Introduction
Tax-exempt bond financing is available for certain water and sewage, solid waste disposal/recovery project, waste-to-energy projects, and wastewater treatment projects. Bond financing may be available for public, private and public-private partnership projects. Bonds might be issued directly by a city or a county for government-owned project pursuant to Georgia's Revenue Bond Law. A privately owned and operated project might be financeable through Georgia's Development Authorities Law. A government-owned project or a public-private partnership project might be financed with Georgia's Resource Recovery Development Authorities Law or Georgia's Regional Solid Waste Management Authorities Law. In order for the bonds to be issued to qualify for tax-exemption, additional requirements will apply. This memorandum provides a brief overview.
Revenue Bond Law
The Revenue Bond Law authorizes every city and county to issue revenue bonds for the purpose of financing various government-owned undertakings, including projects for the collection, treatment and distribution of water, the collection, treatment, re-use or disposal of solid waste, and for the collection, treatment and disposal of sewage, waste and storm water. Such projects are to be operated by the city, county or authority on a revenue-producing basis, and bonds issued for such purpose may be secured only by revenues of such a project, or other revenue-producing undertakings of the city, county or authority.
Development Authorities Law
The Development Authorities Law creates a development authority
that can be activated for any city or county to issue revenue bonds
for projects including water pollution control facilities and solid
waste disposal facilities. A water pollution control facility is
any property
used to abate or control water pollution or contamination by
removing, altering, disposing or storing pollutants, contaminants,
wastes or heat, including the necessary pumping, power and other
equipment, sewers, holding ponds, lagoons and related facilities,
if such facilities are in furtherance of applicable federal, state
or local standards for the abatement or control of water pollution
or contamination. A solid waste disposal facility is any property
used for the collection, storage, treatment, utilization,
processing or final disposal of solid waste, including garbage,
refuse, or other discarded solid materials, and also solid waste
materials resulting from industrial and agricultural operations and
from community activities, but excluding domestic sewage.
No project financed under the Development Authorities law may be operated by a development authority or by any city, county or other governmental subdivision, but must be leased or sold to one or more persons, firms or private corporations. The lessee or purchaser must be required to pay all costs of operating and maintaining the lease or purchased property and pay rentals or installments in amounts sufficient to pay the principal and interest and premium, if any, on all bonds and other obligations issued for the project.
Resource Recovery Development Authorities Law and
Regional Solid Waste Management Authorities Law
The Resource Recovery Development Authorities Law and the Regional Solid Waste Management Authorities Law are two similar pieces of legislation creating in each city or county authorities denominated either a resource recovery development authority or a solid waste management authority. Such authorities have power to issue revenue bonds to finance projects for the collection, transportation, management, storage, treatment, utilization, processing or final disposal of solid waste, or the conversion of solid waste or resources contained therein into steam, electricity, oil, charcoal, gas or other products or energy sources, including any property used in connection with the facility for the extraction, collection, storage, treatment, processing, utilization or final disposal of resources contained in solid waste. Such authorities also have power to finance any property used in the extraction, collection, storage, treatment, processing or utilization of water resources and the conversion of such resources into any useful form of energy. A resource recovery development authority expressly authorizes projects similar to those described above for the sewage sledge. A solid waste management authority or a resource recovery development authority can be activated jointly or on a regional basis by any number of cities or counties.
Distinctive to resource recovery development authorities and
solid waste management authorities are their ability to enter into
intergovernmental contracts with cities and counties, and thus
engage in contract revenue bond obligation financing. One or more
cities and counties and one of these authorities can finance a
project and avoid the requirement for the holding of a voter
referendum to authorize general obligation bonds and the
requirement that city or county revenue bonds be secured only by
revenue-producing undertakings by engaging in a contract revenue
bond financing. The intergovernmental contracts provision of the
Georgia Constitution permits two or more public bodies to contract
for a term up to 50 years for the provision of services which the
contracting parties are authorized by law to undertake or provide.
Consequently, one of these authorities can issue its revenue bonds
for a project and enter into a contract to provide the use of the
project to the city or county, and the city or county can pledge
its full faith and credit to that contract. That contract can be
pledged to the payment of the authority's revenue
bonds, which are treated in the financial marketplace, in effect,
as the general obligations of the city or county.
Resource recovery department authorities also have power to enter into leases of project or contracts with respect to the use of project with private persons, firms and corporation. Thus, all or any part of the use of a project may be transferred to private parties, enabling private-public partnerships for solid waste disposal and reclamation facilities.
