Watershed Protection Plan - Lower Rio Grande Valley Development ...

TECHNICAL AND FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE REQUIRED
Financial Assistance Needs
The following sections describe the fi nancial
assistance needed to implement each of the
components of the ACW Protection Plan. In estimating
fi nancial assistance needs, the ACW Partnership
assessed only those actions and measures for which
general feasibility for implementation had been
established and for which a realistic schedule for
implementation had been developed. Consequently,
the total amount of fi nancial assistance needed to
implement the ACW Protection Plan over the next 10
years may exceed the fi gure(s) presented below and
will depend largely on the success of outreach and
education efforts and the ability of the ACW Partnership
to implement measures with ill-defi ned geographic
locations or lacking stakeholder/landowner support
or for which authorization by permitting agencies is
uncertain (i.e., IBWC, USACE, county governments,
drainage districts, etc.). Table 23 shows the total
amount of technical assistance needed to implement
the ACW Protection Plan over the next 10 years.
Habitat Restoration
As with assessments of technical assistance needs,
assessments of the fi nancial assistance needed to
implement the Habitat Restoration Component of
the ACW Protection Plan necessitates site-specifi c
assessments of environmental conditions and some
measure of the feasibility of implementation for each
project envisioned in the plan. As a result, the ACW
Partnership focused its assessment of the fi nancial
needs associated with habitat restoration on projects
with well-defi ned geographic locations and, at least,
general measures of feasibility. With this in mind, the
ACW Partnership determined that the most pressing
need for fi nancial assistance associated with the
Habitat Restoration Component of the ACW Protection
Plan is in the implementation of large habitat restoration
projects such as constructed wetlands.
treatment plants and/or for polishing fl ows from multiple
wastewater treatment plants in close proximity and
construction of large regional wetlands that treat fl ows
from multiple sources, including wastewater treatment
facilities and nonpoint discharges from urban and
agricultural areas or water pumped directly from the
Arroyo Colorado. Because of the obvious connection
these measures have to wastewater, estimates of
the fi nancial assistance needed to implement habitat
restoration projects have been combined with, and
included in, the estimates of the technical assistance
needed to implement the Wastewater Infrastructure
Component of the ACW Protection Plan.
Wastewater Infrastructure
The amount of fi nancial assistance needed to
implement the Wastewater Infrastructure Component
of the ACW Protection Plan is presented in Table
23. Due to the uncertainty and variability associated
with maintenance costs, only costs of construction
are presented in this report. However, a reasonable
assumption for estimating maintenance costs is to use
a value equivalent to 10% of project construction costs
per year. Detailed descriptions of each of the measures
included in the funding estimates in Table 23 are
provided in the following sections.
Near-Term Financial Assistance Needs for
Wastewater Infrastructure (2006-2010)
The total amount of fi nancial assistance needed to
implement the Wastewater Infrastructure Component
of the ACW Protection Plan in the near-term is
Financial Assistance Needs for Habitat Restoration
(2006-2015)
The ACW Partnership focused estimates of the
fi nancial assistance needed to implement the Habitat
Restoration Component of the ACW Protection Plan
on measures that could be easily quantifi ed. These
measures include construction of wetlands for tertiary
treatment of waste streams from individual wastewater
Arroyo Colorado Watershed Protection Plan 132 January 2007