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]]>Since 1998, the ASCE has prepared a comprehensive assessment of the nation’s major infrastructure systems using letter grades for each category and a concise but replicable methodology to analyse all aspects of system performance.
In terms of water infrastructure, the report assesses dams (D+), drinking water (C-), inland waterways (C-), levees (D+), stormwater (D) and wastewater (D+).
This year’s report finds nearly 50% of the grades increasing for the 18 categories assessed, crediting this to recent federal investments to improve US infrastructure.
The report recommends a comprehensive agenda over the next four years to sustain investment, prioritise resilience, and advance forward-thinking policies and innovations.
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]]>The post Digital data analysis – the devil is in the detail appeared first on The Source.
]]>When we think about the digital transformation of the global water industry, we immediately start to jump to concepts such as digital twins, 3D physical models, and, of course, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. All of these technologies and their adoption into the mainstream are important as we move to a modern water industry. However, underpinning all of these technologies, to a greater or lesser extent, is data.
Data transformation
For me, the fundamental start to any data transformation journey (although this has been an unpopular opinion in the past) is stakeholder engagement. From the CEO of a water operating utility to the frontline operatives and technicians, there is a need for data and situational awareness – an understanding of how everything is operating from the grand scale of the whole utility to the individual scale of a single treatment works or pumping station.
Nowadays, in a water utility environment, all of this data is pushed into a data lake, or whatever data repository you choose (lake, pond, ocean, have all been touted). I believe the distinction is the size of data you have and whether it has been structured or is unstructured. This last point of whether the data is structured or unstructured is the important one here, and was the subject of an IWA project on meta-data that was concluded earlier in 2024.
Meta-data collection
IWA’s Meta-Data Collection and Organization (MetaCO) Task Group, led by Kris Villez, aimed to describe a number of data models – i.e., structured approaches to the management and storage of meta-data – that have been deployed successfully in recent years. In addition, its scientific and technical report included:
- Guidelines aimed at avoiding duplication of efforts and databases
- Current experience with applicable standards, such as open architectures, including Open Geospatial Consortium WaterML
- The potential of recently developed technologies, including block chain and ontology-based tools.
Meta-data collection will be essential to underpin the data lakes that are currently being proposed within the industry or are actively growing in size – giving the data the structure that it needs to be used effectively in a number of different applications.
Streamlining and accessibility
The industry as a whole has been brilliant at collecting data for a single purpose, but when a single piece of data is needed for multiple purposes – and potentially in multiple different databases or models – this is when things historically became unstuck. As the industry’s collection of data is increasing significantly, the lack of meta-data becomes a significantly larger problem as we enter the realms of big data.
UK duration monitoring programme
An example of this is the event duration monitoring programme in the UK and how it ties in with different datasets. Between 2014 and 2022, around 14,000 event duration monitors were installed on combined storm overflows. However, some of these were within the wastewater network and some were on the overflows from storm tanks.
The UK is moving – from a regulatory point of view – to install monitors on overflows to storm tanks, along with monitors on emergency overflows, in addition to flow meters measuring compliance with flow to treatment conditions across the country. This is on top of the water quality monitors that are going to be installed up- and downstream of all overflows to the environment.
From a non-regulatory perspective, the water companies are also using sensing and machine learning to look at wastewater network performance and blockages, with data coming in from tens of thousands of sensors.
What is not available currently is a system to join together all of this data so that it may be operated in a logical way. This, for example, could include sewer network level monitors working with regulatory event duration monitors to give an idea of the situational awareness of network performance – something that is happening with suppliers, however. In addition, current network performance indicators could work with the front end monitoring of wastewater treatment works in a way that is compatible with the water quality monitoring that is going to be installed over the coming decade.
By bringing this data together with models of the wastewater network, treatment works and the riverine environment, we would have a very powerful tool to not only monitor the performance of wastewater systems, but also their impact on riverine environments.
Underpinning the success of this is the availability and quality of the data – a subject that was addressed in the MetaCO scientific and technical report, ‘Digital Water: The value of meta-data for water resource recovery facilities’, which adds to other IWA work undertaken on this subject.
