The Task of Funding Underground Infrastructure

Water and wastewater utilities rely on underground infrastructure to serve their communities. Pipes carry safe drinking water to customers and then convey wastewater away to treatment facilities, aided along the way by pumps and valves. Utilities could not serve customers or protect public health without functioning underground infrastructure.

The best practices to keep underground infrastructure functioning include regular maintenance and then appropriate asset rehabilitation or replacement as infrastructure ages. How can utilities ensure they have the money they need?

Utilities like water and wastewater are operated as enterprise funds, business-like units that are supported by customer rates and fees. Their expenses can be divided into two broad categories: operations and maintenance (O&M) expenses and capital expenses.

O&M expenses include all the costs of running a utility day-to-day. Utilities pay salaries to their employees and offer benefits. They purchase chemicals to make water safe to drink and wastewater safe to be released back into the natural environment. They carry liability insurance. The bear the cost of billing customers and collecting payments.

Infrastructure maintenance is obviously another type of operations and maintenance expense. Ideally, utilities maintain their underground assets on a set schedule. This preventive maintenance aims to prevent equipment failures, ensuring the reliability and efficiency of the systems and extending the lifespan of the utility’s assets. Scheduled leak detection and regular water audits can also allow utilities to identify pipe failures early and fix them before large quantities of water and money are wasted.

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