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Marketing water

ONE Water?

April 25, 2013
Leadership, management, Marketing water, Uncategorized
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One.  That’s the mantra.  I started blogging a year ago with the statement that “It’s all one water.”  And that is true, regardless of the form it may be in (raw, waste, storm, reclaimed, gray, industrial, etc).  But I may have used too many words.  Dan  Pink notes in his newest book “To Sell is Human” that one of the recent trends is to try to get  your  message to one word.  Obama did this with “Change” in 2008 and “Forward” in 2012.  Others have noted that branding to one word is in vogue with private companies as well.  So what about the water industry? So what about water?  Maybe we simply need to say “One.”  It is all one.  We can treat any water quality to meet whatever your need may be.  So why differentiate the water source? There are many water associations out there for a variety of reasons including unhappiness with another associated (so they creates a breakaway group).  But how does this help the water industry?   There are too many water associations that are way too specialized in what they do.  Differentiating them create silos, silos that make you think water is different.  But we know it is not.  It’s all one.  So for example, the America Water Works Association is the oldest of the water industry associations and is the only one that sets standards for the industry.  It has long created manuals of practice that have been updated numerous times by industry professionals.  And water purveyors must treat all types of water to deliver healthy, safe water to your household, and they do, and have for over 100 years.  Tap water is as safe or safer than any other option.  So what would happen if AWWA were to reassert its leadership role with a new mantra that pulls the industry together.  What if they tried “One”?

Market or be Outmarketed

March 10, 2013
communciations, finance, funding, Leadership, Marketing water, sustainability, Uncategorized, water supplies
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Municipal drinking water is strictly regulated by the USEPA.  We spend a lot of time testing our water, producing reports, and providing our customers with information on our results.  The results show it works, because the number of incidents of contaminated water are few, and rarely affect larger utility systems.  We are so good at providing water that the public expects their water to be safe, yet the buy bottled water?  Wait, huh?  Bottled water? Bottled water is not regulated by the USEPA and is not subject to the same requirements as potable water.  There are less than three full time people at FDA inspecting bottled water facilities, versus thousands reviewing public water supplies.  Water utilities run millions of analyses per year and must publish the results.  So why do they buy bottled water when our water is safe?

Keep in mind that in many areas of the world, the bottled water industries move in and compete for the same supplies as we currently use.  North Florida is rife with arguments over flows to springs as are other areas.  Some of the water is simply repackaged tap water.  So in addition to competing for our customers, they are competing with the sustainability of our drinking water supplies.  Then there are the hundreds of thousands of bottles that end up in landfills.  More impact on sustainability.  At the same time, bottled water is more costly that gasoline, which everyone complains about, but that does not stop the purchases?  So what’s up?

Marketing that’s what.  We don’t market water.  I noted in an earlier blog that we simply don’t market our product, which has allowed others to compete for the same dollars.  Customers complain about rate hikes, (averaging about 5% per year for the past 10 years according to the new AWWA study), yet they happily pay over $4/gallons for many of the popular bottled waters, more and more cable channels, fancy phones, etc.  Not that any of these commercial products are per se bad, but none are required for survival like water.

Interestingly when we do market, it reaps positive results.  New York and San Francisco have seen the wisdom of marketing for year.  They ship New York tap water to Florida to make Brooklyn style bagel because Florida Water doesn’t taste the same.  DC Water changed its name, and began a marketing campaign that changed public perception of the utility and has allowed it to start dealing with its infrastructure backlog.  Some of their ideas include branding the water, and having restaurants serve it in marked glasses, paid for by the utility.  Signs on drinking fountains, in schools and even sales of tap water in stores are options some utilities have started.  But the key is started.  Marketing takes dollars, to reap benefits.  Who knows, maybe tap water is the next bottled water….

Sea Level Rise may Impact low lying areas faster than we think

February 23, 2013
Climate, communciations, Environment, groundwater, infrastructure, Leadership, Marketing water, planning, power demands, power-water nexus, sanitary sewer, sea level rise, stormwater, sustainability, Tidal flooding, Uncategorized, water sewer management
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One of the major issues involved with climate changes is sea level rise. Florida has experienced 9 inches of sea level rise since 1900. Projections are 2-3 feet by 2100, perhaps more. Modeling done by my students and I at FAU has demonstrated that in low lying areas, sea level rise will also impact groundwater levels, and accelerate inland flooding. The graphs above compare the traditional bathtub model used by most investigators and our adjusted for groundwater level model. You wee added inland areas of flooding which complicated storm water flooding issues much faster than sea level rise might indicate.