Garbage in, garbage out
We have all heard, or even potentially used, the phrase ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’. It was a phrase that was first used by William Mellin in the 1950s when the majority of instrumentation within the water industry was still mechanical. (Gustaf Olsson’s book, ICA and me, provides an insightful history of the development of instrumentation, control and automation [ICA] in water and wastewater.)
Mellin highlighted that if you put poor quality data into a computerised system, you will, of course, get garbage out – the computerised system will not realise what is and what is not useable data. For an industry that is increasingly using machine learning and trying to make sense of huge datasets to garner insights, poor quality data would make it impossible to see the wood for the trees.
While it may be laudable to collect data for the sake of collecting data, in reality there is a cost to gathering data, and if the value of that data is not recognised, then its collection will not be maintained. This point has been highlighted by an IWA Digital Water Programme White Paper on digital transformation and instrumentation, ‘Digital Water: The role of Instrumentation in Digital Transformation’, which proposed the concept of the instrumentation life-cycle.
Instrumentation life-cycle
The first part of the life-cycle asks the user to define the ‘instrumentation need’ – or, taking it up a step, the ‘data need’. If the need for the instrument is understood and the data that it provides has a value higher than its cost, then the data quality should be ensured.
Understanding uncertainty
The next step is to understand the uncertainty associated with the data, which was a subject that was covered in another IWA Digital Water Programme White Paper, ‘Measurement Uncertainty in Digital Transformation’, published in early 2024.
Next steps to digital transformation
As the water industry transforms digitally, ‘digital tools’ are going to help the sector address global challenges and targets – most importantly, the acceleration of the drive to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6, access to safe water and sanitation for all.
To manage water effectively, the industry as a whole needs to adopt the concepts that digital water offers. But we need to get the fundamentals right and ensure that the data collected is accurate and in a format that can be used. For this to be achieved, we need to garner the situational awareness to which I referred, to ensure data quality and understand its limitations through our knowledge of measurement uncertainty, so that we know what the data is for and where it fits into the system as a whole. Only by doing this will the water industry apply meta-data effectively.
More information
Digital Water: The value of meta-data for water resource recovery facilities, iwa-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/IWA_2021_Meta-data_IWA.pdf
Olsson, G., ICA and me – A subjective review. Water Research (2012),46, (6), 1585-1624
See: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0043135411008487?via%3Dihub
Digital Water: The role of Instrumentation in Digital Transformation,
iwa-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IWA_2020_Instrumentation_WEB.pdf
Measurement Uncertainty in Digital Transformation,
iwa-network.org/publications/digital-water-measurement-uncertainty-in-digital-transformation
The author: Oliver Grievson is an Associate Director at the global engineering consultancy AtkinsRéalis and a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Digital Water at the University of Exeter. He is also Chair of IWA’s Digital Water Programme.
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]]>The post Smart solutions – a Nigerian answer to access appeared first on The Source.
]]>Achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.1 – universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water – is a critical global challenge. While developed nations generally meet water accessibility standards, sub-Saharan Africa struggles with significant deficits in basic water services, affecting more than 336 million people. Nigeria exemplifies these challenges, with more than 40 million Nigerians lacking access to improved water sources and nearly half of its water infrastructure assets being non-functional or failed. This poses a critical issue given Nigeria’s rapid population growth. Addressing these infrastructure failures and ensuring sustainability is crucial to achieving SDG 6.1 in Nigeria.
Why are infrastructure assets in Nigerian communities failing?
Water infrastructure, such as boreholes, often fail because of issues ranging from poor planning in the pre-construction phase to lack of maintenance post-construction. A systematic review conducted by Adeoti et al. (2023), published in Water Policy, the official journal of the World Water Council, identified 265 factors causing infrastructure asset failures based on the analysis of 15 studies. These factors were grouped into 52 distinct themes and categorised into technical, financial, environmental, social, political, and institutional factors.
The complexity of these multifaceted issues requires a comprehensive approach and framework to navigate. However, there is no such framework in Nigeria. Consequently, the authors proposed a sustainability framework for water infrastructure in Nigeria, encompassing all stages of water development.
Creating a framework for sustainable projects
Developing a comprehensive framework requires an iterative research cycle based on a transdisciplinary research method. This method draws knowledge from various sectors, including industry experts, academia, government officials, and end users.
