Notice of Funding Availability for Credit Assistance Under the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) Program

<NOTICE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <DEPDOC>[FRL 12139-01-OW]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Notice of Funding Availability for Credit Assistance Under the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of funding availability. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The purpose of this notice of funding availability (NOFA) is to solicit letters of interest (LOIs) from prospective borrowers seeking credit assistance from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) program. EPA estimates that it may lend approximately $6.5 billion to help finance approximately $13 billion in water infrastructure investment. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> LOIs submitted on or after October 1, 2024, will be reviewed using the scoring criteria outlined in this NOFA. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Prospective borrowers should submit all LOIs electronically via EPA's SharePoint site. To be granted access to the SharePoint site, prospective borrowers should contact <E T="03">wifia@epa.gov</E> and request a link to the SharePoint site, where they can securely upload their LOIs and then email <E T="03">wifia@epa.gov</E> once the complete LOI package has been uploaded to the SharePoint site. EPA will notify prospective borrowers that their LOI has been received via a confirmation email. Prospective borrowers can access additional information, including the WIFIA program handbook and application materials, on the WIFIA website: <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/wifia/.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: </HD> Amelia Letnes, Office of Water, Environmental Protection Agency; telephone number: (202) 564-5627; or email: <E T="03">letnes.amelia@epa.gov</E> (preferred). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">II. Program Funding</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">III. Eligibility Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">IV. Budgetary Scoring Determination for Non-Federal Projects</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">V. Type and Amount of Credit Assistance</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">VI. Letters of Interest and Applications</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">VII. Fees</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">VIII. Selection Criteria</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">IX. Federal Requirements</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Congress enacted the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) as part of the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014 (WRRDA). Codified at 33 U.S.C. 3901-3915, WIFIA authorizes a Federal credit program for water infrastructure projects to be administered by EPA. WIFIA authorizes EPA to provide Federal credit assistance in the form of secured (direct) loans or loan guarantees for eligible water infrastructure projects. The WIFIA program's mission is to accelerate investment in our nation's water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure by providing long-term, low-cost, supplemental credit assistance under customized terms to creditworthy water infrastructure projects of national and regional significance. Additionally, the WIFIA program is implementing five key Administration priorities in this 2024 NOFA: <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Increasing Investment in Economically Stressed Communities</HD> EPA encourages the submission of projects that address the ever-increasing needs of economically stressed and disadvantaged communities to ensure they benefit from investments in water infrastructure, and therefore improve the public health and livability of these communities. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Making Rapid Progress on Lead Service Line Replacement</HD> Many drinking water systems still have lead service lines. EPA encourages the submission of drinking water infrastructure projects that will help make rapid progress on replacing lead service lines to reduce exposure to lead and improve public health. There is no safe level of lead in drinking water. Full lead service line replacement can be an effective method to reduce drinking water lead levels. Because of this, WIFIA-funded projects involving lead service line replacement should include a plan to conduct full lead service line replacement. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Addressing PFAS and Emerging Contaminants</HD> EPA encourages the submission of projects that focus on reducing exposure to perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and other emerging contaminants through drinking water and/or projects that help address discharges of emerging contaminants from wastewater and/or stormwater systems. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Strengthening Climate Resilience in the Water Sector</HD> EPA supports long-term strategies to create a more resilient water infrastructure to address the increasing impacts of extreme weather. This includes projects that protect against drought through conserving water, promoting water efficiency and reuse, and protecting and diversifying communities' sources of water. Additionally, this includes projects that address areas seeing sustained or intermittent increases in water flow, such as projects that address flood risks due to stormwater, projects that address the impacts of combined sewer overflows, and septic to sewer efforts where septic systems are undermined by rising groundwater. Taken together, these efforts can help communities address water quantity and quality concerns. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E. Supporting One Water Innovation and Resilience</HD> One of the defining features of WIFIA is the broad range of eligible projects that EPA can fund to flexibly support priority needs. EPA encourages borrowers to submit applications for water infrastructure projects that are new and innovative in regard to energy efficiency, such as onsite wind or solar energy as well as methane digesters or similar projects that work to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions and may also support energy independence at the system level. In addition, EPA encourages the submission of water infrastructure projects that are more resilient to all threats—whether they are natural disasters or threats such as bioterrorism and cyber-attacks. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Program Funding</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. WIFIA Program Appropriation</HD> In the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024, signed by the President on March 09, 2024, Congress appropriated $64.6 million in funding to cover the subsidy cost of providing WIFIA credit assistance. EPA estimates that this appropriation will allow the Agency to provide approximately $6.5 billion  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> in long-term, low-cost financing to water infrastructure projects and accelerate approximately $13 billion in infrastructure investment around the country. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  This estimated loan volume is provided for reference only. Consistent with the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 and the requirements of the Office of Management and Budget, the actual subsidy cost of providing credit assistance is based on individual project characteristics and calculated on a project-by-project basis. Thus, actual lending capacity may vary. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Funding Availability Period</HD> LOIs may be submitted by prospective borrowers and will be reviewed by EPA on a rolling basis. LOIs shall be submitted using the LOI form found at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/wifia.</E> LOIs will be reviewed based on the scoring guide applicable at the time of submission. The publication of this NOFA does not impact LOIs previously submitted to EPA, which continue to be reviewed based on the applicable requirements at the time of submission. LOIs submitted on or after October 1, 2024, will be reviewed using the scoring criteria outlined in this NOFA. This NOFA provides guidance on all WIFIA funding authority available including funding from previous years. Any funding authority not obligated in the fiscal year for which it is authorized remains available for obligation in subsequent years. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Eligibility Requirements</HD> The WIFIA statute and implementing rules provide eligibility requirements for prospective borrowers, projects, and project costs. In general, the WIFIA program can provide loans to public and private borrowers for a wide variety of water infrastructure projects. Detailed information on WIFIA eligibility requirements for prospective borrowers, projects, and project costs can be found in the WIFIA program handbook at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/wifia/wifia-program-handbook.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Eligible Applicants</HD> Prospective borrowers must be an eligible entity to receive WIFIA credit assistance. Eligible entities include: corporations, partnerships, joint ventures and trusts; state, local, and Tribal governments; and state infrastructure financing authorities. Public sponsorship is required for projects undertaken by an entity that is not a state or local government or agency or instrumentality of a state or local government, or a Tribal government or consortium of Tribal governments. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Eligible Projects</HD> The WIFIA statute authorizes EPA to provide credit assistance for a wide variety of creditworthy drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure projects. The non-exhaustive list below includes several examples of projects eligible for WIFIA credit assistance. For detailed project eligibility information, review the WIFIA program handbook at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/wifia/wifia-program-handbook.</E> • A wide range of wastewater, stormwater, and nonpoint source projects that are eligible under the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF). More detailed CWSRF eligibility information can be found ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━