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A new report issued by the Johnson Foundation called Financing Sustainable Water Infrastructure concludes that the financial health of our water systems is directly linked to their long-term sustainability.
Frequent readers of our blog will know that we often discuss the gap that exists between the need for capital investment in the water/wastewater sector, and the availability of both the necessary capital as well as the ability to repay debt. Indeed, our most recent blog post, Water Rate Affordability (Dec. 26, 2011), presents a [...]
So much has been said about our nation’s failing water infrastructure that another blog post would hardly do the topic justice. We’ve done plenty of them here already (here, for example). There have been many who have done well to help us identify the problem, and the problem is an imminently solvable one. We know [...]
Great vision isn’t always attributed to leaders of the nation’s wastewater utilities. It’s an unfair reality that when great leaders of our local, state, and national water and wastewater industry are successful, the natural result is that everyone quickly forgets that there was ever a problem that required any vision to begin with. Yet, there [...]
Readers of this blog know by now that the financial impact of water and sewer infrastructure needs in local communities is a big one. For moderately sized utilities, the impact is big enough, for very small utilities, the impacts can be completely unmanageable as seen in the below linked article from The News Star in [...]
StepWise Utility Advisors was honored today to lecture at the Wyoming Association of Municipalities hosted this year in Sheridan, Wyoming. Our workshop, entitled Ahead of the Curve: Beating the Infrastructure Funding Gap with Sustainable Management Practices is a detailed discussion that offers municipal water and sewer utility owners with tangible steps for producing sustainable financial [...]
President Obama’s 2012 budget will include provisions for a national Infrastructure Bank. In comments provided at the US Treasury blog, Treasury Secretary Geithner said that the bank would leverage private money to “…support projects that produce significant returns on our investment.” The structure of the infrastructure bank, based on the blog post, appears to include [...]
Public Works magazine is one of many, perhaps the latest, reporting on the huge gap in funding between our water and sewer infrastructure needs and current annual spending. The problem isn’t new. Water and sewer infrastructure have been aging unabated for 50 years or more and its no surprise to anyone that water pipes, pumps, [...]
If you watched 60 Minutes (CBS) on Sunday 12/19 then you heard a story about how the States are in big trouble with their budget deficits that renowned Wall Street analyst Meredith Whitney says is likely to lead to a wave of municipal bond defaults. The prologue for failing municipalities looks like this: the State [...]
Another example of how expensive it can be when infrastructure fails. In this case, a water main break covered an entire house in ice.
Once again we have a graphic image of what happens when infrastructure fails. The costs of infrastructure failure are not localized to utilities. Sometimes, the costs become very personal, as is the case here. You can read the full story from this event here http://www.wtop.com/?sid=2187215&nid=25
It’s not that affordability hasn’t always been a concern, but a recent look at some important data now suggests that affordability has become a major concern for providers of water and sewer utility services in the US. For the first time since the 1950′s, personal income in the United States has experienced negative annual growth [...]
At last count (and still counting), the US Federal Budget deficit stands at $1.43 trillion, and the national debt is now $13.2 trillion. Those are big dollars, but the US is a mighty economic engine even in these recessionary times. Still, the national debt is now over 90% of the nation’s entire economic output for [...]
In the water and sewer utility, costs tend to pile up quick and they are seemingly endless if not formidable. As an industry, water and sewer utility services are among the most capital intensive anywhere. There are very few industries in the world where one has to invest so much capital to produce even the [...]
In a report published in February, the US Conference of Mayors is predicting that spending on water and wastewater systems will increase by by as much as four times. Depending on how fast the country’s population grows, spending could double, triple, or quadruple, according to the report. We’ve posted the full report here, which is [...]
The latest NY Times article on water infrastructure does a good job of demonstrating the seemingly impossible issues between the great need for reinvestment in water and sewer infrastructure, the reluctance of the government owners of those systems to actually pay for that investment, and the increasing consequences of infrastructure failure. The article focuses on [...]
In a recent Op-Ed in the NYT, writer Bob Herbert regales us with the story of Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell who is evidently on a personal crusade to cure America’s infrastructure crisis. An advocate for increased investment in infrastructure, we are told that Rendell personally increased Pennsylvania’s infrastructure spending by roughly triple only to see [...]
As water and sewer infrastructure across the country ages, deteriorates, and eventually fails the cost of replacing it all becomes a growing concern. The cost of replacements is fantastically large, and it doesn’t help that these needs have been largely unplanned, meaning that these large costs tend to come as a shock to oblivious rate-paying [...]
We came across this news article last night and thought it was a good example of strong financial planning by the community of Laurel, Mississippi. In this community, despite an identified need of over $11 million in line replacement costs, the city leaders used a five and ten-year financial plan to determine that they could [...]
A VP for United Water New Rochelle recently published a letter explaining the reasoning behind the company’s requested rate increase that is now being considered by the NY commission (click here to read the full letter). He brings out a couple of points in the letter that bear additional commentary. “Capital improvements are not a [...]
There is an excellent blog entry at Water News Update listing the top 10 infrastructure fail stories for 2009. Water News Update tracked most of these stories, and many of them were also discussed here on the StepWise blog. If you read this blog, you will recognize many in the WNU list. Water News Update: [...]
For those who remain skeptical that water/sewer infrastructures is not one of the most critical (and expensive) issues facing the United States right now, you can easily see several examples of major infrastructure failures at the following links: Baltimore – 42″ water main breaks creating an urban river in seconds. Pittsburgh – water main breaks [...]
When considering the total costs of the crumbling “wet” infrastructure (water/sewer utility infrastructure) around the US, the financial cost of actually repairing and replacing the assets is something that all by itself is able to cause severe sticker shock. Estimates from the American Society of Civil Engineers show that our drinking water infrastructure is underfunded [...]
Utility managers need to focus more effort on managing money if they are to be successful in asset management. Aging infrastructure costs are large and represent a major risk of rate shock for customers. Managing expectations means quantifying these impacts in a financial plan and keeping the asset management plan in line with financial capacity.
Water and sewer rates can sneak up and damage your utility if you aren’t actively managing ratepayer expectations. Planning ahead, using projections of simple recurring costs like water and sewer rehabilitation and replacements is just one example. In this example, we see what happened to one community that didn’t plan: 122% sewer rate increase, 67% [...]