On May 27th, Quantified Ventures issued a press release regarding the evaluation of the first ever Environmental Impact Bond (EIB). EIBs are innovative pay-for-performance debt-financing mechanisms that have been used to finance green infrastructure projects in DC, Atlanta GA, and Hampton VA. EIBs are unique in that they tend to have predetermined outcome measures that dictate the overall cost of capital. While green bonds also finance environmental projects, they typically do not measure and report outcomes.  About the DC Water EIB The DC Water EIB funded green infrastructure installmen ..read more

The North Carolina Water and Wastewater Rates Dashboard was updated with 2021 data and the 2021 North Carolina Water and Wastewater Rates Report was published. Check them out today and join us for our June 15 webinar. We are thankful for another year of partnership with the North Carolina League of Municipalities and for the on-going funding support from the North Carolina Division of Water Infrastructure. The 2021 North Carolina Water and Wastewater Rates Dashboard was deployed in February 2021. The Dashboard is up to date for rates as of January 1, 2021. The Rates Dashb ..read more

The current housing market boom leads to large tracts of available land being swept up into the hands of private developers. For many local governments, development is good. It provides access to new tax revenues and tends to perpetuate growth; an area actively developing tends to attract more industries and people. These new revenues can be used for any number of purposes, including adding services, such as  land conservation or parks and recreation, to the municipality. The challenge is in protecting land before it falls into the hands of developers, and balancing the open space needs ..read more

This is the third post in a three-part blog series on data management. This post will focus on user-centered design of Environmental Finance Center tools. Post by Julia Cavalier, Senior Research Specialist at UNC EFC and Robin Haley,  Graduate Research Assistant at UNC EFC As mentioned in the first and second part of this blog series, If you build the data platform, will they come? and Behind the Scenes of the Revenueshed Tool, the Environmental Finance Center (the EFC) project designers have to know the users, identify purpose of the project goal, and collect the data that exists t ..read more

The past year has forced local government utilities to make difficult decisions about how to maintain operations while providing essential services during an infectious disease pandemic, as discussed in several of our past blog posts (here, here, and here).   Financial viability is a cornerstone of a utility’s ability to weather a proverbial storm that disrupts revenue flows. A viable system is one that functions as a long-term, self-sufficient business enterprise while providing reliable water services. The EFC has been on the look-out for stories of utilities and municipalities that ar ..read more

At the start of the pandemic, there was uncertainty about how water and wastewater utilities’ revenues and finances might be affected. Many utilities and local governments were concerned with loss of revenue from the commercial sector, as well as the financial implications of statewide moratoria on late fees and disconnections for non-payments designed to ensure that everyone has adequate access to water and sanitation during a designated public health emergency. Various polls and case studies were analyzed to gauge early and ongoing effects on the utilities’ financial condition. Now, the rel ..read more

This is the second post in a three-part blog series on data management. This post will focus on the data handling processes involved in the development of the EFC’s Revenueshed tool.   As mentioned in the first part of this blog series If you build the data platform, will they come?, EFC’s design team regularly asks the following three questions when creating a new tool. (1) Who are the users?  (2) What is the project’s purpose? (3) What data exists to support this purpose?   Developing an effective web-based data visualization requires the design team to consider a variety of ..read more

The 1997 EPA Financial Capability Assessment (FCA) consisted of a two-part assessment to determine a municipality’s financial capability to implement projects to comply with Clean Water Act (CWA) requirements.  The EPA has used the 1997 FCA to negotiate implementation schedules for both combined sewer overflow and sanitary sewer overflow controls. The first part of this assessment is the Residential Indicator (RI), which is the cost per household of CWA compliance divided by the median household income. The second part is the Financial Capability Indicator, which evaluates the municipali ..read more

In May 2020, the shortened Maryland 2020 General Assembly Session passed Senate Bill 457, which authorizes local governments in the area to establish Resilience Authorities. The first of its kind, the bill enables a local jurisdiction to flexibly organize funding structures for, and manage, large-scale infrastructure projects specifically aimed at addressing the effects of climate change[1]. The Bill allows local governments to establish and fund Resilience Authorities under local law, outlines the requirements to do so, and stipulates the powers local governments may, and may not, grant to t ..read more

This is the first of a series of three posts on utility data management. The Environmental Finance Center collects all sorts of data for projects. The EFC uses data from regulatory agencies, financial reports, and data on area residents from the US Census Bureau.   The project design questions the EFC asks are: Know the users! Are they: Decisionmakers? Staff? The public? What should be shown? Decisionmakers need reliable data on cost and benefits Staff may need to drill down on details Overall, tell a story What data exists to support and analysis and how can different data source ..read more