HASI Makes First Water Infrastructure Investment, Backing Washington Wastewater Facility

HA Sustainable Infrastructure Capital has closed a structured equity investment in the Pasco Resource Recovery Center, a wastewater treatment and reuse facility developed and operated by Burnham serving the City of Pasco, Washington. The facility, which replaced Pasco's original Process Water Reuse Facility in 2025, has the capacity to recycle more than one billion gallons of water annually for agricultural irrigation, supplying 1,900 acres of agricultural fields the city owns. The investment, which closed in July 2026 and is supported by a 30-year wastewater treatment agreement with the city, marks HASI's first transaction specifically in water infrastructure. Financial terms were not disclosed.

 

Why Anaerobic Digestion Produces Three Distinct Outputs From One Process

 

The Pasco Center uses anaerobic digestion, a process in which microorganisms break down organic matter in the absence of oxygen, to treat wastewater from seven local industrial food-processing plants. That single treatment process generates three separate, commercially and environmentally useful outputs simultaneously: recycled water suitable for agricultural irrigation, renewable natural gas produced as a byproduct of the digestion process and sold separately, and nutrient-rich soil amendments recovered from the treatment process itself.

That multi-output structure matters for the facility's overall economics and environmental value proposition, since it means a single piece of infrastructure serves multiple distinct functions, water reuse, renewable energy generation, and soil nutrient recovery, rather than requiring three separate facilities to achieve the same combined outcome. Food-processing wastewater in particular tends to carry high organic content, making it especially well suited to anaerobic digestion, since more organic matter available for microbial breakdown generally means more renewable natural gas generated as a byproduct of the treatment process.

 

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Why HASI's First Water Investment Signals a Broadening Asset Category

 

HASI describes itself as a leading investor in sustainable infrastructure assets, and this transaction explicitly represents the company's first investment specifically in water infrastructure, a notable expansion beyond the renewable energy and other sustainable infrastructure categories the company has more typically focused on. Co-Chief Investment Officer Annmarie Reynolds specifically framed the investment as an entry point the company intends to build on, stating an interest in investing further into water infrastructure going forward, suggesting this transaction functions as a deliberate first step into a new asset category rather than an isolated, one-off deal.

That expansion reflects a broader pattern increasingly visible across sustainable infrastructure investing, where water and wastewater treatment assets are gaining recognition as a distinct category offering the same long-duration, contracted cash flow characteristics that have made renewable energy infrastructure attractive to specialised infrastructure investors, while also addressing water scarcity and reuse needs that are becoming increasingly pressing in water-stressed agricultural regions.

 

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Why the 30-Year Contract Structure Fits HASI's Investment Profile

 

The investment is backed by a 30-year wastewater treatment agreement with the City of Pasco, giving the underlying asset the kind of long-term, government-backed contracted revenue stream that specialised infrastructure investors typically seek out specifically because it provides predictable, low-volatility cash flow over an extended period, reducing exposure to the kind of market pricing fluctuations that affect merchant infrastructure assets without long-term offtake agreements. That contract structure, combined with the facility's public-private partnership model between Burnham and the City of Pasco, gives the investment characteristics similar to other government-backed infrastructure agreements covered elsewhere in recent reporting, where municipal partnerships provide the revenue certainty needed to attract specialised private infrastructure capital.

 

What This Signals for Burnham's Broader Growth Strategy

 

Burnham chief executive Chris Tynan framed HASI's investment as positioning the company to bring similar water and wastewater solutions to other public utilities facing comparable challenges, describing this transaction as "a strong first step" with the expectation of further partnership opportunities as Burnham's platform continues growing. That framing suggests both companies view the Pasco Center not as a standalone project but as a template for a repeatable investment and development model, one HASI could potentially replicate across additional municipal wastewater infrastructure projects as it builds out its newly established water infrastructure investment capability. Whether HASI follows through on its stated intention to expand further into water infrastructure investment, and whether the Pasco Center's combination of water reuse, renewable natural gas production and resource recovery proves replicable across other municipal wastewater facilities facing similar capacity and environmental challenges, will determine how significant this first transaction proves for both companies' broader growth strategies in the water infrastructure sector.

 

Source: HA Sustainable Infrastructure Capital, Inc.