tonko and mr. harper on their work on this issue. i know mr. tonko has an interest in addressing drinking water issues and i appreciate the work he and mr. harper are doing to break the ice with this first effort. with that i'd like to yield to the vice chair for the remainder of my time. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate you holding this hearing on the needs of drinking water systems in rural and smaller communities. like you and many other members of congress i represent a rural district where many of my constituents get their drinking water from smaller cities, towns and water associations. according to the national rural water association more than 90% of the community water systems across the united states serve a popular of less than 10,000 individuals. these smaller communities do an incredible job of providing our constituents with clean safe drinking water but are often at a disadvantage because of commission of scale and need for more technical expertise. i know this is an important issue to you, mr. chairman, and the ranking m

my village relies on this assistance, i want to thank congressman tonko for sponsoring the act 20614 in the last congress. small and rural communities support your legislation because it enhanced the current drinking water state revolving fund by further targeting the fund to go communities most in need. we do need help. everything from financing, regulations, compliance and the various programs are very complicated for small communities. we don't have financial professionals on staff and often don't understand many of the funding processes. we currently have needs approaching $3 million for our wastewater system. we need new aeration tanks, new sludge drying equipment and new pumps as our facility is over 30 years old wechlt need to stop rain water from leaking into the system and overtaxing our capacity. my water operator is constantly explaining to me the need for these upgrades and his concerns of possible failure, however, we don't really have a way to finance it. it would triple the sewer rates to take out a loan for that much. you can see in the picture at the back of my testi