A number of letters submitted from House Democrats are urging the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to increase EPA funding for drinking water and wastewater state revolving funds (SRFs). House Democrats are urging adoption of the Water Quality Protection and Job Creation Act of 2011 (H.R. 3145) [see above story], which was introduced on October 11 by Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WW). This legislation would reauthorize $13.8 billion in funding for clean water SRFs over five years. The bill is also designed to create hundreds of thousands of jobs and reduce the cost of constructing and maintaining water infrastructure over the long-term due to promotion of energy-efficiency and water-efficiency improvements to publicly owned treatment works that encourage more cost-effective means of improving water quality and to reduce the potential long-term operation and maintenance costs for such facilities. The Deficit Reduction Subcommittee is also being encouraged to include measures that would require recipients of clean water SRF funding to conduct an inventory and assessment of the critical assets of the treatment works and create a plan to manage those assets, increase funding for nonpoint source management programs and provide new tools to track the use of funds and measure performance under the National Estuaries Program. House Democrats are concerned that if the committee fails to agree to a deal, it would trigger automatic discretionary spending cuts that would likely lead to further cuts in EPA's and other agencies' budgets.