CIS receives private financing from UIG to expand stormwater infrastructure in Milwaukee
CIS announced on January 14, 2025, the deployment of a second tranche of private financing from its credit facility with the Urban Investment Group (UIG) at Goldman Sachs Alternatives.
This funding will further enhance CIS’s capacity to mitigate stormwater runoff across the Greater Milwaukee region through its Community-Based Partnership (CBP) with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) called Fresh Coast Protection Partnership (FCPP).
Since the 1990s, MMSD has been implementing green infrastructure strategies to slow or capture water before it reaches discharge points, complementing grey infrastructure by increasing capacity.
A variety of programs, partnerships, and policies have established the foundation for MMSD’s 2035 Vision, targeting a storage capacity of 740 million gallons. So far, MMSD has achieved over 100 million gallons, with CIS accounting for over 10% of that total in the past five years alone.
The investment will continue to fund the construction of green infrastructure to manage a total of 11.5 million gallons of stormwater runoff, reducing localized flooding and sewer overflows to support local communities.
By addressing environmental and health impacts associated with climate change, this initiative supports compliance with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPAs) Clean Water Act while transforming stormwater from a hazard into a resource.
The CBP will continue to prioritize projects in low-to-moderate-income neighborhoods and empower small, local, and disadvantaged businesses to implement green stormwater infrastructure improvements. FCPP’s model protects taxpayer investment by taking on all risk throughout the development process from project origination to delivery.
“Since 2020, we have successfully delivered or are working to deliver eighteen different green infrastructure projects across Milwaukee, 93% of which are located on private properties, nearly 50% located in low-to-moderate income areas, and 46% of the work have been led by local, small, women-, minority-, and veteran-owned businesses,” said Sanjiv Sinha, Ph.D., CEO and board member of CIS, in a press release. “Our ability to source funding from both private sponsors and low-cost public capital, implementing governance controls to treat environmental assets as traditional Assets Under Management is very unique.”
The Urban Investment Group (UIG) at Goldman Sachs Alternatives drives the firm’s impact investing, delivering innovative financing to address pressing social and economic challenges and fuel long-term growth in low- and moderate-income communities. Since 2001, UIG has committed over $21 billion to transformative projects, including one of the U.S.’s first social impact bonds and one of the largest public housing green energy retrofits.
“We’re proud to partner with CIS to bring much-needed infrastructure upgrades to underserved communities,” said Sherry Wang, co-head of the Urban Investment Group at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, in a press release. “Not only will this investment protect communities from environmental threats, it is also expected to fuel job growth by employing the local workforce.”
The EPA estimates that approximately 10 trillion gallons of untreated stormwater runoff enter U.S. waterways annually. This runoff carries pollutants such as raw sewage, trash, and toxins, contributing to environmental degradation and posing risks to public health. CIS’s green infrastructure solutions mimic natural hydrological processes, using soil and vegetation to capture, filter, cool, and reduce flooding while preventing pollutants from entering water supplies.
