Federal obligations in sewage treatment facilities (NAICS 221320)

What $1.29 billion in 221320 obligations means

An obligation is a binding commitment recorded when the government signs or modifies a contract. It is not the same as an outlay, which is money that has left the Treasury. For sewage treatment facilities, the $1,287,706,005.37 total therefore shows how much has been booked against NAICS 221320, not how much vendors have already collected. Modifications, de-obligations, and later payments can move the live USAspending tables without changing the historical fact that this code has drawn more than a billion dollars in contract commitments.

NAICS 221320 is a six-digit Census industry code for establishments that operate sewage treatment facilities. Federal buyers use the code on contract actions so awards can be grouped by the product or service the vendor primarily provides. The label is an industry classification, not a program name and not a guarantee that every gallon of wastewater work in the federal inventory is captured here. Work coded to construction, engineering, or other utility NAICS can sit beside this bucket on related but separate industry pages.

716 awards and how concentrated the buying looks

Dividing $1,287,706,005.37 by 716 awards produces an average of about $1.80 million per action. Averages hide mix: a handful of large facility operations contracts can sit next to smaller task orders for equipment, testing, or short-term operations support. Still, 716 is a modest award count relative to the dollar total, which is the pattern you see when agencies buy plant operations, long-running service vehicles, or major equipment through fewer, larger instruments rather than tens of thousands of small parts orders.

The industry page for this code lists the underlying award rows and any agency or recipient rollups available in the SpendingVault tables. Use those tables to see whether the $1,287,706,005.37 is spread across many buyers or clustered. This guide does not invent agency shares, recipient names, or fiscal-year splits that are not in the packet facts. Those details belong on the live industry hub, which is rebuilt from USAspending contract extracts.

What sewage treatment facilities covers in federal contracting

In Census terms, sewage treatment facilities treat wastewater and sewage. On a federal contract, that can mean operating a treatment plant on a military installation, providing specialized process equipment, or staffing a government-owned facility. The NAICS code follows the vendor’s primary industry, so a construction firm building a new plant may be coded elsewhere even if the finished asset is a sewage plant. Readers comparing this page to construction or engineering industries should treat the codes as parallel views of related work, not as a single complete wastewater budget.

Because assistance awards may not carry NAICS, grant-funded municipal treatment projects that never appear as contracts will not add to the $1,287,706,005.37. That is a structural limit of industry-coded USAspending extracts, not a gap in this particular code. If you need the grant side of water infrastructure, look at program or agency pages rather than this NAICS rollup.

How to read the 221320 tables without mixing units

Keep obligations and outlays in separate columns in your notes. The $1,287,706,005.37 and the 716 award count on this page are obligation-side contract statistics. Outlay files answer a different question: how much cash has gone out against those awards. Mixing the two produces false year-over-year stories. Likewise, do not add this NAICS total to a CFDA program total and call the sum “federal wastewater spending”; the same award cannot be counted twice, and many water dollars never receive a 221320 tag.

SpendingVault’s industry hub for 221320 is the place to open award-level rows. This guide is the prose overlay: it states the two packet facts, explains the NAICS boundary, and points back to the tables. Source for the dollars and the award count is USAspending.gov contract awards.

Limits of the NAICS extract

Contract officers assign NAICS at award time. A vendor that operates treatment plants as one line of business and does other utility work as another may land in 221320 on some actions and in a neighboring code on others. Reclassifications after the fact are uncommon, so the 716-award set is a snapshot of how awards were coded, not a perfect map of every federal sewage-treatment activity. Treat $1,287,706,005.37 as the tagged contract total, then use the industry page to inspect the mix.

Questions

How much has the federal government obligated on NAICS 221320 sewage treatment facilities?

USAspending contract awards coded to NAICS 221320 total $1,287,706,005.37 in obligations across 716 awards. That is a commitment total, not an outlay total. Grants and other assistance often lack a NAICS code, so they are outside this industry rollup even when they fund wastewater work.

Is the $1.29 billion for sewage treatment cash already spent?

No. The $1,287,706,005.37 figure is obligations: amounts the government has committed on contracts tagged to this NAICS. Outlays are payments against those commitments and can lag, split across years, or differ after modifications. Use USAspending outlay fields if you need cash disbursed rather than amounts booked.

Why might a wastewater project not appear under NAICS 221320?

The vendor’s assigned industry may be construction, engineering, or another utility code. Assistance awards may not carry NAICS at all. Only the 716 contract actions coded 221320 feed the $1,287,706,005.37 total. Related work can sit on other industry pages without appearing here.

Where can I see the individual sewage treatment facility awards?

Open the SEWAGE TREATMENT FACILITIES industry page, which lists the contract tables behind the $1,287,706,005.37 and 716-award counts. This guide restates those two facts and explains the NAICS boundary; it does not add recipient or agency totals that are not in the source packet.