Breaking the Barrier to Water Infrastructure Funding

March 14th, 2025 by Jessika Sherman

The New Jersey Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds (SRF) are critical financial resources that can provide a variety of funding and financing options, including principal forgiveness and low-interest loans, to support water infrastructure improvements across the state. These programs, established through federal and state partnerships, empower municipalities and drinking water and sewer systems to address essential projects, including wastewater treatment, stormwater, and drinking water initiatives. Through affordable financing and principal forgiveness, the SRFs enable communities to invest in crucial water infrastructure upgrades that improve public health and create resiliency to future challenges. These SRF programs have been largely successful. However, there are equity concerns regarding the types of communities that have been more successful in accessing this funding.

Funding doesn’t automatically reach the municipalities and water systems that need it, each system must navigate a complex application process. Understanding and applying for such a large-scale program can be daunting for small, resource-limited systems. In New Jersey Future’s and the Environmental Policy Innovation Center’s 2023 report, Improving a Program that Works: Recommendations to the New Jersey Water Bank for Advancing Equity, it was found that small communities have received a significantly smaller portion of SRF awards. These systems often face capacity limitations, making it a costly and time-consuming effort to submit a complete SRF application. This process requires performing an inventory analysis, financial analysis, gap analysis, and asset mapping — an intensive undertaking with no guaranteed funding outcome. The planning and design phases alone can cost several million dollars, posing a considerable financial risk for small systems.

Recognizing these barriers through its work with municipal leaders, water system staff, and coalitions, New Jersey Future launched the Funding Navigator program in 2023. This program is the first New Jersey statewide nonprofit initiative dedicated to helping New Jersey’s most underserved communities access water infrastructure funding. The Funding Navigator program supports municipalities and small—to mid-sized water systems by providing guidance throughout the application process, assisting with community outreach initiatives, and providing engineering support.

The Funding Navigator Program also collaborates with the following technical partners:

These partnerships enable the Funding Navigator program to provide technical assistance, such as sewage system collection mapping for asset management plans and lead line inventory services, as well as community outreach services, such as community engagement recommendations, public mailers, public education programs, and other services based on the community or water system’s needs.

The work starts with identifying communities that are underserved and disadvantaged. Typically, these are small systems and communities that meet the NJDEP’s affordability criteria and/or the highest distress scores under the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) municipal revitalization index (MRI). Communities that have not received any SRF funding in the past several years are top priorities. Jersey WaterCheck, an online dashboard that features data about the state’s drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems, offers important water system data that also helps us identify clean water systems and drinking water systems with known harmful bacteria, the number of known and unknown lead service lines, and how customer-friendly systems are.

By the end of 2024, The Funding Navigator program grew from 3 towns to partnering with 10 communities across the following eight counties:

Atlantic
Gloucester
Hunterdon
Mercer
Middlesex
Monmouth
Sussex
Warren

This growth underscores the critical need for targeted support to help municipalities and water systems overcome the challenges of accessing SRF funding. Looking ahead, the Funding Navigator program aims to further strengthen its reach by expanding technical assistance and building deeper relationships with underserved communities. By continuing this work, the program enhances access to critical financial resources and ensures that the SRF programs distribute funding to the communities that need them most.

To learn more about New Jersey Future’s Funding Navigator program, visit the website.