(8) “Capital improvement” means construction resulting in improvements to real property or depreciable property, or both, or adding to the value or useful life of these assets, including structural improvements such as constructing new wells or elevated storage tanks or modifying existing facilities, or improvements that enhance usefulness or productivity, including replacing an existing pump with a more efficient new pump.
Note: The following are examples of capital improvements: drilling a new well and constructing a well house; upgrading existing equipment or installing new, more efficient process equipment, such as pumps, and chemical feed or other treatment equipment; constructing new buildings or facilities; adding to or constructing major renovations of existing facilities; replacing aged or undersized water mains; constructing a water system crossing of a highway, railroad, or waterbody; constructing a watermain loop to eliminate one or more dead ends in the water system; upgrading or improving an existing storage tank, including recoating the entire exterior or entire interior, or both, of a storage tank; installing security, a supervisory control and data acquisition system, or monitoring equipment as part of a scored project.
(9) “Census block” means the smallest unit for which the U.S. census bureau collects and tabulates population information in the decennial census and income information in the ACS.
(10) “Census designated place” means a statistical area delineated for each decennial census according to U.S. census bureau guidelines for the purpose of presenting census data and ACS data for a concentration of population, housing, and commercial structures that is locally identifiable by name, but is not within an incorporated place.
(11) “Census tract” means a small, relatively permanent statistical subdivision of a county used in the decennial census and the American community survey, delineated for the purpose of presenting data, typically following visible features or governmental boundaries or both, including approximately 4,000 inhabitants, and designed to be a relatively homogeneous unit with respect to population characteristics, economic status, and living conditions.
(12) “Change order” means an action that specifies and justifies a change to a construction contract that alters the time of completion, the contract scope of work, the total price, or a combination of any of these.
(13) “Community water system” means a public water system which serves at least 15 service connections used by year–round residents or regularly serves at least 25 year–round residents. Any water system serving 7 or more homes, 10 or more mobile homes, 10 or more apartment units or 10 or more condominium units shall be considered a community water system unless information is provided by the owners indicating that 25 year–round residents will not be served.
(14) “Construction” means a set of actions taken to make a capital improvement, including any of the following actions:
(a) Building, erecting, extending, or assembling a water system or a new major asset for an existing water system.
(b) Preparing a construction site or sites for work activities. Site preparation includes grading, staking, and digging, and demolition or abandonment of existing structures.
(c) Altering, modifying, improving, upgrading, rehabilitating, or adding to existing water system facilities.
(d) Installing new piping or mechanical, electrical, or electronic equipment or facilities.
(15) “Contaminant” means any physical, chemical, biological, or radiological substance or matter in water.
(15m) “Core scope of work” means the set of activities, items, and work that is specific to and necessary for constructing and putting into operation a scored project.
(16) “Custom tabulation” means a special tabulation of income data from the ACS microdata files that is performed by the U.S. bureau of the census, is not part of the standard ACS data tabulations, and results in generation of a median household income for an area designated by the applicant as the boundaries of a town sanitary district, public inland lake protection and rehabilitation district, or municipal water district, or of the area served by the water system if the water system serves only a portion of the place or minor civil division in which it is located.
(17) “Debt” means a financial liability that is subject to repayment and incurred to fund a project, including liabilities in the form of lines of credit, bond anticipation notes, general obligation bonds, revenue bonds, general obligation promissory notes, certificates of indebtedness, and special assessment bonds.
(18) “Dedicated replacement fund” means a separate fund established by the municipality in which an appropriate balance is maintained, or sufficient deposits are made, or both, for the purpose of making expenditures for major repair or planned replacement of equipment or facilities necessary for the operation of the water system, or for unexpected unbudgeted major costs incurred for operation and maintenance of the water system.
(19) “Department” means the department of natural resources.
(20) “Disadvantaged business enterprise” or “DBE” means a business entity certified as disadvantaged under the U.S. department of transportation unified certification program or other program approved by the U.S. environmental protection agency to certify disadvantaged businesses.
(21) “Distribution system” means all pipes or conduits by which water is delivered to consumers except piping inside buildings served and a service line to a building from a distribution main or pipe.
(22) “DOA” means the department of administration.
(23) “Engineering” includes the following:
(a) Performing preliminary planning to determine the need for or the feasibility of building or modifying a water system.
(b) Performing engineering, architectural, geotechnical, hydrogeological, environmental, archaeological, fiscal, or economic investigations or studies.
(c) Preparing surveys, designs, plans, bidding documentation, working drawings, specifications, or as-built drawings.
(d) Observing, inspecting or supervising any of the activities under pars. (a) to (c) or under sub. (14).
(24) “Financial assistance” includes one or more of the following actions taken by the department and DOA under ss. 281.59 and 281.61, Stats.: (a) Providing a loan, principal forgiveness, a guarantee, or credit enhancement to a municipality.
