The federal government yesterday awarded nearly $70 million to New Jersey to help fund projects to upgrade sewage-treatment plants and drinking-water systems.
The allocation should help finance more than a half-billion-dollars worth of projects through the state’s Environmental Infrastructure Trust, a vehicle set up to help communities fund clean-water projects.
The award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is part of an annual appropriation to help the state raise water quality by improving treatment at wastewater plants and public systems providing drinking water to residents.
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“Resources such as these will help in the effort to modernize our aging infrastructure in our big cities, small towns, and rural areas,’’ said DEP Commissioner Bob Martin.
The EPA award comes from a program that has averted deep cuts in President Donald Trump’s first proposed budget. Forty percent of the New Jersey DEP’s budget relies on funding from the federal agency, according to Ed Potosnak, executive director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters.
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