Financing Alternatives Comparison Tool
Financing Alternatives Comparison Tool
Developed by EPA, the Financing Alternatives Comparison Tool (FACT) is a financial analysis tool that helps municipalities, utilities, and environmental organizations identify the most cost-effective method to fund a wastewater or drinking water management project. FACT produces a comprehensive analysis that compares financing options for these projects by incorporating financing, regulatory, and other important costs.
Access the tool at the link below.
Environmental Finance Center Network Resource Library
Environmental Finance Center Network Resource Library
The Environmental Finance Center Network has developed an extensive library with resources for local water managers. These resources include decision support tools, reports, on-demand trainings, podcasts, blogs, and funding tables summarizing available funding for water infrastructure in each state.
Access the library at the link below.
Water Infrastructure Financial Leadership
Water Infrastructure Financial Leadership: Successful Financial Tools for Local Decision Makers
EPA report highlighting successful financial tools to help inform local water infrastructure investment decisions. This resource is designed to guide local decision-makers in identifying what is needed for financial planning, determining how to fund and finance a project, and considering which strategic approaches can be used to protect local investments.
Click below to download the report.
Guidebook for Strengthening Community Resiliency
Communities along Lake Michigan are mitigating complex challenges related to coastal erosion, flooding, and deteriorating infrastructure compounded by drastic shift in weather patterns. Adopting forward-thinking strategies can address immediate concerns and strengthen long-term resilience.
In partnership with municipal leaders in the City of Kewaunee, American Rivers, WaterNow Alliance, and One Water Econ developed recommendations to leverage natural infrastructure investments for enhanced community resiliency and prosperity for the City. This Funding & Benefits guidebook highlights these recommended funding options for priority projects as well as how these investments will enhance the community and provide valuable recreational amenities for Kewaunee residents.
Click the link below to download the guidebook.
Advancing Resilience: Distributed Stormwater Capture & Conservation
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD or District) is at an inflection point. Like much of the western United States, the region of Southern California served by MWD is facing an increasingly uncertain water future. Prolonged drought over the past decades has diminished the amount of water available to MWD from in-state watersheds. At the same time, deepening aridification across the Colorado River basin, exacerbated by the effects of climate change, has resulted in a 15 percent diminution in flows in that critical water supply. Accelerate Resilience Los Angeles (ARLA) applauds MWD for launching the Climate Adaptation Master Plan for Water (CAMP4W) to identify strategies that build resilience to this enduring challenge. The CAMP4W process and One Water commitments expressed by MWD leadership and Board of Directors specifically call for MWD contributions to environmental and economic justice outcomes. Leadership on these issues requires MWD to make financial investments in programs that deliver community benefits—these investments, in turn, can drive partnerships with member agencies, local governments, and other entities that leverage and expand upon the level of funding provided by MWD.
This Roadmap provides steps and strategies to support MWD in leading Southern California to build water and community resilience by incentivizing distributed multi-benefit outdoor conservation, landscape transformation, and stormwater capture projects through rebate programs.
Click below to download the roadmap.
Water Wise Landscapes & HOAs: Fact Sheet
Water Wise Landscapes: Fact Sheet
Roughly 40 to 50% of all municipal water used in Colorado is applied outdoors, with much of this going to water thirsty turfgrass. Non-native turfgrass 
requires extensive, and increasingly expensive, irrigation water to stay green in the dry Colorado summer. As drought and rising temperatures strain Colorado's water supplies, communities across the state are transitioning from non-functional turf to water wise landscaping to save both water and money. Homeowners Associations (HOAs) have an important role to play in this transition. Many HOAs maintain landscaped areas, much of which is non-functional turf, in community entryways, medians, and unused common spaces.
This fact sheet provides an overview of how HOAs can benefit from waterwise landscaping, how HOAs can pay for these water infrastructure solutions, and examples from Colorado HOAs already making these cost-effective, sustainable investments.
Click below to download the fact sheet. To read the full report click here.
Water Wise Landscapes: A Cost-Effective HOA Investment
Water Wise Landscapes: A Cost-Effective HOA Investment in Resilience
In recent years, Colorado has seen unprecedented momentum behind the replacement of non- functional, cool season turfgrass – such as Kentucky bluegrass – with water wise plants and grasses that significantly reduce outdoor water demand while providing important environmental, economic, and 
community benefits. Since Homeowners Association (HOA) communities are widespread in Colorado, replacing irrigated but unused turf on HOA-managed properties, like community entryways or large common areas, presents an important water savings opportunity for HOAs, water providers, and the state as a whole.
