North Carolina’s Statewide Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Master Plan: The Road to Viability

The North Carolina State Water Infrastructure Authority (Authority) was created by the North Carolina General Assembly to assess and make recommendations about the state’s water and wastewater infrastructure needs. One of the Authority’s key tasks was to define and address these needs through a first-of-its-kind State Water Infrastructure Master Plan.The Authority immediately recognized that the Master Plan needed to address issues beyond just the cost of water infrastructure. A holistic look at the challenges facing public water and wastewater utilities revealed that the state must also help utilities address the organizational and financial management challenges that may contribute to their physical infrastructure limitations.North Carolina will best be able to meet its water infrastructure needs by ensuring utilities are, or are on a path to be, viable systems. A viable system is one that functions as a business enterprise, establishes organizational excellence, and provides appropriate levels of infrastructure maintenance, operation, and reinvestment, including reserves for unexpected events, that allows the utility to provide reliable water services now and in the future. The state’s role is to foster the long-term viability of individual water and wastewater utilities.The North Carolina Local Government Commission and other key partners work closely with the Authority and the Division of Water Infrastructure (Division) in this work.