Methodology / Macro context
The macro context behind the score
Live macro readings that anchor the Water Hawk composite. Treasury rates set the discount-rate baseline for capital plans; the CPI and PPI complex sets the construction-and-chemical pass-through baseline; energy prices set the delivered-cost baseline for chemical lanes. Refreshed quarterly.
Q2 2026 reading
Showing the quarter-anchor reading captured 2026-05-10. The cohort comparisons in the methodology are evaluated against this baseline through the next refresh.
Interest rates
30-Year Treasury Constant Maturity Rate
4.97
+2.90% YoY
As of 2026-05-07
Risk-free anchor for municipal-bond spread analysis. The financial-distress component reads cohort-weighted spreads above 30-year Treasury for utilities issuing in the past 24 months.
10-Year Treasury Constant Maturity Rate
4.41
+0.92% YoY
As of 2026-05-07
Mid-tenor risk-free anchor used for shorter-tenor utility issuances.
Federal Reserve Holdings of Mortgage-Backed Securities
Not in latest snapshot
Indirect signal for municipal credit conditions; rising holdings correlate with looser credit.
Inflation
Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items
330.29
+3.29% YoY
As of 2026-03-01
Headline inflation. Used for real-dollar normalization on multi-year bond-disclosure capital plans.
Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items Less Food and Energy
334.17
+2.60% YoY
As of 2026-03-01
Core CPI, used for steady-state inflation expectations in projections.
Construction cost
Producer Price Index by Industry: Other Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction
354.99
+5.97% YoY
As of 2026-03-01
Civil-engineering construction PPI. The infrastructure-age component normalizes capital plans against this index for cohort comparison.
Producer Price Index by Commodity: Construction Machinery and Equipment
Not in latest snapshot
Construction-equipment cost trend; used as a contractor-margin sanity check.
Industrial chemicals
Producer Price Index by Commodity: Industrial Chemicals
366.66
+5.16% YoY
As of 2026-03-01
Chemical-procurement-load component reads this as the feedstock-price-pass-through baseline. The chemical procurement quarterly cross-checks lane prices against this index.
PPI by Industry: Other Basic Inorganic Chemical Manufacturing
163.16
+3.20% YoY
As of 2026-03-01
NAICS-based PPI for other basic inorganic chemical manufacturing (chlorine, caustic soda, sulfuric acid). Direct feedstock proxy for sodium hypochlorite and caustic-soda lanes. Replaces the discontinued WPU0613020T2 series.
Energy
Crude Oil Prices: West Texas Intermediate (WTI)
109.76
+87.62% YoY
As of 2026-05-04
Energy-price proxy for utility operating cost cohort baselines.
Henry Hub Natural Gas Spot Price
2.67
-18.10% YoY
As of 2026-05-04
Natural-gas spot used for RNG candidate scoring. The RNG composite reads this as the offtake-pricing baseline for project-finance pro-formas.
Employment
Total Nonfarm Payrolls
Not in latest snapshot
National employment, indirectly used for service-area-pressure normalizations.
Macro indicators
Gross Domestic Product
31,856.26
+6.04% YoY
As of 2026-01-01
Headline GDP; cited in economic-context display alongside score-component context.
University of Michigan: Consumer Sentiment
Not in latest snapshot
Consumer-sentiment indicator. Used as a sanity-check for service-area-pressure trends in residential rate-base assumptions.
Why this matters
The composite is built from real public-data inputs, but several of those inputs only mean something against a macro baseline. A utility's outstanding debt is just a number until you compare it to long-rate Treasury and the cohort spread; chemical procurement spend is just a trend until you compare it to the industrial-chemicals producer price complex. The readings above anchor every cohort comparison in the Water Hawk methodology.