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Oregon Health Authority

Capacity Development Tools and Resources

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Budgeting

For more budgeting resources, see the Comprehensive Financial Guidebooks section below.

Rate-setting

  • Setting Small Drinking Water System Rates for a Sustainable Future: This guide, created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is designed to help owners, operators, and managers understand the full costs of providing a safe and adequate supply of drinking water to their customers and how to set water rates that reflect those costs.
  • Principles of Water Rates, Fees, and Charges: This manual is available for purchase from the American Water Works Association (AWWA) has relevant information needed to evaluate and select water rate structures, fees, charges and pricing policies.

Capital Improvement Planning


Asset Management

  • Visit the Asset Management page
  • The intent of asset management is to ensure the long-term sustainability of the water utility. When managers understand their utilities’ assets they can make better decisions on whether it is most appropriate to repair, replace, or rehabilitate those assets. By developing long-term funding strategies, they can also ensure their ability to deliver the required level of service far into the future. Asset management offers these and many other positive benefits.


Comprehensive Financial Guidebooks


Partner and Agency Sites

  • Small Public Water Systems and Capacity Development: This EPA website is designed to help small water systems learn basic information regarding finances, management, infrastructure and operations.
  • EPA Water Technical Assistance: This web page offers technical assistance for water system infrastructure, including assistance applying for funding resources.
  • Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC): RCAC assists water treatment facilities with design and engineering of unit process improvements, as well as performing financial analyses and rate studies to support such improvements.
  • Environmental Finance Center Network (EFCN): EFCN is a university-based organization creating innovative solutions to the difficult how-to-pay issues of environmental protection and improvement. EFCN works with the public and private sectors to promote sustainable environmental solutions while bolstering efforts to manage costs.
  • Oregon Association of Water Utilities (OAWU): OAWU can conduct and provide water systems with rate studies and supporting documentation to review water system rates. Their rate studies have allowed many systems to obtain capital improvement funding from various private and government agencies.
  • US Water Alliance: The Alliance promotes sustainable and effective management of all water resources and strives to unite diverse interests for a secure future.

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Tools and Resources