Through transdisciplinary PhD research, we have been dedicated to addressing the high failure rate of water infrastructure in Nigeria. We conduct our research by creating conceptual solutions, piloting them, collecting and analysing data, and continuously refining our approach. This iterative process helps us understand challenges, identify effective strategies, and build a sustainable framework for water infrastructure.
Our recent research (Adeoti et al. 2024), published in IWA’s journal Water Supply, challenges the prevalent assumption that state-level poverty metrics are reliable indicators of community water infrastructure and poverty conditions. The state-wide multi-dimensional poverty index often fails to capture the nuanced and localised challenges faced by individual communities. Precision mapping and comprehensive surveys are essential for identifying specific community needs and interrelated challenges.
The study also examined borehole failure trajectories and classified states of functionality to mirror the actual conditions encountered on the ground, improving understanding of how boreholes transition from full operation to total failure and abandonment. The examination noted the lack of functionality monitoring and the absence of preventive maintenance as contributing factors. The study proposed the need for smart infrastructure for monitoring and data collection, enabling historical trend analysis and pre-emptive maintenance. Consequently, the study proposed that a holistic approach to water infrastructure sustainability must include mapping and constructing smart water infrastructure to ensure long-term sustainability.
What is mapping and why is it important?
As previously mentioned, more than 40 million Nigerians lack access to clean drinking water, yet the precise locations of these individuals remain unknown. Addressing people’s problems effectively requires understanding of where they live and the interrelated challenges they face. A mapping project aims to ascertain the locations of people suffering from extreme water poverty, identify the interrelated challenges they face, and gather necessary data to develop tailored and sustainable solutions for their communities.
A pilot project to test the feasibility of this mapping project was conducted across 1696 communities in three Nigerian states. The outcome demonstrated that mapping is essential, important, and achievable for creating tailored solutions that meet community needs and ensure longevity. The data on the mapped communities is kept up to date through communication with community caretakers identified during the initial mapping.
How smart water infrastructure can solve the problem
Smart Water Kiosk case study
Smart water infrastructure, leveraging Internet of Things (IoT) technology, enhances the efficiency and sustainability of water supply systems. By integrating sensors and smart meters, these systems collect extensive data, enabling proactive maintenance and strategic water resource management. This case study examines how the implementation of an initial Smart Water Kiosk (SWK) in a mapped community provided key insights, ultimately leading to the development of a more advanced mobile SWK.
Implementation and insights from the initial Smart Water Kiosk
The SWK was introduced as a pilot project to test the viability of smart water infrastructure. It was equipped with IoT devices capable of monitoring water flow, detecting leaks, and tracking the volume of water sold or dispensed. Over a three-year period (2021 to 2024), the SWK collected extensive data that proved crucial in assessing its effectiveness and guiding necessary adjustments.
Initially, the kiosk achieved a Self-Sustainability Rating (SSR) of 22%. However, uncoordinated aid efforts from another NGO, which installed a free-use water well within the community, led to an overlap of aid that drastically reduced this rating to zero. This overlap caused a significant drop in kiosk usage as residents opted for the free option, undermining their willingness to pay and threatening the kiosk’s sustainability. Consequently, water had to be provided for free to prevent abandonment. Despite this challenge, the kiosk eventually achieved a 100% Sustainability Rating (SR) through external support and maintained a high Reliability Rating (RR) of 97.1%, remaining operational for 1063 out of 1095 days.
Development of the mobile Smart Water Kiosk
The challenges and insights from the initial SWK informed the development of a mobile SWK, equipped with a water treatment plant. Designed to address the issue of aid overlap, the mobile kiosk offers flexibility, allowing it to be relocated when no longer needed or when similar aid initiatives arise in a community. This adaptability ensures that the infrastructure remains functional, sustainable, and effectively serves communities with genuine water needs, preventing redundancy and ensuring optimal resource utilisation.
Recommendations
The SWK case study demonstrates the significant potential of smart water infrastructure in addressing water poverty and infrastructure failures in Nigeria. The iterative process of designing, piloting, data collection, analysis, and redesign proved essential in developing resilient and sustainable solutions that cater to specific community needs. Mapping played a crucial role in this process, ensuring interventions were both effective and aligned with the realities faced by communities.