Governmental Projects versus Private Activity Projects
If a waste or wastewater project is owned and operated by a government unit, or owned by a government unit and operated by a private company under a qualifying management contract, tax –exempt governmental bonds may be utilized for the financing. For more information on governmental bonds see our "Overview of Governmental Bond Financing." Such financings are not subject to narrow constraints on the types and amounts of property that can be financed, the necessity to obtain an allocation of a limited amount of bond issuing authority (volume cap) available to the State, the need to publish and conduct a public hearing, the limitation on the amount of issuance costs, the applicability of alternative minimum tax to interest earned on the bonds and, in some cases, the tax disadvantages placed on the purchase of such bonds by banks and other financial institutions. However, if the project is to be owned or substantially utilized by private parties, bonds issued will be treated as "private activity bonds" and subject to these restrictions (except that the need to obtain an allocation of volume cap does not apply to a solid waste facility that is government-owned but used by private parties).
If a facility is privately owned, any bonds issued would be treated as private activity bonds. Also, bonds are private activity bonds if the project financed is to be used more than 10%, directly or indirectly, in a private trade or business and if payments from or property of a private business are to secure or repay, directly or indirectly, 10% or more of the bonds. For example, if a government-owned facility is contracted on a long-term basis to process waste from private companies that would utilize more than 10% of the capacity of the facility, this private use satisfies the "use" portion of the test, and the revenues to be paid under the contract probably satisfy the "security" portion of the test, and bonds issued for the project would be private activity bonds.
Requirements for Private Activity Solid Waste Projects
A solid waste facility must comply with several specific requirements to utilize tax-exempt private activity bonds. Such a facility or portion thereof must be used for the collection, storage, treatment, utilization, processing or final disposal of solid waste. "Solid waste" for this purpose is defined as garbage, refuse, and other discarded solid materials including solid waste materials resulting from industrial, commercial and agricultural operations and from communities activities, but does not include solids or dissolved materials in domestic sewage or other significant pollutants in water resources, such as silt, dissolved or suspended solids in industrial wastewater effluents, dissolved materials in irrigation return flows or other common water pollutants. The solid waste must be useless, unused, unwanted or discarded solid material that has no market or other value at the place where it is located. If a person is willing to remove such property at his own expense, but is not willing to purchase such property at its location at any price, such material is treated as waste. The material may be valuable in the hands of the recycler, but retains its classification as waste if it was valueless in its original location, taking collection and transportation costs in account.
Although any governmental recycling and waste-to-energy project may be financeable with tax-exempt bonds, there are limitation on the types of private activity projects that qualify for tax-exempt financing. A facility that disposes of solid waste by reconstituting, converting or otherwise recycling it into material which is not waste is financeable on a tax-exempt basis as a solid waste disposal facility only so long as the solid waste constitutes at least 65% by weight or volume of the total materials introduced into the recycling process. A recycling facility will not fail to qualify for tax-exempt financing only because it operates at a profit. However, private activity facilities that further process saleable waste-derived products into finished products are not financeable with tax-exempt solid waste bonds (although they might be financeable as tax-exempt manufacturing bonds — See our "Overview of Private Activity Bonds and Incentives). If the facility has both a solid waste disposal function and another function, only the portion of the cost of the property allocable to the solid waste disposal function may be financed with tax-exempt solid waste bonds. For example, metals and glass can be separated from solid waste and then further sorted, sized, cleaned and pulverized. The private activity solid waste bonds cannot be used, however, to finance facilities that would further process the saleable metal or glass into a finished product.
If materials or head are recovered from the solid waste disposal process, the waste disposal function includes processing of such materials or heat into saleable or useable form, but does not include further processing which converts the materials or heat into other products.
Financing for Private Activity Wastewater Projects
A private activity wastewater, pretreatment facility may be financed with tax-exempt bonds only if it is deemed functionally related and subordinate to a government-owned sewage system. Sewage disposal facilities are defined as property used for the collection, storage, treatment, utilization, processing or final disposal of sewage. Facilities tied directly to sewage facilities that pretreat waste, if the waste is required to be treated prior to release into the sewage system, may constitute a functionally related and subordinate facility that is financeable with tax-exempt bonds. Property is not a functionally related and subordinate to a sewage facility if it is not a character size commensurate with the character and size of the sewage facility.
Summary
Georgia law provides a number of issues and methods for issuing tax-exempt bonds for solid waste disposal, recovery, recycling and waste-to-energy projects, and sewage and wastewater treatment and pretreatment projects. However, if the facility is to be privately owned or substantially used in a private trade or business, special federal tax rules come into play to determine whether and to the extent the facility can be financed with tax-exempt bonds. With the proper legal structuring, however, many privately-utilized waste projects, as well as governmental projects, can be financed on a tax-exempt basis.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