This report aims to help HOAs successfully leverage funding and financing opportunities to pay for turf conversion projects, to maximize their return on investment, and to make informed financial decisions about their project. Case studies are included to demonstrate how other Colorado HOAs have successfully funded, implemented, and benefitted from turf conversion projects. Since HOAs are managed, governed, and funded differently from, for example, a city that wants to replace turfgrass at city hall, the report addresses how the funding and financing opportunities available to HOAs will also be different. Identifying funding is one of several important phases involved in carrying out a successful turf conversion project from start to finish.
Click below to download the report.
The Bond Basics
The Bond Basics
This “Basics Handbook,” prepared by a subcommittee of the General Law and Practice Committee of the National Association of Bond Lawyers, represents a compilation of resource materials relating to the issuance of municipal securities. The subcommittee was purposefully staffed with attorneys and non-attorneys with varied levels of experience in public finance. This Basics Handbook is intended to provide certain foundational information to serve as a resource for those beginning their work in the legal aspects of public finance (“Novices”) as well as more experienced professionals who, from time to time, would like to get back to the basics. Readers are encouraged to revisit this Basics Handbook as they gain more experience in public finance. This Basics Handbook is intended to be easily digestible by Novices in public finance on their first day, but still helpful for partners revisiting concepts in federal tax law or federal securities law. It is a basic, but insightful, reference tool which may serve as a foundation for understanding public finance transaction documents and related matters. The National Association of Bond Lawyers does not intend this Basics Handbook to set standards or provide documents for use in municipal bond transactions.
Click the link below to download the guide.
Rainfall to Results
Rainfall to Results: the Future of Stormwater
Stormwater presents several unique challenges when compared to its more mature water sector counterparts of drinking water and waste- water. The dispersed nature of stormwater makes responsibility for its treatment and control hard to assign. Since the promulgation of the Phase I and Phase II municipal separate storm sewer systems (MS4) regulation, communities have been faced with the task of managing stormwater flows based on early studies highlighting the potentially significant water quality effects of urban runoff.
Initial techniques to provide stormwater management focused on traditional “gray” infrastructure, but the evolution of stormwater has been heading in the direction of nature-based, or “green”, infrastructure. Similarly, the passive practices used in the first generation of stormwater infrastructure investments is starting to give way to “smart” stormwater infrastructure that uses automated controls to enhance the performance of stormwater facilities.
In addition, the view of urban runoff as being a burden has morphed into a perspective that stormwater flows are valued as significant water resources to be captured and used in strategic ways. Lastly, the rise of emerging contaminants, such as microplastics and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, highlights the need for true source control in stormwater programs.
In response to these challenges, the Water Environment Federation (WEF) has identified seven areas within the stormwater sector to drive change with a vision for each area:
- Work at the watershed scale
- Tranform stormwater governance
- Support innovative best practices
- Manage and maintain stormwater assets
- Continue to close the funding gap
- Engage the community
- Plan for stormwater resilience
Click below to read the full WEF report.
Lead Communications Guide and Toolkit
American Water Works Association's Lead Communications Guide and Toolkit
The U.S. EPA’s revised Lead and Copper Rule follows water crisis situations that captured national headlines and eroded public confidence in drinking water. The rule presents utilities with new challenges, but fundamentally, the rule is an opportunity to strengthen public trust. Regardless of whether you have a dedicated communications department, we all have the responsibility to engage with our communities and tell the story of drinking water and what we do to minimize the risk of lead getting into the drinking water.
AWWA’s Lead Communications Guide and Toolkit draws insights and examples from utilities throughout the United States and Canada that are at the forefront of communicating about water quality and lead. This document includes the following:
+Communication best practices, examples, and guidance.
+Tips on communicating about water quality with your community.
+A summary of the LCRR requirements and what they mean for your utility’s communication and outreach efforts.
+Checklists for meeting key LCRR communication and outreach requirements and assessing your readiness for implementation.
Click the link below to download the toolkit.
