At the February meeting of EPA’s Environmental Financial Advisory Board (EFAB), the agency provided updates on a host of key utility management topics. A part of the Water Infrastructure and Resiliency Finance Center, the board is chartered by law to provide EPA advice and recommendations on creative approaches to funding environmental programs, projects and activities.
Andrew Sawyers, director of EPA’s Office of Wastewater Management, updated the board on the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) program, announcing that its first loan would soon be issued. The initial loan is expected to be $129 million for a wet weather treatment station in King County, Washington. Additional loans anticipated to be closed in the next quarter include a $200 million loan to the Baltimore City Department of Public Works, he said.
Sawyers also discussed reducing the number of drinking water and wastewater systems through partnerships, collaboration and alliances, saying “it’s absolutely necessary” to look at streamlining, and adding that both structural and operational changes should be examined. EPA has asked EFAB “to identify and evaluate financing strategies that have been designed to assist or incentivize systems to implement governance strategies that may include system consolidation, regional projects, and/or shared service arrangements.”
EPA may also ask the board to make recommendations on how it should revise a 1997 guidance, commonly referred to as the affordability guidance, developed to assess municipalities’ ability to pay for infrastructure upgrades to prevent combined sewer overflows. The guidance – intended to provide general boundaries to aid EPA, states and cities in negotiating reasonable and effective schedules for implementing infrastructure upgrades – does not cover drinking water and stormwater, but should as part of a revised guidance, Sawyers said. EFAB was not formally charged with evaluating revisions to the guidance, but such an assignment could come at the board’s next meeting.
In its presentation to the board, EPA reiterated its encouragement of water and wastewater utilities’ use of asset management and recognized the sector’s workforce development concerns, citing research that indicates approximately a third of all water and wastewater employees are expected to retire soon. It also focused on water utility sustainability, which remains a challenge in both rural and urban areas, where systems face declining populations and revenues, making it more difficult to become sustainable.
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Learn more about the work of EFAB at www.epa.gov/waterfinancecenter/efab.