What do you believe are the three biggest water challenges in the U.S.? Part 2

February 20, 2013
Climate, Environment, finance, funding, groundwater, infrastructure, Leadership, management, Marketing water, sustainability, Uncategorized, water sewer management, water supplies
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This question has been asked a couple times on on-line discussion groups.  It usually results in a short list of answers.  In the last post, I outlined the number one answer –  getting a handle on failing infrastructure.  The next issue has to do with water supplies.  You hear the argument that we need to get people to respect that drinking water as a limited resource, develop where water supplies are plentiful as opposed to arid regions that are water poor and protecting water sources instead of rendering it unusable in the process of using it. People (and their jobs) are moving to “more favorable” (read: warmer, more arid) climates, so people are now actually trying to grow rice and develop golf courses in the deserts of the Southwest US and complaining about “drought” conditions. The sustainability of groundwater supplies is often noted as a problem because much of the west relies on groundwater for agricultural irrigation. Having a 50 or 100 year management plan for an aquifer, which is how to insure there is water to last 50 or 100 years, is shortsighted, even though it doesn’t sound like it. Long term these areas could run out of water which will create significant economic impacts to these communities. More professionals should be involved in this discussion: regional growth planners; federal and state funders that offer ‘incentives’ to businesses to relocate their workers; city and county governments that accept these ‘incentives’ to beef up their budgets.

But just as cities market their community to developers and industry, it is interesting that marketing services is another issue.  I had a conversation where an elected official said it was inappropriate for government to market. Yet the bottled water industry does, power companies do, and cell phone companies do. Utilities ignore the people that put fliers on houses asking our residents to take a sample of their water, and then attacking the quality of our drinking water by explaining that having calcium and chlorine in the water is bad, should have been addressed long ago. Of course calcium and chlorine are in the water! Chlorine disinfects the water and then keeps the distribution system clean (especially an issue in warmer climates with TOC in the water). Our public is uneducated and we have been out-marketed for scare dollars for 40 years. That is an elected official, but also a water official problem.

What do you believe are the three biggest water challenges in the U.S.?

February 15, 2013
Climate, communciations, Environment, finance, funding, infrastructure, Leadership, management, Marketing water, planning, Uncategorized, water sewer management, water supplies
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This question has been asked a couple times on on-line discussion groups.  It usually results in a short list of answers.  The number one answer is usually getting a handle on failing infrastructure.  The US built fantastic infrastructure systems that allowed our economy to grow and use to be productive, but like all tools and equipment, it degrades, or wears out with time.  In addition, newer infrastructure is more efficient and works better. In many ways we are victims of our own success. People have grown used to the fact that water is abundant, cheap, and safe. Open the tap and here it comes. Flush the toilet and there it goes, without a thought as to what is involved to produce, treat and distribute potable water as well as to collect, treat, and discharge wastewater. Looking to the future, we should take education as one of our challenges.  Our economy and out way of life requires access to high quality water and waste water. So this will continue to be critical.  But utilities have not been proactive in explaining the condition of buried infrastructure in particular, and need more data. The same goes for roadways and many buildings.

Cities are sitting on crumbling systems that have suffered from lack of adequate funding to consistently maintain and upgrade.  In part this is because some believe that clean drinking water is a right instead of a privilege to be paid for. We gladly pay hundreds of dollars per month for cable television and cell phones, but scream at the costs for water delivered to out tap. The discussion usually continues along the lines of utilities are funding at less than half the level needed to meet the 30 year demands while relying on the federal government, which is trying to get out of funding for infrastructure for local utilities. Utilities are a local issue which is some ways makes this easier. Our local leaders to send help with the education (after we educate them), send less money going to the general funds and more retained by utilities.

