective in 2025? Our secret sauce: a unique blend of policy expertise, data-driven insight, on-the-ground experience, and trusted relationships with the people responsible for delivering results. Across our Funding Navigator, Lead Service Line Replacement, State Revolving Fund, and Green Infrastructure initiatives, we paired smart policy with practical, implementable solutions designed for the constraints communities and agencies face. This year was about pairing smart policy with practical solutions to drive lasting impact. 

Helping Communities Navigate Funding

Accessing water infrastructure funding remains one of the biggest barriers for small, rural, and under-resourced communities. By the end of 2025, the Funding Navigator team had supported nearly 80 communities in identifying and developing applications to finance drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater capital projects. That support was hands-on, helping local government and utility staff clarify funding eligibility, interpret shifting and often complex rules, respond to state agency feedback, and coordinate specialized support. In several cases, we stayed engaged for more than a year, because that’s what it took to get the application materials together and filed. 

In helping communities address their capital needs, our team documented common pain points and lifted up practical workarounds in case studies that others can use. In an environment where guidance and rules are often abstract and difficult to interpret, this translation work is essential. 

Advancing Infrastructure Investment with State Revolving Funds

State Revolving Funds (SRFs) remain a powerful - but complex - tool for financing water infrastructure. In 2025, we continued to identify and share with states concrete, evidence-based ideas for strengthening their programs to better serve communities and protect the SRFs’ long-term impact.

A major focus this year was translating state-level best practices into shared learning. Our  SRF webinar series brought together participants from 21 state agencies, along with utilities, advocates, and technical assistance providers, to compare approaches and surface what’s working and what remains challenging in project prioritization, loan structuring, and defining disadvantaged communities. These conversations, along with EPIC’s broader suite of SRF resources, helped clarify where operational barriers persist and highlighted practical approaches to overcome them. 

We also published a first-of-its-kind analysis of congressionally directed spending and its impact on SRFs. The takeaways are not subtle: earmarks are undermining the long-term effectiveness of  these programs. The report sparked early conversations with Congressional staff, and we’ll be updating our findings in Q1 of 2026 ahead of new appropriations cycles. 

Meanwhile, the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) Funding Tracker improved visibility into how state and federal SRF dollars are making their way to communities. Coupled with EPIC’s and partners’ comments to state agencies, we’re seeing evidence that increased transparency and practical recommendations are resulting in positive program changes in multiple states. 

This work continues to show that protecting the revolving structure of SRFs—while modernizing programs and policies to meet today’s needs—is essential to ensuring fair, sustainable investment in water infrastructure. It’s also critical for maintaining trust in these programs over time and for preserving the programs’ ability to support safe, reliable, and affordable water service.

Accelerating Lead Service Line Replacement

Lead service line (LSL) replacement remained a major focus in 2025, and we saw clear momentum. More utilities are moving from planning to execution. Several cities completed full replacements. More states are investing in inventories, outreach, and replacements. And federal datasets are providing a clearer picture of where lead pipes remain. New national estimates now draw on more than 57,000 data points– an order-of-magnitude increase over prior estimates– that provide a clearer picture of the scope of the challenge and help states and utilities plan with greater confidence. 

Our work helped connect the dots between policy, funding, and delivery. Through the  Lead Innovation Hub, technical assistance, data analysis, and research, we helped states and communities shift focus from planning to implementation, highlighting how to get replacements done faster, more affordably, and at scale. The Hub contains examples and ideas for tackling some persistent challenges: mayors concerned about how to access available funding, states working to balance speed with accountability, and utilities struggling to apply federal rules on the ground. We advanced models like automatic enrollment, which can streamline utility programs, and examined how eliminating federal minimum allotment requirements could reduce funding bottlenecks.

The goal we helped elevate—eliminating LSLs within a decade—is no longer just aspirational. It’s actively being operationalized in more places. Throughout the year, we shared examples of progress to ground that ambition in practice. Cities such as Akron, Ohio, have already completed full replacements, while others are on track to remove all lead service lines well before the ten year deadline. We also tracked progress in states like Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. In many states, sustained policy attention and implementation capacity are beginning to show real results. Still, we recognize the path isn’t smooth. Achieving our shared goals depends on aligning program rules, funding and financing strategies, local capacity, and public trust. That’s where our team continues to add value.

Driving Investment in Green Infrastructure

Green infrastructure is gaining traction—but still often lives on the margins of state and federal funding systems. In 2025, we worked to change that.

Our team focused on closing the gap between GI’s promise and its practical uptake. We examined stormwater incentive programs, Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) sponsorship programs, and innovative approaches such as Pay for Success, drawing insights from local projects and testing ways these ideas could scale. Throughout, we stayed grounded in implementation realities, especially the need to design programs that work for utilities, municipalities, and residents alike.

One recurring challenge: GI investments are often harder to finance because benefits accrue over time and across sectors. In response, we explored how to better align financial incentives with long-term outcomes like flood reduction, heat mitigation, and neighborhood health and how state-level SRF policies could better reflect those broader co-benefits.

We also worked to lift up GI as not just an infrastructure category, but a strategy that links environmental performance, equity, and resilience. By highlighting where GI is already delivering community benefits, we helped position it as a serious investment, not just a side project.

Looking Ahead to 2026

We’re entering 2026 with stronger partnerships, clearer data, and a growing body of insight into what accelerates—or stalls—progress on the ground. The challenge now is execution at scale.

This year, we’ll double down on:

• Removing friction from funding and financing processes

• Helping communities navigate persistent barriers

• Strengthening shared learning across states, agencies, utilities, local governments, and advocates

• Making sure policy reforms don’t just sound good on paper but work in practice

Our upcoming in-person team retreat will give us space to reflect, interrogate assumptions, and reset priorities for the year ahead. As we’ve seen across all our work, success depends on aligning funding, policy, and capacity - and building the trust to adapt as things change.

In the year ahead, we will continue working alongside states, utilities, and communities to strengthen program and project delivery, remove friction in funding and implementation, and carry forward the lessons emerging from real projects. We’re doubling down on practical support, shared learning, and policy feedback loops that help successful approaches spread and stalled efforts move forward.