HARRISBURG, Pa.—Pennsylvania's public water and sewer systems were among the biggest winners in this year's budget process, as legislators are poised to approve $1.2 billion in borrowing to repair and improve them.

By one estimate, local governments and authorities face a $20 billion bill over the next 10 to 15 years to improve how they supply people with fresh water and treat sewage. There will be no shortage of requests for ways to spend the new money.

"Some of the costs get to be so expensive and prohibitive, it's very difficult for a lot of the smaller municipalities and the older cities in Pennsylvania to actually look at those price tags," John Brosious, deputy director of the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association in Wormleysburg, said Wednesday.

The House on Wednesday amended a water and sewer infrastructure bill previously passed by the state Senate, with a vote on its final passage and a companion bill expected in the coming days.

One of the bills would dedicate some of the slots gambling revenue to pay off $800 million in borrowing that would be doled out by the Commonwealth Financing Authority.

The other, which would depend on voter approval in a referendum that would probably be held in November, would authorize the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority to divvy up $400 million.

An amendment approved by the House on Wednesday dedicated the $800 million purely for grants to local water and sewer

authorities—the $400 million would be issued in a mixture of grants and loans.

Language was added to encourage systems to consolidate and to extend the program to cover high-hazard dams, including those owned by the state.

After a lengthy and at times testy debate, an amendment that would have exempted projects under one of the bills from prevailing wage provisions for workers was defeated, 67-133.

Consideration of amendments to the second bill was halted abruptly after the House ran up against its 11 p.m. curfew, and leaders could not muster the supermajority required to extend the session for another hour.

Pennsylvania has about 2,200 drinking water systems, including some older systems with wooden pipes. Some of its 1,060 wastewater plants become so overloaded during heavy rains that they can spill raw sewage into downstream waterways.

Beyond water and sewer needs, some of the funding also would pay for storm water management and flood control projects. A small portion would be available for privately owned water systems, Brosious said.

For sewer plants, "capacity is an issue," Brosious said. "We have a lot of plants that were built in the 1970s with federal money that have kind of come to the end of their useful existence and have to be overhauled."

New limits on the discharge of nitrogen that aim to improve the health of Chesapeake Bay have saddled 184 sewer plants within the Susquehanna River basin with $1 billion in improvements, he said.

In Williamsport and six surrounding municipalities, more than 50,000 people are staring at a $140 million tab to improve sewage collection and treatment, some of which will help it comply with Chesapeake Bay cleanup mandates.

The average annual household bill there will triple to $540 by 2012, said Walt Nicholson, the director of operations for Williamsport's sanitary authority.

"It's still going to be expensive" even with help from the state, he said. But "it might take us from a tripling of our rates to two-and-a-half times higher, somewhere in that area. That's still a lot of money, that's still two or three million dollars a year in debt service savings."