To build on these insights and ensure the long-term sustainability of water infrastructure projects, the following policy recommendations are proposed:
- Coordinate aid with centralised water management: Establish a centralised water asset database to prevent aid overlap and ensure efficient resource allocation. This system would help coordinate all water infrastructure projects, directing efforts towards communities with genuine needs, thereby avoiding redundancy and ensuring that contributions are complementary and sustainable.
- Adopt an iterative research and development approach: Implement an iterative research and development cycle, treating each water project as an ongoing pilot for innovation. This approach facilitates systematic data collection, identifies best practices, and allows continuous improvement. By refining smart water management practices based on real time data and community feedback, every project contributes valuable insights to enhance the design and implementation of future water infrastructure initiatives.
By learning from data and analysis, combined with lived experience, and a model that can adapt to community needs, this project has evolved, enabling it to be more flexible, sustainable and resilient.
The authors
Oluwagbemi Samuel Adeoti is a transdisciplinary PhD researcher at the University of Technology, Sydney, and CEO of Fairaction International
Saravanamuthu Vigneswaran is Emeritus Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Technology, Sydney, and an IWA Distinguished Fellow
More information
For more details and access to the mapped communities, please visit:
https://target6.1map.management
doi.org/10.2166/ws.2024.127
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]]>The post Experts address water’s hidden numbers appeared first on The Source.
]]>Two IWA Specialist Groups met in Livorno, Italy to approach water infrastructure problems through the lens of economics, statistics, finance, and asset management.
The joint conference convened 134 delegates at plenary and parallel sessions, which covered topics such as Utility Bankability in Europe, or the Circular Economy in the Water Sector, while highlighting the major financial challenges facing utilities.
Delegates debated current topics beyond technical issues in the sector, said Jaime Gabriel Silva, to cover water governance, explore policy implementation, or assess the impact of regulations through water utility performance analysis.
An “opportunities-focused perspective” looked at the opportunities arising from sludge, greenhouse gas emissions and carbon trading with sessions linking sanitation to energy and food security.
Speakers included Patricia Castellarnau of the European Investment Bank, Hannah Leckie, at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and Andrea Guerrini of the Azienda Servizi Ambientali.
The combined effort came together under the two chairs of the organising IWA Specialist Groups–Ed Smeets of Water Economics and Statistics, and Helena Alegre of Strategic Asset Management.
Parallel sessions on water, economics and finance covered 68 papers presented as oral presentations, which included economic valuation; tariffs and regulation; communication strategy; water demand; wastewater treatment plant management–cost benefit analysis; benchmarking and efficiency; and regulation, governance and policy.
On the asset management side, delegates discussed: finance and infrastructure; sustainability and sustainable solution; risk management; performance assessment of wastewater treatment plants and water reuse; asset management of stormwater; agriculture water management; and cost analysis and planning.
Speakers discussed methodologies, key indicators, case studies and difficulties to overcome in seeking long-term investments. Most approaches understood that, increasingly, the only way to obtain the necessary funding for the huge infrastructure costs ahead will be if you can economically justify investments.
“We believe that the themes under discussion were strongly appealing for the water community around the world with a well-balanced participation that allowed for a deep debate on the more actual water sector issues, as well as on the funding issues for the improvement of water infrastructures’ performance and sustainability, within a framework of growing risks and complexity,” said Silva.
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]]>The post Pipe manufacturers set to cash in on US water market, says new report appeared first on The Source.
]]>Pipe and hardware companies are poised to benefit from heightening concerns about US municipal water infrastructure with US$300 billion of forecasted capital expenditures over the next decade, according to a new report from Bluefield Research.
The report, US municipal pipe markets: trends, opportunities and a changing competitive landscape in water, forecasts that new and replaced pipe and hardware infrastructure will make up more than 57 percent of municipal utilities’ total capital spend until 2026.
