The White House’s Legislative Outline for Rebuilding Infrastructure in America, which was released early this year, outlines the President’s proposed steps to encourage increased state, local, and private investment in infrastructure. And though you’ve probably heard a lot about it, … Read more

Water and sanitation access challenges are often thought of in the extremes—lack of a clean water source in a village or community or lack of indoor plumbing in homes. But the reality is that many individuals living in or around … Read more

The Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (EFC at UNC) has created several free resources that are relevant to water utilities in addressing the challenges and questions related to resilience and disaster recovery. These resources … Read more

The EFC at UNC worked with Abt Environmental Research on a Water Research Foundation funded study entitled “Customer Assistance Programs for Multi-Family Residential and other Hard to Reach Customers.” The primary objective of this project was to provide water utilities … Read more

Access to clean and safe water does not come easily. While we may have mental images of people in distant parts of the world  spending their whole day traveling to and from water sources and preparing it so that it … Read more

We’re all in agreement that how you pay for it matters, but is it possible that when you pay for it matters too? Some utilities are experimenting with prepayment plans, in which customers pay in advance for a set amount … Read more

The Environmental Finance Center at The University of North Carolina recently completed a study which compiled and analyzed examples of alternative delivery models in nine communities across the country. This research was supported by EPA’s Water Infrastructure and Resiliency Finance Center and through partnership … Read more

In North Carolina, there are 305 active local government community water systems serving up to 3,300 people, and 60 active local government water systems serving 20,000 people or more. The large systems outperform the small systems on financial performance, and … Read more

What happens if a water utility collects less in revenues than it pays in expenditures in one year? It will raise some alarms, but some utilities might be able to weather that shortfall by dipping into their reserves and bounce … Read more

Here at the Environmental Finance Center, we work with water systems across the country to help them improve their financial and managerial capacity. While there are many reasons why it is important for water systems to have sound management and … Read more