Taking CARE: Infrastructure And Resiliency For Those In Need
In a country that prides itself on providing the basic tools necessary for citizens to flourish, the water and wastewater infrastructure in much of America is letting communities down. The need for costly repairs in places where residents struggle to make ends meet have sent public employees scrambling for advice and funding. A select few have found hope in WaterCARE.
The U.S. EPA’s WaterCARE program — the acronym representing “Community Assistance for Resiliency and Excellence” — is providing 10 communities around the country with money and technical assistance to revamp their drinking and wastewater infrastructures.
Each of the chosen communities maintains a population under 100,000 with household incomes below the median average. The EPA also required that they have a distinct need to address public health challenges and have recently demonstrated readiness for major infrastructure undertakings. Otherwise, the 10 locales are a mixed bag.
They include Buchanan County, VA; the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe of Montana; Gatesville, TX; the Hoopa Valley Tribe of California; Haines Borough, AK; Johnston, IA; Lawrence, MA; Selma, AL; The Township of South Orange, NJ; and Youngstown, OH.
“These were selected based on need and on their demonstrated commitment to improving the lives of their communities by maintaining effective and reliable water infrastructure systems,” an EPA representative said. “These communities often lack capacity and wherewithal and our assistance can leverage important and critical improvements.”
The City of Lawrence, MA, invested heavily in drinking and wastewater infrastructure at the turn of the 20th century when its population boomed. It was considered a pioneer in modern drinking water treatment, constructing the country’s first municipal slow sand filtration system, and then funds for infrastructure investment dried up. Today, the city’s underground infrastructure is in desperate need of rehabilitation and with the lowest median household income in the state, rate increases are met with stiff resistance from elected officials.
A representative from the EPA contacted the city with the chance to join WaterCARE.
“The EPA will help us develop design documents for flood resilience projects at our water treatment plant, will help us collect and analyze water quality data to make informed decisions, and will help us develop the framework for a working stormwater utility [through WaterCARE],” said Brian Pena, Lawrence’s water and sewer department commissioner.
WaterCARE is an offshoot of the agency’s Water Infrastructure and Resiliency Finance Center, which was launched early last year as part of a larger White House effort to promote public and private sector collaboration. For WaterCARE, the EPA allocated $500,000 to its national network of Environmental Finance Centers (EFCs), a trust that will be jointly managed by the EFCs at the University of North Carolina and the University of New Mexico.
The EFCs will be responsible for direct financial, managerial, and technical services to the WaterCARE communities. Each community will receive about $50,000 worth of services to be administered in the fiscal year of 2016 and completed in 2017.
Gatesville, TX, struggles with four fundamental infrastructure shortcomings: a main water transmission line without enough shutoff valves to allow for repairs during breaks, aged sewer lines subject to infiltration and inflow problems, a majority of water and wastewater distribution lines that are past useful life and would cost $40 million to replace, and unmanageable runoff problems stemming from commercial growth in what was once a farming community.
Bill Parry, Gatesville’s city manager, articulated these challenges on the EPA website and the next day received a call from the director of the Southwest EFC. She wanted to help the city through WaterCARE.
“The two major obstacles are a very low property tax base in a state that provides very limited state financial assistance to its municipalities and the fact that the three largest employers in the City of Gatesville are tax-exempt entities,” Parry said. “It is my hope that this program… can assist with the community outreach function so that the residents of Gatesville understand why their rates may have to be increased to address the problems.”
Currently, WaterCARE is developing a timeline to conduct an initial meeting with each community during which they will share their needs and goals and help to narrow down a list of assistance priorities. The EPA anticipates that the program will support public engagement and customer outreach, board education and training, rate and revenue analyses, asset management practices, financing options, fiscal sustainability plans, water efficiency studies, resiliency assessments, and regional partnerships.
“WaterCARE will work with community leaders to determine which combination of these financial planning and project development services is most appropriate for the community and will have the greatest impact,” the representative said.
On the Flathead Reservation in Western Montana, the Salish Kootenai Tribe operates 29 water and wastewater systems with an average age of 42 years. It struggles to provide adequate fire protection and many of the storage and wastewater facilities need to be restored. Suffering from high rates of unemployment, the residents struggle to afford their monthly water bills and the tribe loses money when operating its water system.
Aware of these struggles, an EPA representative called reservation authorities and asked if they would be interested in participating in the WaterCARE program.
“We feel this will be an excellent opportunity to help rejuvenate our aging water and wastewater systems,” said Bud Gillin, division manager of the Salish Kootenai Housing Authority. “My expectations from this program are finding finance opportunities that can look at our situation independently, providing financial services that meet our needs knowing we are not a typical water and sewer operation. This will require consideration on many fronts and if we can make it work, it may give us the ability to share our newfound knowledge and opportunities with other reservations that are in need as well.”
While the EPA does not have any plans to expand this program in the near future, it does expect other struggling communities around the country to benefit from the WaterCARE by following the examples it sets.
“Case studies of the project successes will be shared to support decision-making for other communities that have similar water infrastructure financing needs,” the EPA representative said. “These case studies will help similar communities broadly think about ways to prioritize water infrastructure improvements and identify options for funding these investments.”
Others dealing with the same level of disrepair without the benefit of direct federal intervention may see that as poor consolation. But for the residents of 10 lucky communities, WaterCARE could make a world of difference.