The Clean Watersheds Needs Survey and Stormwater Needs

The Clean Watersheds Needs Survey (CWNS) is conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assess the capital costs (or 'needs') to meet the water quality goals of the Clean Water Act and address water quality-related environmental and public health concerns. Needs are organized into categories based on project eligibilities in the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) program, a federal-state partnership that provides communities low-cost financing for a wide range of water quality infrastructure projects. Recent legislation has expanded the number and types of projects eligible for loans through the CWSRF program. These changes, and the elapsed time since the last data collection in 2012 , prompted EPA to conduct an extensive review of the CWNS. A key result was the conclusion by internal, state, and other external partners that stormwater-related projects are a substantial category of need that was significantly underestimated in previous surveys. EPA intends to capture this category to the greatest extent possible as severe weather events bring renewed focus to stormwater management throughout the country. To work towards this objective, EPA collaborated with state-level partners to design a new data entry portal and streamline the documentation requirements for submitting needs. In addition, cost estimation tools based upon the Integrated Decision Support Tool's (iDST) Life Cycle Costing Modules for stormwater systems have been developed to help small communities estimate their stormwater needs. These EPA tools include inputs for estimating green and graywater infrastructure costs such as green roofs, constructed wetlands, and storage tanks. State-provided data through survey participation are critical to validating the models within these tools and will lay the groundwork for more comprehensive modeling efforts in the future. The results of the CWNS will be published in a Report to Congress to be used by Congress and state legislators in their budgeting efforts. These data, crucial to infrastructure planning and academic research, will be available to the public through an online platform.