Philadelphia Creating Clean Water Cash Flows Report

Chapters 1 and 2 of the Creating Clean Water Cash Flows: Developing Private Markets for Green Stormwater Infrastructure report analyze stormwater retrofit economics and financing challenges that might apply to greening of private parcels in Philadelphia. In addition to identifying existing barriers, the conclusions of Chapter 1 and 2 provide suggestions for how PWD could improve the economic viability of greened acre investments on private parcels through additional policy measures—such as improved regulatory certainty, enhanced transparency in the credit renewal process, creation of an offsite mitigation market, facilitating project aggregation, and direct subsidies for green infrastructure projects on private parcels. Chapters 3 and 4 outline approaches to developing project aggregation and offsite credit trading systems in an effort to enlarge the universe of financially attractive retrofit projects by reducing transaction costs and directing available private capital to the lowest-cost projects. Chapter 5 explores the benefits that private-public-partnership structures could generate by encouraging the development of the most economical greened acres, including retrofits on public or private lands.