Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation (WIFIA)

To accelerate investment in our nation's water and wastewater infrastructure by providing long-term, low-cost supplemental credit assistance under customized terms to creditworthy water and wastewater projects of national and regional significance. Selected projects shall demonstrate the broad range of project types that the WIFIA program can finance including wastewater, drinking water, stormwater, and water recycling projects. Funding priorities are announced with the release of each Notice of Funding Availability.
The WIFIA program accelerates investment in water and wastewater infrastructure of national and regional significance by offering creditworthy borrowers loans for up to 49 percent of eligible project costs. For small communities of 25,000 or less people who face significant water infrastructure challenges and economic or administrative hardship accessing funding and financing, the WIFIA program may provide loans for up to 80 percent of eligible project costs. The WIFIA program can fund planning, design, and construction activities for a wide variety of eligible water infrastructure projects, including wastewater conveyance and treatment projects; drinking water treatment and distribution projects; stormwater management; non-point source pollution control; projects that enhance energy efficiency in the operation of a public water system or a publicly owned treatment works; desalination, aquifer recharge, and water recycling projects; acquisition of property if it is integral to the project or will mitigate the environmental impact of a project; and a combination of eligible projects secured by a common security pledge or submitted under one application by an SRF program. Eligible borrowers include: local, state, tribal, government entities, partnerships and joint ventures, corporations and trusts, and clean water and drinking water state revolving fund (SRF) programs. In addition, a set-aside of the WIFIA program, called the State infrastructure financing authority WIFIA (SWIFIA) program, authorized by Congress in section 4201 of America’s Water Infrastructure Act (AWIA) of 2018, provides loans exclusively to state revolving fund programs.

The entity applying for WIFIA credit assistance must be one of the following: a corporation, a partnership, a joint venture, a trust, a state or local government entity, agency, or instrumentality, a tribal government or consortium of tribal governments, a State Revolving Fund (SRF) program as defined by the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Issuing office will provide location of application procedure details as appropriate.

Once projects are selected, prospective borrowers are invited to submit an application. At this point, the funds for the loan are set-aside to ensure the WIFIA program will have sufficient funds for the loan. The borrower does not receive disbursements until after loan closing. At that point, the funds are obligated.

Prospective borrowers can submit a Letter of Interest (LOI) at any time. Projects will be notified of selection approximately 4-6 weeks after the LOI submission. Once prospective borrowers are notified that they have been selected, they have up to a year to submit an application.

The WIFIA application process is two phases: Phase 1: Project Selection: EPA announces the amount of funding it will have available and solicits letters of interest from prospective borrowers. In their letters of interest, prospective borrowers demonstrate their project's eligibility, creditworthiness, engineering feasibility, and impact on statutory and regulatory scoring criteria. Based on this information, EPA selects projects it intends to fund and invites the prospective borrowers to continue to the application process. Phase 2: Project Review, Negotiation, and Closing: Each invitee must apply for its WIFIA loan. The WIFIA program conducts a detailed financial and engineering review of the project. Based on that review, the WIFIA program proposes terms and conditions for the project and negotiates them with the applicant until they develop a mutually agreeable term sheet and loan agreement. Prior to closing, the WIFIA program must receive approval from the Administrator or his designee and the Office of Management and Budget. At closing, the prospective borrower executes the credit agreement, which is the binding legal document that allows the borrower to receive WIFIA funds.