(b) Refinancing a municipality’s interim debt obtained for the project.
(c) Purchasing insurance for a municipality.
(25) “Financial assistance agreement” means a written agreement between a municipality, the department and DOA that contains the terms and conditions of the financial assistance provided to the municipality.
(26) “Financial assistance agreement amendment” means a formal, written change to an existing financial assistance agreement, executed by all parties to the original agreement.
(27) “Force account work” means engineering, construction, or other project-specific activities performed by a municipality’s employees, or using equipment owned by the municipality, or both.
(28) “Future growth” means distribution system expansion beyond the existing system and excess capacity built into facilities that exceeds standard engineering practices.
(29) “Interim financing” means a debt of a municipality incurred to temporarily finance a project until permanent financing is obtained from the department under this chapter.
(30) “Interim financing costs” means the net interest, fees, and charges associated with issuing interim financing, including underwriter discounts, attorney fees, financial advisor fees, printing costs, bond rating charges, and trustee fees.
(32) “Maintenance” means activities or procedures that are established, commonplace, or repetitious, and are performed or should be performed frequently or on a schedule to sustain the functional integrity and efficiency of existing facilities and to provide upkeep for prevention of early decline or failure, or are performed as needed in response to minor emergencies, such as watermain repair when a pipe bursts, including the following types of maintenance:
(a) Preventive maintenance, including scheduled service, repair, inspection, adjustment, or replacement of parts, to keep equipment or facilities in satisfactory operating condition, to avoid frequent breakdowns and premature replacements, and to achieve the expected life of constructed assets and installed building equipment, conducted with a frequency of one year or less.
(b) Corrective maintenance, including unscheduled maintenance repairs to correct deficiencies during the year in which they occur.
(c) Mobile equipment maintenance, including all corrective, preventive, emergency, or replacement maintenance work done on mobile equipment assets, except when performed at time of purchase of used equipment to bring the purchased equipment to a fully functional or improved condition, or both.
(d) Recurring maintenance, including preventive maintenance activities that recur on a periodic and scheduled cycle of greater than one year, but less than 10 years.
(e) Component renewal, which is preventive maintenance activities that recur on a periodic and scheduled cycle of greater than 10 years, excepting storage tank recoating.
(f) Emergency maintenance, including unscheduled activities and repairs, such as repairing watermain breaks or mechanical malfunctions in aged or damaged infrastructure, typically initiated within a very short amount of time from when a need is identified, to correct an emergency need to prevent injury, loss of property, or human health impacts, or to quickly return an asset to service, excepting emergency repairs or replacement needed due to damage caused by severe weather, cyber attacks, or other unforeseen serious emergency situations over which the municipality has no control.
(g) Minor equipment replacement that substitutes or exchanges one existing asset, asset component, or item of installed equipment for another having the same specifications and the same capacity to perform the same function, except when performed within the scope of a larger capital improvement.
(h) Demolition that does not meet the cost eligibility criteria established in s. NR 166.07 (1) (g). (33) “Market interest rate” has the meaning given in s. 281.59 (1) (b), Stats. Note: Under s. 281.59 (1) (b), Stats., “market interest rate” means the effective interest rate on a fixed-rate revenue obligation issued by the state to fund a loan made under s. 281.59 (1) (b) or, for a variable rate obligation, the effective interest rate that the department of administration determines would have been paid if the variable rate obligation had been sold at a fixed rate. (34) “Maximum contaminant level” or “MCL” means the maximum permissible level of a contaminant that is delivered to any user of a public water system.
Note: The maximum permissible level and the sampling and analytical requirements vary depending on the specific contaminant. Chapter NR 809 should be consulted for specific information regarding any contaminant. (35) “MCL exceedance” means the analytical results of sampling for microbiological, inorganic, synthetic organic, volatile organic, disinfection byproducts, or radionuclide contaminants, as determined by methodology outlined in ch. NR 809, exceed the MCL of the contaminant. (36) “Median household income” has the meaning given in s. 281.58 (1) (cm), Stats. Note: Under s. 281.58 (1) (cm), Stats., “median household income” means median household income determined by the U.S. bureau of the census as adjusted by the department to reflect changes in household income since the most recent federal census. (37) “Minor civil division” means the primary governmental divisions of a county, including towns, as designated by the U.S. bureau of the census to collect and publish data.
(38) “Minority business enterprise” or “MBE” means a DBE that is owned or controlled on a daily basis by one or more minority group members.
