Findings

Congress finds that— (1) clean and safe drinking water is necessary to ensure public health and a vibrant economy; (2) communities that are dependent on private groundwater supplies to meet domestic drinking water needs, as well as those that continue to experience drinking water infrastructure challenges from public water supplies, including with infrastructure into and within households and living facilities, are disproportionately impacted by drinking water quality issues; (3) in many instances, those communities and their households have been adversely impacted by the presence of 1 or more naturally occurring and human-caused contaminants found in drinking water, such as lead, arsenic, nitrate, nitrite, and volatile organic compounds, as well as federally unregulated contaminants, including perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances and hexavalent chromium (chrome-6), in local groundwater or other drinking water supplies; (4) public health organizations and institutions, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have cited giardia, enterovirus, radon, rotovirus, norovirus, shigella, campylobacter, salmonella, hepatitis A, cryptosporidium, and E. coli as among the major diseases and contaminants that can be present in drinking water sources; (5) investments in projects to improve and support drinking water infrastructure are critically important to addressing water quality in the United States, but because those projects can typically take many years to complete, the current, and in some cases the ongoing, needs of communities impacted with immediate drinking water quality challenges cannot be or are not addressed in a timely manner; (6) as an interim measure (and in some cases in rural areas, for longer term or permanently), point-of-entry and point-of-use water quality improvement products are viable solutions to address drinking water contamination challenges for the people of the United States; and (7) grants provided under this Act are intended to provide financial assistance for eligible grant recipients (as defined in section 306F(a) of the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act (as added by section 3)) that voluntarily seek to improve the quality of the drinking water of eligible end users (as defined in that section), and not to demonstrate that an eligible end user is in compliance with a Federal, State, or local primary drinking water standard or regulation.