Funding issues plaguing utilities aren’t just localized to the United States. The world’s water and wastewater utilities are grappling with a massive and urgent challenge: an impending wave of expenditure required to address a growing infrastructure deficit. This key concern was highlighted by Joel Kolker in a recent session he presented at WEFTEC 2025 in Chicago.
Kolker, recently retired as senior advisor at the World Bank, referenced aging infrastructure and the costs associated with it as a “tsunami of expenditure.” His presentation, which focused on emerging markets throughout the world, identified the inability to adequately finance infrastructure as the most critical issue facing water professionals, elected officials and the public.
A primary driver of the crisis is the rapid withdrawal of support from national governments, according to Kolker. “Federal or central government money is starting to dry out,” he said. “It’s being pushed down to utilities and local councils.” This financial shift places the full burden of infrastructure renewal and expansion onto local authorities.
Despite the shift in funding, there is still hope. The new reality forces utilities to rely heavily on rate hikes for funding, which carries significant political risk in the form of community pushback. Utilities will have to balance raising enough capital and maintaining public support. Kolker called this the “dirty dollar dilemma.”
Kolker stated that innovative and sustainable financing models must be implemented quickly to avoid widespread system failures and public backlash.
At a global scale, Kolker said that utilities must provide good service to customers and be in good standing to receive funding from government – like a social credit. He referenced two main methods of funding: taxes and tariffs, or private and public funds.
One answer to this, Kolker stated, was better regulation across the board. He said that common-sense regulation across different sectors, including prices and tariffs, service quality, competition, consumer protection and social/pro-poor regulations, could help the funding issue plaguing utilities worldwide.
