Water infrastructure funding is fragmented, repetitive, study says

Poor coordination on water and wastewater infrastructure projects has led some communities to apply for federal grants multiple times, found an investigation by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' watchdog arm.

The projects help fund development in rural communities of 10,000 or less, but redundancies between federal agencies has caused some communities to apply to multiple departments for a single project, investigators found.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Agriculture Department have taken steps to improve coordination at the federal level, but the state level is still redundant and overlapping, the GAO said.