This agreement provides funding under the infrastructure investment and jobs act to support the environmental finance center (EFC) at the rural community assistance partnership, INC. (rcap)

The efcs provide finance-related training, education, and analytical studies to help regulated parties develop solutions to the difficult 'how-to-pay' issues associated with meeting environmental standards. The efcs educate state, tribal, and local governments and businesses on lowering environmental costs, increasing environmental investments, improving financial capacity, identifying appropriate revenue generating mechanisms, and evaluating environmental financing options. The rural community assistance partnership, INC. (rcap) will work with its six regional partners, communities unlimited (CU), great lakes community action partnership (glcap), midwest assistance program (map), rcap solutions (rsol), rural community assistance corporation (rcac), and southeast rural community assistance project (sercap), collectively, 'rcap,' in addition to 8 strategic partners, the american water works association (awwa), four of the existing category 1 environmental finance centers (efcn), the university of california-LOS angeles' luskin center (ucla), the university of illinois (u of i), and water finance assistance (WFA) to help disadvantaged communities (dacs) address the environmental and financial resource challenges they face and maximize the impact of the bipartisan infrastructure law (BIL) for small, rural, and tribal UN/underserved communities with the end goal of protecting human/environmental health, advancing environmental justice (EJ) and equity, revitalizing communities, and improving compliance, sustainability, and resilience. The council of infrastructure financing authorities (cifa), which represents the clean water (CW) and drinking water (DW) state revolving fund (SRF) programs will be an unfunded collaborator of ours and all 28 other efcs. Rcap has a robust collaborative team of partners with a diverse pool of trusted industry leaders that will provide depth and breadth of experience in engineering and technical skills, managerial and financial expertise, community outreach/engagement, and commitment to help small, rural, and tribal dacs access BIL funding across all 10 EPA regions. Activities:the activities include 1) provide direct water TA to facilitate access to BIL SRF resources - EFC and EPA will collaborate to provide direct water TA to 78 communities per year to facilitate access to BIL SRF resources (and other relevant BIL funding opportunities such as the emerging contaminants in small or disadvantaged communities grant program), with a focus on underserved and disadvantaged communities, communities that have never accessed SRF funding before, and communities that are not currently receiving an equivalent kind of TA. This includes: always building relationships and trust with vulnerable communities; helping communities get ready (long-range and pre-planning); project and facilities planning; capital improvement $ applications; meeting SRF conditions and permitting; project construction and post- construction supports; project operations and maintenance; preparing for loan repayments and financing for the next improvement or replacement project 2) system and community needs identification - rcap, with input from EPA, will develop a road map to help prioritize outreach and technical assistance (TA) for small, rural, and tribal communities across the country that most need support in order to access BIL and other infrastructure funding to overcome their most urgent infrastructure needs. Rcap will use a.) USA spending data to identify places in each state that have not received DW or CW SRF, USDA rural development, community development block grant (cdbg) or other water infrastructure funding, that b.) intersect with other factors of social vulnerability (e.g.