28 federal programs fund rural water. Coordinating them is the gap.
Summary
A GAO review found 28 USDA and EPA programs that can help rural communities without drinking water or wastewater service build or improve their infrastructure. The agencies signed a joint memorandum in 2017 laying out best practices for coordinating that assistance -- but haven't updated or monitored it since. GAO's recommendation to fix that split the two agencies -- EPA agreed, USDA didn't.
The scale of what's needed
's own 2022 Clean Watersheds Needs Survey⧉ put the unfunded need for centralized wastewater and stormwater infrastructure in rural areas at $57.0 billion -- 12% of the national total -- and the need for wastewater treatment and collection specifically at $37.8 billion, 11% of the total. Those two figures likely overlap rather than add up to $94.8 billion combined; itself cautioned that rural areas' small share of the reported national total may partly reflect low survey response rates from small communities, not the true size of the gap.
Neither nor collects nationwide data on how many rural communities actually lack service in the first place -- 's regulatory reach only covers water systems serving at least 25 people, structurally excluding much of the smallest, least-served population. 's report grounds the abstraction in one place it could measure directly: Greene County, Alabama, where a federal study put wastewater capital costs at $12 million to $33 million, in a county where 40% of residents live in poverty.
View data as table
| Centralized wastewater & stormwater infrastructure (12% of national total) | 57,000,000,000 |
|---|---|
| Wastewater treatment & collection specifically (11% of national total) | 37,800,000,000 |
One block of pipe, one regional treatment plant
's review of about 500 -funded rural water and sewer projects from fiscal years 2023 and 2024 found estimated costs ranging from about $270,000 to $130 million⧉, averaging around $9 million. That range illustrates the scale problem underneath the coordination problem: a small community replacing a few blocks of pipe and a multi-town regional treatment authority are navigating the same 28-program landscape.
View data as table
| Smallest sampled project | 270,000 |
|---|---|
| Average sampled project | 9,000,000 |
| Largest sampled project | 130,000,000 |
A 2017 agreement, never revisited
and signed a joint memorandum in 2017⧉ laying out best practices -- streamlining applications, coordinating among funding partners -- meant to help states and communities navigate exactly this fragmented landscape. found the two agencies haven't collaborated to update or monitor it since. Its recommendation that they do so drew a split response: agreed and said its water-office staff expected to start talks with counterparts by the end of fiscal year 2026. disagreed, citing new April 2026 regulations it said should shift environmental-process guidance to -- a point said doesn't actually limit 's ability to update the shared memorandum.
The takeaway
- The program count itself is in flux. 's list started larger before 7 programs -- 4 , 3 -- were removed as discontinued by December 2025, leaving 28.
- The dollar range within one program is enormous. -funded rural water projects ranged from $270,000 to $130 million -- a nearly 500-fold spread.
- The two agencies didn't agree on the fix. accepted 's recommendation to update their shared coordination memo; did not.
Two things this report does not provide: a nationwide count of how many rural communities currently lack drinking water or wastewater service ( and don't collect that data), and any total dollar figure for how much funding is currently available or appropriated across the 28 programs combined. Both would meaningfully sharpen the scale of this gap, and their absence is itself part of what 's coordination recommendation is meant to address.
's review excluded programs primarily serving tribal communities (the subject of separate, ongoing work as of this report) and excluded colonias -- unincorporated communities along the U.S.-Mexico border -- citing its own September 2024 report on that population, which found about 5% of colonias still lacked water infrastructure access and about 29% lacked wastewater access, per a 2015 nonprofit needs assessment. Both figures are cited here for context on the broader rural-access picture, not as part of the 28-program review itself. made three recommendations total: one urging and jointly to update their coordination memorandum, and two urging specifically to give its technical-assistance providers better guidance on local community capacity.
Sources(1) ▾
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Rural Water Infrastructure: Better Agency Coordination Could Help Unserved Communities Address Their Needs (2026-06-23) — report to congressional requesters examining what and know about rural communities lacking drinking water/wastewater service, which of their programs can help, and the challenges those communities face accessing that assistance. Based on program document review, interviews with federal officials and officials from 10 selected states, and site visits to rural communities in three states and one Tribe. Fetched via WebFetch (returned as binary, auto-saved) and converted with pdftotext -layout; read in full. gao.gov · original document
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Rural communities without drinking water or wastewater service have 28 federal programs⧉ they could turn to for help, a review found -- spread across and , each with its own deadlines, eligibility rules, and restrictions on how funds can be used. Communities often need to apply to several of these programs at once to fully fund a project, and found the timing rarely lines up: in one case, a community's federal grant arrived too late to secure a matching state grant, putting the whole project at risk.