“The public does not want to think, or even know, about the [2.5 million kilometres] of pipes underground, but hundreds of thousands of water main breaks and lead-tainted water have begun to put a spotlight on this historically overlooked sector,” said Reese Tisdale, President of Bluefield Research. “In fact, the average age of water pipes continues to climb–from 25 years in 1970 to 45 years in 2020–largely because of underinvestment.”
While municipal demand for pipe solutions, is expected to grow going forward, the pipe sector’s material profile, for water and wastewater, is also being reshaped. The report identifies that new spending by utilities and engineering firms has a strong preference for plastic pipes–PVC and HDPE–which account for US$97 billion of the ten- year total. The trend highlights the continued growth of these materials, largely because of cost.
Bluefield also identifies that the scale of investment going into upgrading pipe networks is already driving more innovative, smarter solutions to stay ahead of rising costs. Over US$2.7 billion will be directed towards asset condition assessment and pipeline monitoring through 2026, while operating expenditures on leakage management, alone, will total US$1 billion through the forecast period.
“Replacing water pipes is extremely labour intensive and costly, so utilities will increasingly be forced to look for ways to squeeze costs with more cost-effective materials, installation techniques, such as trenchless technologies, and network analysis,” said Tisdale. “Certainly adoption will take time but innovative solutions are in front of them.”
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]]>The post The power of social contracts in strengthening institutions appeared first on The Source.
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As the sixth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG6) gives us 15 years to achieve and maintain universal access to water, it’s easy to call for more infrastructure investments. What’s hard is leveraging funds into success without reliable management systems in place.
Water supply services are more than just physical infrastructure. They involve living institutions. These institutions must increasingly be able to anticipate, absorb and rapidly recover from disruptions, whether climatic, physical, social or economic. Indonesia has begun to appreciate this reality in dozens of small and medium-sized utilities.
Like many middle-income countries, Indonesia has a growing number of smaller cities and towns with rocketing demand for water services. Donors have rightly emphasised the need for pro-poor services within slums of megacities like Jakarta. But they overlook many small- to medium-sized cities that suffer under-performing utilities and can’t meet demand or bounce back from shocks.
So what is a resilient water institution? How will it interact with, and be held accountable to, the people it serves? One study suggests that the secret lies in forging alliances.
Recently, the International WaterCentre–together with Indonesia’s Planning and Development Agency (BAPPENAS) and Water Utility Association (PERPAMSI)–conducted a study. It reviewed small utilities of less than 10,000 connections, seeking ways to improve coordination and decision making capacity between key local water supply stakeholders: the utility, the local government, owner of the utility, and consumer groups.
At this small scale, a typical Indonesian utility struggles to generate enough revenue to pay its workers to respond to the rising demands of leaky pipe networks, water quality monitoring, financial oversight, customer services, planning and management.
To cover operational costs, local utilities can, in theory, negotiate higher tariffs with their government owners. In practice, many lack negotiation skills. They can’t justify why elected officials should support tariff hikes, perceived as against the interests of their constituents.
Their failure leaves institutions and their water services vulnerable to socio-economic unrest, material risks, and political protests. What little external support was available often drifted toward the purely technocratic. Outsiders invested in pumps and pipes, but offered scant funds to unlock sustained improvement in human services.
So rather than pour more money into the infrastructure of under-performing utilities, the Indonesian government took a step back, and took a hard look at the broader environment in which utilities operate.
As it did, it realised that decentralisation of water services has its merits. But too often it left utilities with insufficient and decaying infrastructure, unable to explain either the challenges they face, much less address them.
As a predictable result, dissatisfied customers complained to locally elected officials, who, in a vicious cycle, denied any requests for tariff reforms from the hapless utility. “Why would I pay for a higher unit cost of water,” said one customer, “when it is mostly air that comes out of my tap?”
With bilateral support from Australia, the Indonesian government has begun efforts to build trust between local utility partners, who can then share challenges, risks, and rewards. A supportive environment gives utilities a platform from which to negotiate tariff reforms, if they in turn can demonstrate small but consistent service delivery improvements. This social contract uses a three-stage process–initiation, formalising expectations, and implementing commitments–to discuss, identify and commit to actions towards a shared goal.
Partnership, trust, and accountability: these buzz words shape the universal and integrated nature of the SDGs. They also define resilient institutions, as prerequisites for social contracts. Yet they are too often lost in debates over “the economic pricing of water.”
