Identifying its core water/wastewater business as facilities and infrastructure design and engineering, Gannett Fleming (Camp Hill, Penn.; www.gfnet.com) is anticipating steady growth in the practice, but the growth rate is not what it could be, company officials confide. In particular, limits in budgets for water infrastructure projects are holding back the flow of funding for the work that's required to replace aging systems and to meet future demand. For both Gannett Fleming and the water/wastewater sector of the environmental industry, "there's a potential for growth that's greater than what we've seen in recent years," reflects Gene Koontz, a senior vice president at the firm. "There's a tremendous backlog of work that's building up." Congress will in all likelihood reject the Bush Administration's proposed $361-million reduction for FY 2006 of the Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund (SRF), but "the real need for infrastructure renewal is about five times what's been put into the federal budget for the past several years," Koontz points out.
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