When the five small water systems in Hampton County, South Carolina decided to band together to create the Lowcountry Regional Water System (LRWS), they, like many other small water systems across the country, faced a number of managerial and financial … Read more

Successful and long-lasting businesses are all about capturing and creating value. Value creation or value added can broadly be defined as taking an action where the benefits of the action exceed the costs of the action. For example, value creation … Read more

It can be hard being a water utility when nobody needs you. Or worse yet, when you have to push people away. But the news seems rife with such stories of unrequited demand for service from water utilities that invested … Read more

It’s college football season again, and thoughts among many in the South, and elsewhere, turn to tailgating and touchdowns, hot dogs and sodas, field goals and fun. (Here in Chapel Hill, we like to remember alumnus Andy Griffith’s famous 1953 … Read more

As the green infrastructure (GI) approach to water management gains momentum, the budget process needs to adapt to some of the characteristics that make green distinct from the more traditional gray infrastructure approach. As communities are embarking on GI, shortcomings … Read more

If you’ve been on a college campus lately (or received your annual alumni donation request letter), you know that colleges and universities are increasingly focused on “green” initiatives that improve sustainability and reduce campus-wide energy use. While the EPA’s proposed … Read more

This summer, the Environmental Finance Center is taking its interest in how environmental projects are funded on the road through a three-week Applied International Environmental Finance program in Quito, Ecuador.  The EFC, in collaboration with TripleSalto –a nonprofit organization that generates integral … Read more

The challenges associated with designing and implementing water conservation finance strategies are multifaceted. First, stakeholders must agree on the initial environmental problem and forge an agreement of action. Second, participants must identify who should pay for protection efforts and where … Read more

Many government-owned wastewater systems in the United States are enterprise funds.  That is, they are business-like units within the overall government that should be self-sustaining, taking their revenue from the rates and fees charged to wastewater customers rather than from … Read more

This is Part 2 of a 2 part blog post on utility financial risk. Part 1 focuses on utility revenue risk, and Part 2 focuses on utility debt risk. In our first blog post on utility financial risk, we discussed … Read more