2016 Deal of the Year: Non-Traditional Financing

Who won this year's Deal of the Year award for Non-Traditional Financing? The winner will be honored on Thursday, December 1 at 583 Park Avenue in Manhattan, and later that night will compete with winners in the seven other categories for the right to be named The Bond Buyer's 2016 Deal of the Year.

VOICE OVER: The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority this past September issued the nation's first environmental impact bonds. The net proceeds of which will finance the inaugural project in DC Waters Green Infrastructure Program. Engineered to manage storm water run off and improve water quality in the district. The GI program is part of DC waters clean rivers project. A federally mandated, 25 year $2.6 billion infrastructure project designed to control the estimated two billion gallons of combined sewer overflows that pollute the Potomac and anakoskrivers and the rock creek annually. DC waters environmental impact bonds represent the scalable and replicable financial solution for other issuers as well as a series of firsts for the municipal market. Those firsts include expanding a pay for success model to one structured as a true debt instrument, structuring a new tax exempt security, risk sharing project performance with investors and leveraging non traditional investor demand. The environmental impact bond is an innovative, first of its kind and precedent setting financing. It is a scalable and replicable structure that carries much promise for the funding the nation's environmental infrastructure needs.