Municipalities can:
1) make their own infrastructure sustainable; and/or
2) foster sustainable infrastructure in the private sector, especially at the subdivision level. 

But first, municipalities should understand their role by asking the following questions:

• What are our core responsibilities with respect to our infrastructure? (billing; operations and maintenance; regulatory)
• What is our scope of influence – for example, how can we influence the private sector? 
• What is our relationship with local utility providers?  
• To what extent are we in the utility business, and to what extent do we want to be?

Having asked those questions, local governments can decide how to engage in partnerships.  Typically, these are critical to making a community’s infrastructure systems more sustainable. Types of partnerships include:

• Public private partnerships. These are contractual agreements between public agencies (federal, state or local) and private-sector entities. Through these agreements, the skills and assets of each sector (public and private) are shared in delivering services or facilities for the use of the general public.  The private sector partners can be developers or utility companies.
• Eco-industrial networking. These create collaborative relationships among businesses, governments, and communities to more efficiently and effectively use resources, such as materials, energy, land, infrastructure, and people. This approach places infrastructure systems in the context of the community in which they operate.  Opportunities for by-product synergies are explored, and systems are able to achieve multiple objectives simultaneously, such as job creation, wastewater treatment, and delivery of non-potable water to industry.
• Funding programs. A growing number of public funding programs support pilot projects. Local governments can take advantage of these programs as more and more attention turns to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions