American Water Stewardship Act

The bill would extend authorization of funding through fiscal year 2031 for several Clean Water Act geographic programs run by the Environmental Protection Agency: the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the Long Island Sound program, the Columbia River Basin Restoration Program, the San Francisco Bay Restoration Program, the National Estuary Program, and the BEACH Act coastal water-quality monitoring program. It would designate Mississippi Sound as an estuary of national significance eligible for National Estuary Program support, though it would restrict use of certain fiscal year 2026 and 2027 funds for that designation. It would let states or local governments use BEACH Act grants to identify specific sources of beach-water contamination, broaden eligible recipients and cost-share rules for the San Francisco Bay program, and bar funds for these programs from going to entities tied to countries of concern from FY2026-FY2031. It would not create any new EPA program from scratch; it operates entirely by amending existing Federal Water Pollution Control Act authorizations and adding a Government Accountability Office reporting requirement on EPA's geographic programs generally.

States, local governments, and coastal communities that receive EPA grants for the Great Lakes, Long Island Sound, Columbia River Basin, San Francisco Bay, national estuary, and beach-monitoring programs; EPA program offices administering these grants; and nonfederal entities, including research partners, that could be barred from funding if tied to a foreign country of concern.

Continued authorization means these regional water-quality and restoration programs can keep receiving federal funding through 2031 rather than facing lapses. The Mississippi Sound designation and BEACH Act grant flexibility could bring new resources to Gulf Coast and beach communities, while the foreign-country-of-concern restriction could exclude some current or prospective grant partners from future funding.

EPA would continue administering the reauthorized programs' existing grant and management-conference processes under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, with new eligibility rules (Mississippi Sound, BEACH Act contamination-source identification, San Francisco Bay recipients) applied to future grant cycles. EPA could not use FY2026 funds, and only limited FY2027 funds, to implement the Mississippi Sound designation. Grant recipients across all listed programs would be screened against the foreign-country-of-concern restriction for FY2026-2031 funding. The Comptroller General would evaluate all eleven EPA geographic programs and report findings and recommendations to relevant House and Senate committees within two years.