Water Online the Magazine gives Water & Wastewater Engineers and end-users a venue to find project solutions and source valuable product information. We aim to educate the engineering and operations community on important issues and trends.
Issue link: http://wateronline.epubxp.com/i/110987
Financing Innovative Financing: The Creation Of The West Coast Infrastructure Exchange West Coast partners ���raise their game��� by increasing funding for water infrastructure. By Mike Matichich S tate and local governments throughout North America are finding their ability to finance infrastructure through traditional municipal bond markets increasingly constrained as a result of both reduced public budgets and market conditions. This capacity restriction comes at a time when demand for new infrastructure and for infrastructure improvement and innovation is increasing. Estimates of the 30-year infrastructure investment need for three West Coast states and British Columbia easily top $1 trillion.1 Water projects alone are expected to cost, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers: ��� an extra $4.6 billion a year in California (2012 data); ��� an extra $2.8 billion over the next 20 years in Oregon (2009 data); ��� an extra $6.7 billion over the next 20 years in Washington (2009 data); we���ll need to raise our game. Innovative partnerships like the West Coast Exchange can help us do that by overcoming financial, regulatory, and political hurdles and facilitating investment in long-term, job-creating projects.��� No projects have yet been selected, but the WCX is laying the groundwork to identify and select a first wave of projects for investment. During this startup phase, a WCX manager will be recruited and participating governments will work together to define the framework for the evaluation of candidate projects. Defining Objectives The participants��� goal is to develop an innovative infrastructure financing system that provides cost savings and better collaboration, and ultimately makes projects more successful by helping to broker connections between public projects and private sources of capital. Some examples The ���Infrastructure Acceleration Layer Cake��� shows how regional CH2M HILL identified in its exchanges such as WCX can play a pivotal role in driving national infrastructure renewal. report on how the WCX could A New Model Emerges achieve its objectives include: These dynamics ��� the escalat��� Bundle similar projects together, which would allow for ing need for infrastructure and constrained public budgets streamlining of term sheets and allow smaller projects to ��� mean that states need to look at new models to deliver qualify for different financing options. infrastructure projects. A new initiative, the West Coast ��� Manage projects more efficiently through Infrastructure Exchange (WCX) was created to do just that ���performance-based��� partnerships. ��� bridge this funding gap by helping West Coast states and ��� Facilitate collaboration between government officials, British Columbia explore alternative funding methods, includindustry experts, and innovators. ing the potential to use private capital to finance critical infra��� Collect data and make expertise available to governments structure projects. New York-based Rockefeller Foundation that may have little experience designing and financing provided start-up grants worth $750,000 to the Oregon State projects. Treasury to get the Exchange up and running. A formal announcement of the formation of the WCX, ���The WCX, operating as a multi-jurisdictional forum to including release of a CH2M HILL study on the initiative, took bring public project proponents together with private invesplace on November 14, 2012, where the governor of Oregon, tors, is explicitly designed to help reduce overall infrastrucJohn Kitzhaber said, ���To build a 21st century infrastructure, 34 wateronline.com ��� Water Online The Magazine