415 ILCS 5/19.1

(415 ILCS 5/19.1) (from Ch. 111 1/2, par. 1019.1)

Sec. 19.1. Legislative findings. The General Assembly finds:

(a) that local government units require assistance in financing the construction of water treatment works and projects in order to comply with the State's program of environmental protection and federally mandated requirements;

(b) that the federal Water Quality Act of 1987 provides an important source of grant awards to the State for providing assistance to local government units through the Water Pollution Control Loan Program;

(c) that local government units and privately owned community water supplies require assistance in financing the construction of their public water supplies to comply with State and federal drinking water laws and regulations;

(d) that the federal Safe Drinking Water Act ("SDWA"), P.L. 93-523, as now or hereafter amended, provides an important source of capitalization grant awards to the State to provide assistance to local government units and privately owned community water supplies through the Public Water Supply Loan Program;

(e) that violations of State and federal drinking water standards threaten the public interest, safety, and welfare, which demands that the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency expeditiously adopt emergency rules to administer the Public Water Supply Loan Program;

(f) that the General Assembly agrees with the conclusions and recommendations of the "Report to the Illinois General Assembly on the Issue of Expanding Public Water Supply Loan Eligibility to Privately Owned Community Water Supplies", dated August 1998, including the stated access to the Public Water Supply Loan Program by the privately owned public water supplies so that the long term integrity and viability of the corpus of the Fund will be assured;

(g) that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides a source of capitalization grant awards to the State to provide loans and additional subsidization, including, but not limited to, forgiveness of principal, negative interest loans, and grants, to local government units through the Water Pollution Control Loan Program and to local government units and privately owned community water supplies through the Public Water Supply Loan Program;

(h) that expanding eligibility to include publicly owned municipal storm water projects eligible for financing as treatment works, as defined under Section 212 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, will provide the Agency with the statutory authority to use moneys in the Water Pollution Control Loan Program to provide financial assistance for eligible projects, including those that encourage green infrastructure, that manage and treat storm water, and that maintain and restore natural hydrology by infiltrating, evapotranspiring, and capturing and using storm water;

(i) that in planning projects for which financing will be sought from the Water Pollution Control Loan Program, municipalities may benefit from efforts to consider a project's lifetime costs; the availability of long-term funding for the construction, operation, maintenance, and replacement of the project; the resilience of the project to the effects of climate change; the project's ability to increase water efficiency; the capacity of the project to restore natural hydrology or to preserve or restore landscape features; the cost-effectiveness of the project; and the overall environmental innovativeness of the project; and

(j) that projects implementing a management program established under Section 319 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act may benefit from the creation of a linked deposit program that would make loans available at or below market interest rates through private lenders.

(Source: P.A. 98-782, eff. 7-23-14.)