Green Infrastructure
The CWSRF can fund the "capital costs" of green infrastructure projects with direct water quality benefits. Capital costs include traditional infrastructure expenditures (such as pipes, pumps and treatment plants), as well as unconventional infrastructure costs (like land conservation, tree plantings, equipment purchases, planning and design, environmental cleanups and even the development and initial delivery of environmental education programs). One of the few things the CWSRF cannot fund is the operation and maintenance costs of a project.
An increasing effort to promote innovation and the use of green infrastructure has been seen in recent proposed legislation related to increasing authorized appropriations for the CWSRF. The Water Quality Protection and Job Creation Act of 2011 (H.R. 3145) would have required states to use “no less than 20 percent” of the amount of grants made in a fiscal year for sewer overflow to “carry out projects to control municipal combined sewer overflows and sanitary sewer overflows through the use of green infrastructure, water and energy efficiency improvements, and other environmentally innovative activities."
Similarly, the Water Infrastructure Financing Act (S. 1005) stipulates that after enactment, an “Innovative Technology and Alternative Approaches Grant Program” should be established to provide grants to, and enter into contracts and cooperative agreements with higher education institutions, National Laboratories, and other appropriate entities for reaserach and development of “innovative and alternative technologies to improve water quality, drinking water supply, or water use efficiency and conservation."
Types of projects that may be selected for funding under S.1005 would include those that inter alia increase the effectiveness and efficiency of water and wastewater infrastructure through the use of integrated water resource management; and increase the effectiveness and efficiency of public water systems, including water source protection, water use reduction, water collection, storage, and treatment and reuse of rainwater, stormwater, and graywater.
Read more about this topic: Clean Water State Revolving Fund, Addressing Climate Change
Famous quotes containing the word green:
“Therefore awake! make haste, I say,
And let us, without staying,
All in our gowns of green so gay
Into the Park a-maying!”
—Unknown. Sister, Awake! (L. 9–12)