Pooling the issues helps smaller communities by spreading the costs among the pooled participants. There have been eight pooled financings and nine stand-alone financings through the SRF as of May 1996. This represents over one-half billion dollars obligated to projects now under construction. Without leveraging, the federal and state dollars would already have been exhausted in the summer of 1995. The subsidized interest rates on the loans thus far range from 2.1 percent to 3.6 percent.
Success stories document the savings to both small and large communities.
Even a small percentage savings makes a big difference on a large project. Eric Knoll, city administrator of Arnold has used the fund twice. One of the new initiatives is a program developed in cooperation with the Missouri Department of Agriculture which aids smaller farmers in financing animal waste facilities. The Department of Natural Resources has always attempted to finance a broad range of municipal wastewater projects. However, for many small communities a loan is financially unfeasible.