Nevada would lose millions under Trump’s proposed budget cuts to EPA, EDF report says

By Jeniffer Solis

Nevada News and Views

Nevada would lose millions of dollars in funding for water infrastructure and clean air programs under President Donald Trump’s proposal to cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by more than half.

Trump and his administration plan to cut the EPA’s budget next year by $4.9 billion, a nearly 55 percent decrease that would reduce the agency’s budget to levels not seen since the Reagan administration. About half that amount would be stripped from state revolving loan programs that fund drinking water and wastewater projects.

In Nevada the proposed cuts could result in the loss of more than $16 million for state revolving loan programs, according to a report from EDF Action, the advocacy arm of the Environmental Defense Fund.

Nevada’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, which provides low-interest loans and financial assistance to public water projects, would be all but erased, seeing funding reductions of more than 86 percent, according to the EDF Action analysis.

Nevada’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which funds upgrades to wastewater infrastructure, would similarly be devastated by cuts of more than 90 percent under the Trump administration proposal.

Last year, the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection allocated more than $55 million in state drinking water and clean water revolving funds to 19 communities for infrastructure projects.

Nevada also saw a surge in demand last year and was set to finalize another $266 million in state drinking water and clean water revolving loan agreements in 2025, according to the agency.

Large water infrastructure projects in Nevada are heavily reliant on federal funding to ensure safe drinking water. The Truckee Meadows Water Authority in Washoe County, for example, was awarded $125 million in state drinking water and clean water revolving funds to build a water purifying facility that would increase water quality and provide a clean water source even in years of severe drought.

The Trump administration said cuts to the state revolving loan programs were made to return the responsibility of water infrastructure funding to states.

But projects like Reno’s water purifying facility would not be possible without significant federal funding, said former Administrator for EPA’s Region 9, Martha Guzman Aceves, who helped launch the project.

“These infrastructure projects are so incredibly expensive that states — especially states that have a smaller population, like Nevada — don’t have the economies of scale to do these projects without the federal government,” Guzman Aceves said.

Without federal funding water utilities would likely be forced to raise rates to cover vital water infrastructure, said Guzman Aceves.

“Responsible governments in Nevada, the municipalities and the water districts, they’re going to make sure that the citizens of Nevada have safe water, but it’s going to come at a much bigger cost. These costs are going to have to be recovered from the rate base” charged to homes and businesses, she continued.

Smaller water utilities that serve rural communities are especially reliant on state revolving loan programs to finance water projects because they can’t afford costly treatment systems or upgrades without significantly raising rates to unaffordable levels.

Silver Springs Mutual Water Company, which serves about 3,000 Nevadans, received more than $4 million from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund for six projects between 2022-2024 to replace wells, upgrade tanks, and install new water mains, among other improvements to its drinking water system.

Both state revolving funds provide the bulk of funding for upgrades to drinking water infrastructure projects in the state, including lead service line replacement and treatment for PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” in drinking water.

According to EPA data, more than 485,000 Nevadans are served by a water utility releasing an elevated level of PFAS into drinking water. Nevada also has an estimated 6,783 lead service lines that need to be replaced, according to a 2023 EPA survey.

Trump’s plan to cut the EPA’s budget by more than half would also eliminate the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) Program, which provides the state funding to replace older vehicles with newer cleaner engines that reduce air pollution in the state.

The DERA program helped reduce air pollution that can exacerbate asthma for the more than 269,000 Nevadans who suffer from the condition. In 2023, Nevada was awarded $747,000 to replace four older diesel-powered trucks with cleaner electric trucks.

The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection has also received more than $1.2 million since 2023 from the grant program for an ongoing project to replace diesel-powered buses with clean alternative-fueled versions across multiple school districts.

The EPA cuts would also eliminate the State and Local Air Quality Management Grant, which awarded Nevada more than $4 million in 2023 to monitor air quality standards.

Guzman Aceves called the cuts “unprecedented” and potentially “catastrophic” for state and local municipalities that need infrastructure improvements to tackle growing drought and air pollution.

“These things are not done on an individual level. You can’t clean the air individually. You can’t go home and have safe water and clean air without the government playing a role. It doesn’t work that way. These things have to be done at a social scale, at a community scale, at a state scale, and when the federal government is taking away the most essential tools, the foundations of how we are able to do this, it is catastrophic,” Guzman Aceves said.

The House and Senate are supposed to complete work on the dozen annual government funding bills by the start of the 2026 fiscal year on Oct. 1, but are still far from final agreements.

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Jeniffer Solis was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada where she attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas before graduating in 2017 with a B.A in Journalism and Media Studies.