Twenty Iowa cities have been awarded loans totaling just over 42-million dollars from the State Revolving Loan Fund to do planning or work on their local water systems. The Iowa Finance Authority runs the program and executive director Dave Jamison says the money can be used for treatment plants, piping or anything else related to the water.
“We make these loans available to cities so they can keep their infrastructure up to snuff and keep it current. We can give loans to cities that hopefully it is a lower cost to them rather than them going out and doing their own bonding, which they could do. We can give loans to help them with their drinking water or their (wastewater) treatment facilities, those are the two main areas,” Jaminson says.
Jamison says the cities usually repay the loans from the revenue they get from the water systems. “Since the beginning of the program we’ve done about two-billion dollars in construction loans and about 123-million in planning and design,” Jamison says.
“And we’ve never turned down an application, and we’ve never had a default.” He says putting the loan in a revolving fund has worked well and the fund is about to make a complete 360.
“Because we revolve it, we are almost to the point of being perpetual — meaning that the repayments of loans that we’ve made in the past is pretty close to matching the amount of loans that go out the door. And once that happens, then the Iowa program could weather any kind of federal budgets cuts better than we might otherwise,” Jamison explains.
The state has seen a variety of issues in the past couple of years with drought to flooding impacting water supplies. Jamison says this program helps cities ensure the delivery of food water and the proper treatment of wastewater. “Everybody kind of takes it for granted, but it doesn’t just happen,” Jamison says.
“These communities are working very hard to keep their infrastructure up to date and make sure that their citizens have clean drinking water and that the wastewater plant is doing its job correctly so that the water in our rivers and streams is clean and everybody can enjoy the environment.”
For more information on State Revolving Loan Fund programs, visit: www.iowasrf.com.
Here are the latest loan recipients:
Loan recipient / County/ Amount/ Project Type
City of Lidderdale Carroll $400,000 Drinking Water Construction
City of Deloit Crawford $100,000 Planning & Design Loan
City of Schleswig Crawford $217,000 Planning & Design Loan
City of Granger Dallas/Polk $285,000 Planning & Design Loan
City of Burlington Des Moines $1,000,000 Planning & Design Loan
City of Dubuque Dubuque $3,048,000 Clean Water Construction
City of Gilmore City Humboldt/ Pocahontas $81,500 Planning & Design Loan
City of Maquoketa Jackson $492,000 Drinking Water Construction
City of Monmouth Jackson $76,000 Clean Water Construction
City of Sabula Jackson $131,000 Planning & Design Loan
City of Lambs Grove Jasper $272,000 Clean Water Construction
City of Hills Johnson $740,000 Planning & Design Loan
Keokuk Municipal Water Works Lee $1,600,000 Drinking Water Construction
City of Melbourne Marshall $306,000 Clean Water Construction
Des Moines Metro Wastewater Reclamation Authority Multiple $7,700,000 Clean Water Construction
City of Davenport Scott $7,085,000 Clean Water Construction
City of Cambridge Story $333,000 Drinking Water Construction
City of Bonaparte Van Buren $75,000 Planning & Design Loan
City of Indianola Warren $4,036,000 Clean Water Construction
City of Sioux City Woodbury $4,200,000 Clean Water Construction
City of Sioux City Woodbury $7,100,000 Clean Water Construction
City of Sioux City Woodbury $3,100,000 Clean Water Construction
Total $42,377,500