Progress report - - Potential Cost Savings due to Financial Consolidation of Water Infrastructure 26 July , 2013

Residents of the Hudson-Mohawk River Watershed and the state of New York face serious challenges during coming years to maintain water infrastructure, including both water supply and sewage treatment. For example, maintaining wastewater infrastructure is expected to cost more than $36 billion by 2028 (NY-DEC 2008). Given this extremely high cost, one of the few potential opportunities for substantial cost savings is consolidation of water infrastructure entities. For this reason, I have undertaken a critical review of the literature on this topic to estimate the potential for cost savings and the strengths and weaknesses of consolidation for reducing overall costs. I am focusing on organizational consolidation without physical consolidation because it will be applicable to all entities, while physical consolidation is applicable to just the very few entities that could feasibly be physically connected. This report summarizes progress to date along with discussion of plans for the remainder of this aspect of our research project.