Massachusetts has a two-year legislative cycle, and a one-year budget cycle. The 2023-2024 legislative session ended on August 1, 2024. IRWA staff and advocates have been hard at work over the past two years building coalitions and pushing for our legislative priorities. Here’s a legislative session debrief on how our priorities ended up:
The Drought Bill: Legislative Strides and Unfinished Business
Our top legislative priority this year was the drought bill (H.861/S.475). As the Commonwealth seeks to expand housing, ensuring the sustainability of our water supplies becomes even more urgent. This bill is a small yet crucial step toward creating a proactive, coordinated, statewide drought response that safeguards our environment, our economy, and public health. The bill advanced further than it ever has, passing the Senate this June. That’s a huge accomplishment, only possible with strong coalition support — again.
Unfortunately, despite the bill’s inclusion in the Senate version of the Climate Bill, the House and Senate were unable to reconcile this piece of legislation and ultimately the legislature failed to pass the climate bill. For a full recap of this bill’s journey through the state house, check out MassRivers’ blog post.]
Thank you to the many organizations and individuals who advocated strongly for improved drought management policy for Massachusetts.
Legislative Successes
Blocking harmful legislation: In the final weeks of the legislative session, IRWA and its allies rallied in opposition to an amendment in the Senate version of the Housing Bond Bill to review (and very likely weaken) the Interbasin Transfer Act (IBTA), one of the state’s foundational water management laws. When a municipality or water supplier suggests moving water from one watershed to another, for either water supply or wastewater, the IBTA requires that the applicant demonstrate via scientific review that the transfer won’t negatively impact either the donor or receiving basin. In the law’s forty-year history, only three applications have been rejected by the Water Resources Commission, who currently administers the law; overwhelmingly, this law enables housing and growth by ensuring that local water management is sustainable. IRWA opposed this amendment and participated in successfully advocating for its removal from the final version of the bill.
What’s Next for IRWA’s Legislative Advocacy?
In the next legislative session, IRWA will continue to advocate for the ultimate passage of the drought bill. Our success in the Senate gives us a strong start to the next legislative session, which starts in January.
We are also focused on increasing the funding for the Massachusetts Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Program as part of the Massachusetts MVP Coalition. This coalition is calling for $100 million per year for this program so that the scale of the funding opportunity matches the scale of the climate challenges we are facing. Each year IRWA supports local municipal efforts to get MVP funding to implement projects that simultaneously improve our regional climate resiliency and improve the health of the Ipswich River.
Finally, we will continue to provide opportunities for our members to engage with their legislators on issues that matter to them, kicking off the next legislative session with our biannual legislative breakfast next March. Keep your eyes out for your invitation to that event in early 2025 and in the meantime sign up for our Advocacy Alerts to stay up to date on how you can be involved in protecting and restoring our River!