Using State Revolving Funds to Build Climate-Resilient Communities
This report was developed by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to support the integration of community level climate resiliency solutions into State Revolving Fund (SRF) policies. NRDC describes how to incorporate water efficiency, green infrastructure, and flood risk reduction into SRFs, and provides examples of states and municipalities already experiencing successes with these approaches.
According to the report, the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) and the the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) can be used for community level climate resiliency projects. These funds provide critical support for a variety of drinking water, wastewater treatment and stormwater management projects and, increasingly, address challenges from natural disasters.
NRDC suggests that both SRFs can support responses to a range of issues such as flooding, water scarcity, and infrastructure resiliency, however, they have historically been underutilized for these purposes. In order to promote climate-resilient communities, NRDC recommends the development of SRF policies that incorporate (1) water efficiency, (2) green infrastructure, and (3) flood risk reduction.
In section A of the report, four recommendations of complementary approaches for integrating water efficiency into DWSRF and CWSRF programs are described. In Section B, NRDC illustrates that the EPA and the states have ample legal authority to implement these policies. Section C highlights a number of states already using these approaches or similar ones.
Section D provides examples of water and wastewater utilities that have successfully used (or are currently using) water conservation strategies to reduce water demand and the costs of water and wastewater infrastructure.
Publication Date: June 2014
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