The agreement provides funding to the southwest environmental finance center (SW EFC)

To ensure that tribal communities can access and use infrastructure funding for 'shovel-worthy' projects and to help tribally owned wastewater treatment works (totws) increase their technical, managerial, and/or financial (TMF) capacity to provide sustainable operations that protect the environment and human health, the project team proposes a comprehensive work plan that focusses on increasing communication between federal, state, and tribal partners and assisting systems through directed training and technical assistance.activities:activities include training and technical assistance focused specifically on tribes for planning, developing and acquisition of financing/funding, to help improve water quality and achieve and maintain compliance, and/or to support emerging contaminants project development by providing services to any of the 66 tribal nations in environmental protection agency (EPA) region 6, the 9 tribal nations in EPA region 7, and the 28 tribal nations in EPA region 8.subrecipient:because of the many different groups involved with regulating, funding, and assisting these tribally owned wastewater treatment works (totws), partnerships are critical to be effective in working with tribal communities in the project area. For this project, the southwest environmental finance center (SW EFC) has partnered with the wichita state university environmental finance center (WSU EFC) which serves EPA region 7. WSU EFC will participate in outreach activities and provide technical, managerial, and/or financial (TMF) training and technical assistance. The SW EFC and the WSU EFC have a long history of partnering on EPA projects to provide training and assistance focused on increasing the capacity of small systems. They also have the wide range of resources and expertise that the larger environmental finance center network (efcn) provides. The project team has forged excellent working relationships with EPA, indian health services (IHS), funding agencies, and tribal communities in the project area, which will aid in the success of the program. Outcomes:the anticipated deliverables include training events for states/territories/tribes, technical assistance efforts for small publicly owned treatment works (potws) and decentralized wastewater treatment facilities, podcasts, educational videos, peer-to-peer advisory sessions, blogs, and resource creation and distribution. The expected outcomes include that tribal communities will be able to fund infrastructure for 'shovel-worthy' projects and tribally owned wastewater treatment works (totws) increase their technical, managerial, and/or financial (TMF) capacity to provide sustainable operations that protect the environment and human health. The intended beneficiaries include tribal, small, and rural populations within regions 6, 7, and 8.