The Handbook of Municipal Bonds

CHAPTER 59

Water and Sewer Bond Analysis

Brian Winters Vice President Van Kampen Investments

 

 

 

Water has played a central role in all civilizations from earliest of times to the most contemporary of advanced cities. Societies settled near rivers, lakes and seas for the benefits of protection, transportation, commerce, and irrigation. Across the span of history, water and its employment have had a profound impact on the growth and development of mankind as witnessed in the accounts of the Noahic flood, the ancient Sumerian canals, dikes and reservoirs, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Egyptian’s controlled irrigation of the fertile Nile River Valley, the extensive Phoenician maritime trading of the Mediterranean, the engineering marvel of the Roman aqueducts, the breadth of overseas Spanish exploration and the British Empire, and the widespread achievement of municipal water and sewer utilities in the United States.

The quest for potable water is ever more urgent with growth in global population and the increasing size of large urban centers. Also, safe and efficient sewerage is just as necessary to keep the local environment clean in order to prevent and reduce the spread of disease. Fresh water accounts for only 2.5% of all the water in the world, and of that two-thirds is frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps.

The procurement and distribution of clean drinking water and the safe disposal and treatment of wastewater has been successfully accomplished by local municipalities ...