Two Detroit-area members of Congress are pushing again for a federal water assistance program, one that would work something like the existing low-income energy benefit but for your tap.

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit) and U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor) reintroduced the Water Access and Affordability Act this week, a bill that would direct the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to create and run a low-income water affordability program. The EPA’s administrator would have one year from the bill taking effect to get the program running.

This isn’t their first attempt. Tlaib and Dingell introduced the same legislation in 2024, and it didn’t make it through Congress. They’re trying again now.

What the bill would actually do

If both chambers pass it, the program would give financial assistance directly to low-income households struggling to pay water bills. It would also fund debt relief for people already behind on payments, crisis and disconnection assistance, and water efficiency help including plumbing repairs.

Not a small scope.

The bill bans water service disconnections and the fees that come with them for enrolled households. It requires automatic enrollment and puts guardrails in place to reduce paperwork burdens. Renters and owner-occupants would get equal treatment under the program, which matters in a city where a significant share of residents are renters.

Community water systems would get technical assistance too, not just households. That piece acknowledges a real problem: many utilities don’t have the money to maintain aging pipes, and the cost of that failure eventually lands on customers.

The Tlaib argument

“Our families can’t live without access to water,” Tlaib said in a statement. “We have a federal program for electricity and gas, but no permanent program for water. Millions of our neighbors across our country are having their water shut off simply because they cannot afford the rising bills.”

She’s talking about LIHEAP, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which has existed since 1981 and provides federal help with heating and cooling costs. Water has never had a comparable permanent federal program. That’s the gap this bill is trying to close.

Tlaib also pointed to infrastructure: many utilities can’t keep up with maintenance costs, which drives rates up, which pushes more households into unaffordability. It’s a spiral that hits Detroit particularly hard. The city has dealt with water shutoff controversies for over a decade, and rates have climbed steadily, driven in part by the cost of running and repairing a system built for a much larger population.

Who’s behind it

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has endorsed the bill. So have Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Mothering Justice, Clean Water Action, and the National Wildlife Federation.

That coalition spans environmental law, conservation, and economic justice groups. Broad on paper. Whether it translates into enough votes in the current Congress is a different question.

The bill arrives roughly 16 months after the 50th anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act, the 1974 law that set federal standards for drinking water quality. That law governs what’s in the water. This one is about whether people can afford to access it at all. Different problems, same pipe.

Reporting from Michigan Advance first covered the reintroduction.

The Detroit angle

For Detroit residents, this isn’t abstract. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department serves roughly 230,000 accounts in the city and more than 100 suburban communities. Water bills here have risen faster than inflation for years. Residents who fall behind face shutoffs, and the city has no permanent local fund to bridge that gap year to year.

A federal program with automatic enrollment and a disconnection ban would change the math for a lot of households on the east side, in Brightmoor, in Delray.

Still, the bill faces a tough path. Republicans control both chambers of Congress, and a new EPA-administered assistance program is unlikely to move easily in that environment. Tlaib and Dingell are laying down a marker as much as they’re expecting a quick vote.

Watch for whether this picks up co-sponsors in the coming weeks. That’s the real signal of whether this effort has more momentum than the 2024 version.