H.R. 4677 would authorize the appropriation of $25 million annually over the 2022-2027 period for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to provide grants for restoration and habitat protection within the New York-New Jersey Watershed and to coordinate those activities. The bill would direct USFWS to allocate at least 75 percent of the authorized amounts for grants.
For this estimate, CBO assumes that the legislation will be enacted late in fiscal year 2022 and that the authorized amounts will be provided each year. Using information from USFWS, CBO expects that the agency would enter into an agreement with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a nonfederal entity, to manage the grant program on its behalf, as authorized under the bill. Thus, amounts provided to USFWS for the grant program would be transferred to the foundation in full at the beginning of each fiscal year starting in 2023. On that basis and using historical spending patterns for similar programs, CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 4677 would cost $124 million over the 2022-2026 period and $26 million after 2026.