Indonesia’s social contracts suggest how a partnership process can place trust at the centre of water pricing. Trust secures accountability between the ‘golden triangle’ of urban water actors, binding utility, customers and government. And the study found that the presence of trust was associated with higher adaptive capacity to climatic, economic or social shocks.
Still, trust rarely emerges on its own. Social contracts depend on external ‘honest brokers’ who seed the process and facilitate key steps. Among the leading visionaries for the social contract approach was Pak Nugroho Tri Utomo, BAPPENAS Director for Housing and Settlement. Utomo believed that the “benefits from a social contract process will only be harvested when the process has become ‘auto run’, and when local stakeholders can hold each other to account and there is little need for external facilitation in the process.”
Social contracts have been implemented in twelve unities. They are proving to be an effective framework for building local accountability, and unlocking improvements in service delivery. Scaled up, the approach may prove a significant tool that contributes to resilient service delivery in Indonesia, and beyond.
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]]>The post Embracing water as an asset appeared first on The Source.
]]>“We must find ways to merge managing the risk of water and embracing it as an asset, making sure that what we are left with are solutions that increase people’s quality of life in cities,” said Søholt. “People are attracted to water. We have positive associations with the sound and blue colour of water, all linked to our needs as humans. So naturally we see waterfront destinations come up all over the world and people congregating at these placed to enjoy the sound and activities surrounding water.”
Gehl are focused on building cities for people and making sure all their work benefits those that live, work and move around cities today. Integrated design solutions have been identified as one of the biggest challenges facing city authorities in getting people across different silos to work together.
One of Søholt’s key points was that there is a common denominator with all of the risks we are facing; people and their behavioural change, which need to be addressed in all the solutions that are being formulated.
When the city of Gothenburg were formulating its strategy a team was gathered across all the various departments to sit together in the same space in the harbour to come up with new solutions.
“It is unfortunately very seldom that I see this kind of totally integrated solution making and creative design leadership in cities around the world,” explained Søholt. “So we have to overcome this way of silo planning and move away from reactive governance where we think of planning as a linear process and move towards a much more proactive facilitative leadership model where the cities are actually engaging all the stakeholders to come up with not just good projects but with shared value. Something that we can see we are all benefitting from.”
The city of Copenhagen was highlighted as a leading example after the designing of a climate neighbourhood in the northern part of the city, where they have engaged local citizens through a local office where people can be involved in the design of plazas and streets.
Authorities have also recently created a green city strategy for the whole of Copenhagen. One of the elements in this strategy is planting 1,000 new trees in the city, where the citizens were asked to vote for the streets in most need of greening and climate adaptation design.
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]]>The post US make US$1 billion available for water infrastructure projects appeared first on The Source.
]]>The programme will provide long-term, low-cost credit assistance to creditworthy water projects. WIFIA provides another option for financing large infrastructure projects–generally at least US$20 million–in addition to the State Revolving Funds and bond market.
“The launch of the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act programme marks a huge step forward for modernising our nation’s aging water infrastructure,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “WIFIA gives us a new opportunity to provide billions of dollars in low-interest loans to communities to build large infrastructure projects, significantly accelerating investments that benefit our nation’s public health and water security for generations to come.”
WIFIA is available to state, local, and tribal governments; private entities; partnerships; and State Revolving Fund programmes. EPA estimates that funds appropriated to the WIFIA programme could be leveraged at a ratio greater than 50 to one, which means the US$17 million programme budget could allow EPA to make approximately US$1 billion in loans and stimulate about US$2 billion in total infrastructure investment.
Some of the projects that WIFIA enables the Environmental Protection Agency to provide assistance for include: drinking water treatment and distribution projects, wastewater conveyance and treatment projects, enhanced energy efficiency projects at drinking water and wastewater facilities, desalination, aquifer recharge, alternative water supply, and water recycling projects, and drought prevention, reduction, or mitigation projects.
EPA will evaluate projects using criteria such as the extent to which the project is nationally or regionally significant, helps maintain or protect public health or the environment, protects against extreme weather, and serves regions with significant water resource challenges.
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