Engineering Inc - May/June 2017 - 7

The new UV disinfection system and facility at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Chicago's O'Brien Water Reclamation Plant. This project,
designed by Greeley and Hansen, is the world's largest wastewater disinfection system by flow. It is a 2017 EEA National Recognition Award winner.

the total amount of bonds that can be issued by a state. If those
state volume caps were removed for water and sewer projects,
Anderson says, municipalities and utilities would have access to
private funding for public purposes.
He is also intrigued by the Trump administration's infrastructure funding proposal.
"Projects would have maybe a 15 percent equity stake, which
would receive an 82 percent tax credit, and the 85 percent
municipal stake would get tax exempt status," he says. "It's the
best of both worlds. Rate growth is held down both because
the tax credit means the equity partner's return on investment
doesn't have to be as high and the public partner only has to
borrow on 85 percent of the project."
ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGE

"Funding is a big challenge," says Andy Richardson, chairman
and CEO of Greeley and Hansen, a global wastewater engineering firm headquartered in Chicago. "But this is a very dynamic
market and we see a lot of opportunity, because of the reduced
spending levels over the past few years, there is tremendous
pent-up demand."
Richardson believes utilities will be able to meet that demand
by considering new business models such as the Utility of the
Future concept that is advancing within the industry.

"We have to realize we are no longer just in the wastewater
business," he says. "We are in the resource recovery business.
Instead of just discharging waste, we need to figure out what we
can do to recover it-and not just some of it, all of it."
Richardson says utilities may be able to tap into new revenue
streams that allow them to fund improvements without having to increase rates. He points to DC Water, the water and
wastewater utility in Washington, D.C., which recently spun
off Blue Drop, a nonprofit that markets a new line of products
and services. Blue Drop sells Bloom, a biosolids soil made at the
Blue Plains treatment plant, and provides consulting services for
external affairs and management to other utilities.
On a bigger scale, the city of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada,
spun off most of its utility functions into a private profit-making
firm called EPCOR. The city is the 100 percent owner of
EPCOR, which now also owns and operates utilities in Arizona,
Texas and New Mexico. All of EPCOR's profits are returned to
the city.
"Now is the time to seriously consider alternate funding
sources," Richardson says, as the wastewater market is projected
to grow between 2 and 4 percent annually over the next four
years. ■
Gerry Donohue is ACEC's senior communications writer. He can be
reached at gdonohue@acec.org.

MAY / JUNE 2017

ENGINEERING INC.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Engineering Inc - May/June 2017
