One of the action items from the Dam Finance Roundtable was to develop a summary of “dam finance recommendations, both for US dam finance in general and CWIFP in particular.” I don’t have sufficient real-world expertise in the dam sector to add much to the ‘general’ part of these recommendations without falling into a Dunning-Kruger trap. But as you’d expect on this site, I do have some specific ideas for CWIFP that stem from my thinking about WIFIA and other federal infrastructure loan programs.
For clarity and to establish context, I’m going to approach this exercise in a series of three posts that start with questions:
The US has a lot of dams, many of which are in need of some type of repair, rehabilitation or removal. But only a sub-set could benefit from what a federal infrastructure loan program like CWIFP can realistically offer. Using data from various sources like the National Inventory of Dams and the ASDSO reports, I think the basic scale and characteristics of this sub-set can be roughly determined. In effect, that will help define CWIFP’s ‘customer base’ and their needs & limitations.
2. What are the current policy objectives that guide CWIFP implementation or modification with respect to dam finance?
I’m making the general assumption in this exercise that recommendations must be consistent with furthering current CWIFP policy objectives. Of course, these could change as things develop and a possible type of recommendation involves policy refinement or redirection, especially in connection with additional funding. But this requires real-world sectoral expertise that’s beyond my pay grade. Instead, I’ll try to summarize those CWIFP current policy objectives which seem to be especially relevant to meeting the needs of the program’s customer base in the immediate future.
3. For potentially relevant dam projects, what realistic & near-term actions could be taken to improve CWIFP’s ability to achieve its policy objectives?
These are the recommendations. There’ll be two types: (1) minor legislative refinements in the WIFIA statute that could be enacted relatively soon and are especially applicable to dam projects, and (2) outreach and innovative development that’ll likely be required for smaller and more challenging dam projects. The latter might also include possible future legislative changes as a realistic, but not necessarily near-term, goal.
As I did for the FCRA Non-Federal Series, I’ll highlight & link each question as the posts are completed over the next few weeks.