(39) “Municipality” has the meaning given in s. 281.59 (1) (c), Stats. Note: Under s. 281.59(1)(c), Stats., “municipality” means any city, town, village, county, county utility district, town sanitary district, public inland lake protection and rehabilitation district, metropolitan sewerage district, joint local water authority created under s. 66.0823, Stats., or federally recognized American Indian tribe or band in this state. To be eligible for financial assistance from the safe drinking water loan program, an entity must be of a type included in the definition of “municipality” under s. 281.59 (1) (c), Stats., However, “municipality” includes some entities that are not eligible to receive safe drinking water loan program financial assistance because they are not eligible under federal regulations. The types of entities that are eligible to receive safe drinking water loan program financial assistance are those included in the definition of “local governmental unit” under s. 281.61 (1) (a), Stats., which reads as follows: ““Local governmental unit” means a city, village, town, county, town sanitary district, public inland lake protection and rehabilitation district, joint local water authority created under s. 66.0823, or municipal water district.” If a municipal water district applies for safe drinking water loan program financial assistance, the recipient of the financial assistance is the incorporated place, rather than the utility itself. (40) “Non–community water system” means a public water system that is not a community water system.
(41) “Operations” means labor, materials and chemicals used regularly, and work activities performed on a recurring basis throughout the year that are intended to meet routine, daily functional needs. Work activities may include any of the following:
(a) Operational maintenance activities related to continuing normal performance of the functions for which a water system asset or item of equipment is intended, such as lubricating gates and valves and removing organic growth or sediment, or related to keeping building systems such as HVAC, lighting, and electrical utilities working properly.
(b) Custodial maintenance activities, such as housekeeping duties, rodent and pest control, cutting brush and weeds, and lawn mowing, associated with general day-to-day care and cleaning necessary to maintain constructed assets.
(c) Trash removal activities to dispose of hazardous and non-hazardous waste and debris and to recycle products such as paper, cans, and bottles.
(d) Snow and ice removal and activities to treat surfaces to eliminate unsafe weather-related conditions.
(e) Office activities related to billing, collections, customer communications, personnel, and other types of activities that support the administration of the water system.
(f) Monitoring and record-keeping activities associated with making sure all components of the water system are working as they should, including: sampling, testing, analyzing data from a supervisory control and data acquisition system, patrolling and inspecting, reading gauges and meters, keeping plant logs and records, and preparing operations reports.
(42) “Place” means a concentration of population either legally bounded as an incorporated place, such as a city or village, or identified as a census designated place by the U.S. bureau of the census.
(43) “Plans and specifications” means project drawings and specification manuals for all construction work to be included in the financial assistance for the scored project.
(44) “Population” means the most recent year’s final population estimate published by the DOA demographic services center for the Wisconsin city, town, or village that submitted an intent to apply form. For a public water system owned by other than a city, town or village, “population” means the most recent population count or estimate done for the system or municipality and provided to the department by the municipality for purposes such as completing a sanitary survey.
(45) “Present value subsidy” or “PV” means the sum of periodic subsidies for loans made to or projected to be made to municipalities during a fiscal year, discounted at a rate of 5% to 7% per year to the first day of the biennium during which the loans are made.
(46) “Priority score” means the numerical value determined by the department that is assigned to each project in accordance with ss. NR 166.23 and 166.24. (47) “Professional services” includes engineering, archaeological, legal, or financial services, provided by a formally certified member of a professional body, such as a trade association or organized profession.
(48) “Project” means a set of activities described by a municipality for a planned undertaking related to its water system.
(50) “Project completion date” means the earliest date on which all of the following apply:
(a) The project construction is complete.
(b) The department or its agents have certified that the project was constructed according to department-approved plans and specifications.
(c) The department or its agents have certified that the facilities are operating according to design.
(d) The project closeout is complete.
(e) The department has notified the recipient that the project is complete.
(51) “Public water system” means a system for the provision to the public of piped water for human consumption if the water system has at least 15 service connections or regularly serves an average of at least 25 individuals daily at least 60 days each year. A public water system is either a community water system or a non–community water system.
Note: The definition of public water system as regulated by this chapter is broader and includes more water systems than those governed by the Public Service Commission under its definition of a public utility in ch. 196, Stats. (52) “Recipient” means any municipality or group of municipalities that has been awarded or has received financial assistance under ss. 281.59 and 281.61, Stats. (53) “Safe drinking water act” means the federal safe drinking water act, 42 USC 300f to 300j–26. (54) “Safe drinking water loan program” or “SDWLP” has the meaning given in s. 281.61 (1) (d), Stats. Note: Under s. 281.61 (1) (d), Stats., “safe drinking water loan program” means the program administered under s. 281.61, Stats., with financial management provided under s. 281.59, Stats. (55) “Scored project” means a project to which all of the following apply:
(a) The type of project meets eligibility criteria established in s. NR 166.06 (1). (b) The planned set of activities of the project includes construction activities that are reasonably necessary and appropriate to address a particular public health or water system concern.
(c) The scope of work is described in a priority evaluation and ranking form and a notice of intent to apply submitted by the applicant.
(d) The department completed all of the following actions:
