The Corps Water Infrastructure Financing Program (CWIFP) is a credit assistance program providing direct loans to non-Federal entities for dam safety and levee projects. The program enables critical local infrastructure investments to improve public safety across the nation. Projects are fully implemented at the local level, with local control and ownership. CWIFP provides significant financial savings to local taxpayers while leveraging minimal federal investment and risk.
CWIFP is authorized by the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) which was signed into law on June 10, 2014 as part of the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014. The Act established Federal credit programs to be administered by USACE and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for eligible water and wastewater infrastructure projects. Additional information about EPA’s WIFIA program can be found here.
Key Features of CWIFP:
- Long-term, low cost credit assistance for water resource infrastructure projects (currently limited to dam safety projects that are non-federally owned, operated, and maintained)
- Funding of up to 49% of project costs (can fund up to 80% of project costs in some cases)
- Big impact to infrastructure with low cost and risk to taxpayers
- Available to individual projects or a group of projects with eligible costs in excess of $20 million
- Accelerates construction
- Local control and ownership of project is maintained
CWIFP will publish a Notice of Funding Availability in the Federal Register when the program is accepting new loan applications. Using the appropriations received, USACE works diligently to issue loans to qualified non-federal borrowers. The final program rule for CWIFP was published in the Federal Register on May 22, 2023.
CWIFP is part of the Revolutionize USACE Civil Works initiative. Through this initiative USACE is taking bold actions to improve its performance and engineer solutions for the nation's toughest challenges. Traditional delivery of the annual Civil Works program is being overhauled by using innovative tools, modernizing internal processes, and pursuing alternative financing approaches.