The 2023 Commonwealth Wastewater Infrastructure Needs Assessment (the Assessment) is an estimate of the amount of wastewater infrastructure funding that is necessary to implement the Commonwealth’s Wastewater Infrastructure Policy established in § 62.1-223.1 of the Code of Virginia. Authored by the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), in partnership with the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) and other stakeholders, the Assessment reports that the total wastewater infrastructure need over a 20-year period (2022-2042) in Virginia is approximately $15.8 billion and excludes projects that have already commenced.

The total estimated need is split into two categories: community wastewater infrastructure needs ($10.8 billion), and onsite wastewater infrastructure needs ($5 billion). Community wastewater infrastructure needs represent needs that are centralized in a community and are typically funded primarily by locality sewer user fee revenue (local) with some funding from federal and state sources. Onsite wastewater infrastructure needs represent wastewater treatment that is decentralized, otherwise known as onsite sewage or septic systems, and are typically funded by private homeowners with limited funding from local, state, or federal sources.

DEQ coordinated the data collection for community wastewater infrastructure needs using the same data collection efforts for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Watersheds Needs Survey (CWNS), a national effort to perform a comprehensive assessment of capital costs to meet the water quality goals of the federal Clean Water Act. Outreach efforts to owners of wastewater collection and treatment systems, including counties, cities, towns, service authorities, sanitation districts, and school systems yielded needs data and documentation to substantiate approximately $10.8 billion in community wastewater infrastructure needs. This value is consistent with past estimates when adjusted for inflation. The 2012 CWNS reported Virginia’s previous funding needs at $6.5 billion, when adjusted for inflation seen in this industry, this value increases to approximately $9.0 billion. Therefore, the current estimate of $10.8 Billion is very similar considering the continued increase in requirements to treat to higher standards as well as the influx of new categories of pollutants. Historically, funding for community wastewater infrastructure across the United States has come from sewer user fee revenues (approximately 85 percent), Federal funds (10 percent), and State funds (5 percent). Virginia does not vary significantly from these trends. Approximately $539 million in additional funding is needed than has historically been provided on an annual basis, $458 million from local sources, $54 million from federal sources, and $27 million from state sources. It should be noted, though, that there continues to be a push towards lower amounts of local funding as more communities develop affordability issues due to more costly requirements.

VDH’s assessment of onsite wastewater infrastructure needs used existing permitting data, population density analysis, and data mapping tools to estimate the number of onsite sewage system needs in five categories. Those estimates multiplied by real septic project costs for conventional and alternative systems provided a total of $5.05 billion for onsite wastewater infrastructure needs.