MA Water infrastructure Finance Commission releases Initial Report

  

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The MA WIFC (Water Infrastructure Finance Commission) was established by the Legislature in 2009 to develop a water infrastructure finance plan for the Commonwealth and its municipalities. Governor Patrick appointed formal Norfolk Ram employee Representative Carolyn Dykema as the leading House member.

To develop this plan, the WIFC is using data from different sources:

• municipal officials, water department and water district officials
• groups and agencies interested in water policy
• environmental and consumer  protection groups
• professionals that work in water resources engineering including BSCES

This past fall, four public hearings were held throughout the Commonwealth. The WIFC attended these hearings and analyzed the data taken from then.

This past June, the WIFC released an initial report, Toward Financial Sustainability, that summarizes its findings about these hearings and includes Commission’s research.

This initial report deals mainly with seven themes that WIFC identified to investigate:

• Aging water systems: the water and wastewater facilities in Massachusetts are nearing the end of their intended service life.
• Increasing costs of environmental compliance: many municipalities in Massachusetts have to improve or upgrade the systems in their level of treatment to meet environmental requirements, treating wastewater and improving drinking water quality.
• Growth requires new and/or expanded infrastructures: there is a need to invest in new infrastructure to address demands due to commercial or residential growth or emerging problems with stormwater, private wells or septic systems.
• Increasing costs to pay off curent debt: less funding is available and debt costs are too high in Massachusetts and prevent the municipalities from investing in maintenance and expansion projects.
• Stormwater mitigation costs are looming: there will be new federal stormwater regulations that will lead to substantial investments in compliance by municipalities without a funding source.
• New requirements for operations, maintenance, and emergencies: investment at a sustained level will be required.
• The public has little understanding of the systems that supply and protect its water: people do not appreciate the cost of water infrastructure and it varies greatly between communities.

The WIFC organized working group meetings in order to collect more information and recommendations for the final report.  Fourteen questions have been studied as recommendations to add to the final report.  Some of which are:

• Fund an asset-based analysis of the gap between projected needs and revenues
• Use a two-pronged approach to lower the Need Gap that reduces costs and increases funding
• Adopt USEPA Sustainable Infrastructure guidelines
• Establish a new ‘ Water Preservation Fund’ or ‘Blue Community Act’ to provide a new sustained revenue stream to assist cities and towns in their water infrastructure investments
• Invest in Massachusetts as a hub of innovation in the field of water, wastewater and stormwater management 

 The main goal of these reports and the WIFC is to educate the public on water infrastructure and especially on its value and cost.

If you have any question about Water Infrastructure, please contact John McAllister at jmcallister@norfolkram.com or at (508) 747 - 7900 x 117.

Information in this article taken from Sept 2011, article by Peter A. Richardson, published in BSCES News.