Facilities Financing Issues
AMSA Releases 1996 Financial SurveyfAMSA's Facilities Financing Committee has completed and released its "1996 Financial Survey -- A National Survey of Municipal Wastewater Management Financing and Trends," which provides an overview of municipal wastewater financing and trends, including user charges, per capita debt, per capita needs, and operations and maintenance expenditures. The survey indicates that the nation's largest publicly-owned treatment works are providing significantly higher levels of treatment, greater conventional pollutant removal efficiency, and reduced influent metals loadings than they were three years ago. The report updates and expands upon six previous surveys and is intended to be used as a tool to guide national, state, and local policy development. Some of the findings of the 1996 Financial Survey include: (1) more than 90 percent of responding agencies provide secondary treatment or greater, and at least 90 percent of their flows are treated to at least secondary levels, (2) more than 30 percent of the agencies provide advanced secondary or tertiary treatment, (3) the loadings of nine metals surveyed show an overall reduction of 54 percent since the 1986 survey, pointing to the success of pollution prevention, pretreatment and public education programs, (4) Staffing per capita has decreased by almost 20 percent since 1990, (5) user charges have increased as a percentage of revenue from 51.9 to 60 percent since the 1993 survey, (6) user charges have increased 2.6 times the rate of inflation over the last five years, (7) operations and maintenance expenditures have increased to more than 43 percent of total expenditures, while capital improvement and reserve expenditures have decreased to about 33 percent, (8) the median per capita debt of responding agencies has doubled since 1990, and (8) average five-year per capita needs have decreased by more than 20 percent. CONTACTS: Brian Crewdson, Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility 907/786-5511, or Mark Hoeke, AMSA 202/ 833-9106.