Fund the BEACH Act & EPA Clean Water programs FY2025

Hundreds of millions of Americans and visitors enjoy U.S. beaches every year, trusting that the water is safe for recreation. Unfortunately, too often this is not the case. The Surfrider Foundation has long been advocating for congressional support for the EPA’s BEACH Act grant program that provides funding to coastal states to run their beach water quality monitoring and public notification programs. This program is critical to provide families with the information they need to stay safe at the beach and to safeguard our valuable coastal tourism-based economies. Nearly 20 years of level funding, however, hovering just under $10 million, has left gaps in agency testing programs – either seasonal gaps or beaches that are not tested at all or only infrequently sampled. Oftentimes it is beaches in more rural communities that are already underserved that are left uninformed. 

With previous small increases in funding ($10.119 million in FY2022 and $10.619 in FY2023) states haD the ability to start providing more public health protection at the beach, rather continuing to roll-back their programs as inflation makes it harder and harder to stretch their federal dollars. However, in the fiscal year 2024 federal budget, Congress reduced funding for this program to below $10 million again. Surfrider is asking Congress to appropriate $15 million in the FY2025 budget (only half of the fully authorized level of $30 million) to provide better health protection for more people. At a minimum, we do not want to see program funding backslide to below $10 million again.

There are other important programs at EPA that are vital to protecting our waterways and communities from pollution including the Clean Water State Revolving Fund that provides assistance to states to upgrade failing stormwater and wastewater infrastructure.  Our country has failed to properly maintain our water infrastructure to handle growing populations and the growing pressures of climate change and as a result over 900 billion gallons of untreated sewage and 10 trillion gallons of stormwater flow into U. S. waterways every year.  

Sewage contains bacteria, viruses and parasites that make people sick with gastrointestinal symptoms, rashes, and worse. Sewage discharges also pollute waterways with excess nitrogen that wreaks havoc on coastal ecosystems by fueling harmful algal blooms that harm human health, cause fish kills and other animal mortalities, and smother coral reefs. Surfrider is asking Congress to provide $3 billion for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund in the FY2025 budget to build on the great momentum that was initiated through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill of 2021 to upgrade failing wastewater infrastructure and stop sewage spills at the source.

Learn more about Surfrider’s efforts here to protect public health at the beach and #Stop Sewage Pollution.