The Brandywine-Christina Revolving Water Fund (Brandywine-Christina RWF) operates in Northern Delaware and Southeastern Pennsylvania, within the iconic Brandywine-Christina watershed, part of the Delaware River Basin.
The Brandywine-Christina RWF was founded as part of the Delaware River Watershed Initiative, with major funding from the William Penn Foundation. An early feasibility study by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Delaware and the University of Delaware Water Resources Center supported the notion of a market-based plan, and the development of a comprehensive business plan in partnership with i2 Capital brought the feasibility study to life. With additional funding from the NRCS Conservation Innovation Grants program, i2 Capital and TNC combined forces with Stroud Water Research Center, Brandywine Conservancy, the Brandywine-Red Clay Alliance and local producers and agricultural experts, alongside regulatory, quantification and conservation science experts, to refine the Brandywine-Christina RWF market mechanisms and pilot the project with regional municipal water quality stakeholders.
According to the 2020 Pennsylvania Integrated Water Quality Monitoring and Assessment Report, approximately 55% of the streams in the Brandywine-Christina are listed as "impaired." meaning they do not meet water quality standards using USEPA-approved water quality assessment methodologies.. The BCRWF directly tackles the two main impairments to the Brandywine-Christina: "siltation due to urban runoff/storm sewers" and "nutrients due to agriculture," aiming to increase the targeted pace and scale of resources to address water quality impairments, in partnership with producers, municipalities and regional corporations. See: https://www.chesco.org/2027/Impaired-Waters-of-Chester-County.
In 2021, the Brandywine-Christina RWF closed three pilot pay-for-success (PFS) contracts with municipalities, whereby the Brandywine-Christina RWF provided full delivery contracts for quantified and calibrated water quality reductions that aim to achieve compliance under state Clean Water Act guidelines set by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Quality (PADEP) and the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC). These are the first PFS contracts of their type executed in the United States. The ultimate payment for such contracts is contingent upon final approval by regulators of permits issued to Brandywine-Christina RWF purchasers. The Brandywine-Christina RWF further partnered with TNC's Global Water Funds team to assess expanded municipal and water company demand for quantified water quality reductions, based on explicit regulatory and business case analysis. Based on this work, the Brandywine-Christina RWF received an incremental influx of development capital from the William Penn Foundation, the Longwood Foundation and the Richard King Mellon Foundation - the largest foundations in Pennsylvania and Delaware - to continue to develop the RWF model and to scale the solution. Further, in partnership with Ecosystem Services Market Consortium, the Brandywine-Christina RWF is piloting a corporate carbon offtake program that stacks water and carbon assets to produce maximum benefits for regional producers while achieving corporate sustainability objectives in line with global carbon quantification and reporting standards.
