Welcome to the Wildfire Resilience Financing Dashboard

Developed in partnership between WaterNow Alliance, One Water Econ, and the Water Center at Penn this dashboard is designed to help Colorado water providers make the best business case for investments in wildfire resilience interventions in their upper watersheds.

To get started, go to the decision tool to explore the feasibility of utility financing for various upstream watershed health and wildfire resilience projects. This is key because, in many cases, different types of funding may/may not be available for different types of wildfire interventions.

The decision tool will walk through several threshold factors allowing you to make an initial assessment about the availability of financing for specific resilience interventions from various funding sources. The decision-tool is focused specifically on municipal bonds, Clean Water State Revolving Fund loans, and Drinking Water State Revolving Fund loans, i.e., sources of capital that can enable larger-scale investments in wildlife resilience projects.

The dashboard also has additional background information to help water providers navigate considerations about whether and how to pursue upstream watershed projects, including:

• An overview of the types of watershed interventions Colorado water providers can deploy to achieve resilience to wildfires, improve water quality, increase recreation access, and other benefits
• A framework for how to value the co-benefits of resilience interventions, i.e., make the most comprehensive business case for these projects
• How to build partnerships to help ensure success, and
• Guidance on possible pathways for using debt to pay for watershed interventions get to scale.

The dashboard was created with generous support from the Innovative Finance for National Forests grant program. Contributors and collaborators also included the City of Greeley, the Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed, Denver Water, and the Colorado State Revolving Fund administrators.