Notice of Funding Availability for Credit Assistance Under the State Infrastructure Financing Authority Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act Program

<NOTICE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <DEPDOC>[FRL 12140-01-OW]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Notice of Funding Availability for Credit Assistance Under the State Infrastructure Financing Authority Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act 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 state infrastructure financing authority borrowers seeking credit assistance from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the State Infrastructure Financing Authority Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (SWIFIA) program. EPA estimates that it may lend approximately $1 billion to help finance approximately $2 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-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Program Funding</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Eligibility Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Budgetary Scoring Determination for Non-Federal Projects</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Types and Amount of Credit Assistance</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Letters of Interest and Applications</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Fees</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VIII. Selection Criteria</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">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. Congress amended WIFIA in America's Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 (AWIA) to authorize Federal credit assistance exclusively for state infrastructure financing authority borrowers. 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> Congress appropriated $5 million in funding to cover the subsidy cost of providing SWIFIA credit assistance. The subsidy cost covers the Federal Government's risk that the loan may not be paid back. EPA anticipates that the average subsidy cost for SWIFIA-funded projects will be relatively low; therefore, this funding can be leveraged into a much larger amount of credit assistance. EPA estimates that this appropriation will allow it to provide approximately $1 billion  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> in long-term, low-cost financing to water infrastructure projects and accelerate approximately $2 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 received by EPA on a rolling basis. LOIs shall be submitted using the SWIFIA LOI form found at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/wifia.</E> Under the rolling process, LOIs will continually be reviewed and selected based on available funds. 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 received on or after October 1, 2024, will be evaluated as described in section VIII of this document. This NOFA provides guidance on all SWIFIA 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 set forth eligibility requirements for prospective borrowers, projects, and project costs. The requirements outlined below are described in greater detail in the WIFIA program handbook found at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/wifia/wifia-program-handbook.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Eligible Applicants</HD> Prospective borrowers must be a state infrastructure financing authority to be eligible for SWIFIA credit assistance. EPA defines state infrastructure financing authority as the state entity established or designated by the governor of a state to receive a capitalization grant provided by, or otherwise carry out the requirements of, title VI of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (33 U.S.C. 1381 et. seq.) or section 1452 of the Safe Drinking Water Act (42 U.S.C. 300j-12). <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Eligible Projects</HD> To be eligible for SWIFIA credit assistance, the SWIFIA project must be a combination of projects, each of which is eligible for assistance under section 603(c) of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (33 U.S.C. 1383(c)) or section 1452(a)(2) of the Safe Drinking Water Act (42 U.S.C. 300j-12(a)(2)), for which a state ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━