Federal Water Infrastructure Financing: Recent Surge in Federal Capitalization Comes with New Opportunities and New Requirements

The Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) has seen a surge in funding in recent years. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provided 4 billion to build wastewater infrastructure and stimulate the economy. That was later augmented by 2.1 billion from the FY 2010 appropriation for the CWSRF. Along with this additional funding come a number of new requirements and new opportunities. Provisions of both ARRA and the FY 2010 appropriation direct how a subset of the fund is to be used. However, the CWSRF programs still maintain their flexibility to select which projects receive funding and have been able to seize the opportunities presented by these new requirements. This manuscript provides up-to-date information pertaining to federal water infrastructure financing available to communities through the CWSRF and describes how state CWSRF programs have met the new requirements tied to increased federal funding of the program.