Report details risk of eliminating tax-exempt municipal bonds

According to a new estimate developed by the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA) and the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA), eliminating tax-exempt municipal bonds would increase water and wastewater infrastructure financing costs by $16 billion nationwide over a 30-year repayment period.

The latest figures represent an update to a report on the value of tax-exempt municipal bonds that AMWA and NACWA originally developed in 2013.  The newly updated data goes into greater depth by estimating not only nationwide financing cost increases in the absence of tax-exempt municipal bonds, but by also calculating these figures for each state where tax-exempt bonds were issued to fund water or wastewater infrastructure improvements in 2016 or another recent year.