Capital expenditures (CAPEX) for U.S. municipal water & wastewater utilities are expected to exceed $532 billion between 2016 and 2025, according to new forecasts just-released from Bluefield Research.
This new outlook, which draws heavily from planned utility budgets, represents an almost 28 per cent increase over CAPEX during the last ten years.
While CAPEX is forecasted to rebound, a significant decrease in federal funding for water utilities – which has fallen to $4.3 billion in 2014 from $16 billion in 1976 – passes the burden onto states, municipalities, and ultimately ratepayers. Residential and sewer bills have increased annually 5 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively, since 2000, but their impact is expected to continue falling short of infrastructure needs.
Bluefield water experts have addressed the 50-state forecast through a mix of bottom-up data analysis collected from the largest U.S. utilities and top-down insights from government agencies and company assessments.
These and other findings are found in Bluefield’s new report here: http://bluefieldresearch.com/research/municipal-water-capex/