Perhaps where we have failed is in educating the public. Public agencies are almost always reactive, as opposed to pro-active, which is why we continuously end up in defensive positions and at the lower end of the spending priorities. So we keep deferring needed maintenance. The life cycle analysis concepts used in business would help. A 20 year old truck, pump, backhoe, etc just aren’t cost effective to operate and maintain. We are not very successful at getting this point across.

Money is an issue, and will always be, but the fact that local officials are not stressed about infrastructure is in part because utility personnel are very good at our jobs, minimizing disruptions and keeping the public safe. We are not “squeaky wheels” and we don’t market our product at all. Afterall, is cable or your phone really more valuable that water and sewer?

The Way of the Wolverine

January 30, 2013
Climate, communciations, Environment, finance, funding, infrastructure, Leadership, management, Marketing water, planning, sustainability, water sewer management
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Last week, the headline in the morning newspaper and on-line news outlets report the most recent suggestions from the House of Representatives to cut the federal budget deficit involves major cuts to domestic programs.  No surprise there.  Among those that are proposed to be cut significantly is infrastructure investments.  Infrastructure is what allows our country to thrive.  Without water, sewer, roads, airports, ports, etc, the economy could not be as robust as it has been, and will not achieve its greatest output.  The fact that our elected leaders don’t see infrastructure investment as a high priority is problematic.  More problematic is that this appears to be an ongoing position of some in Congress, meaning there is likely more of this view at other levels of government.  But it ignores that facts.  This country has always grown after investments in infrastructure, not before.  The federal government has been involved in infrastructure since the beginning of the country, and actually accelerated its involvement after WWII, including water and wastewater upgrades starting immediately after WWII.  The monies to improve water and sewer systems increased after the passage of the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts.  Recall that President Nixon, a conservative republican, sponsored the new federalism concept that greatly expanded the amount of federal block grants to local governments. In part this was due to the perceived need to help local governments catch up with improvements needed in connection with new federal rules, like the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water act.  The high point in federal aid for infrastructure.

The trend was reversed in mid-1980s, when most of the grant programs were converted to loan programs, with the idea that the federal government would wean the utility industry off federal entitlements within 30 years.  The current concern over budget deficits and taxes further weakens the prospects of large scale federal flow –throughs to assist local governments with infrastructure upgrades, water and sewer included.  Given that the current water and sewer needs exceed over $1 billion in the next 30 years, and current funding levels are expected to derive half that amount, the infrastructure needs gaps will continue to widen, with potentially more common failures in piping systems, and impacts to local economies.  It is a viscous circle that needs to end, and one that can only have negative long-term effects for us.   In part the issue is political will, but also the failure of non-elected executives to fully grasp the issue, and adopting the way of the wolverine – to fight and scrap, climb, scramble and investigate new means to defend what is their’s.  The analogy is that utility personnel, and the upper management they report to, need to take “ownership” of their utilities infrastructure, and urge the decision-makers to do the same.  We need to defend our infrastructure, and we have the means to do it.  The time may be right to push this issue locally.  The economy is looking up.  Property values are starting to climb, and commercial activity is slowly creeping back.  The result will be more tax money available to general funds, many of which have been living large off the utility system.  Seems like this would be a good time to reverse that trend.

The failure to do so creates difficulties, not unlike those faced by wolverines today.  The wolverine suffers from effects placed on it by others.  There are only 500-1000 in the United States as opposed to the many that were here before hunting, farming and other development.  A second “way of the wolverine” is decline because they cannot fix the problems caused by others.  Unlike the wolverine, we have the power to prevent our decline.  We need to do so.

Outlook for Utilities is Up, but Leadership needed for Infrastructure Investments

January 13, 2013
communciations, finance, funding, infrastructure, Leadership, management, Marketing water, planning, sustainability, water sewer management, water supplies
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The magazine Utility Contractor suggests that 2013 may be much better than 2012 from a utility construction perspective.  In Fact they suggest a 13% increase in utility construction, although the bulk of that is in the power industry, not the water industry.  Their projections are for water utility infrastructure spending to remain roughly constant from 2012, a slight uptick from the recession years.  At the same time, the US water infrastructure bill was suggested by Public Works magazine to exceed $1 trillion over the next 30 years, requiring over $30 billion to be spend annually on upgrades.  This is more than double their estimates of current funding..  Many of these upgrades are pipe.  Much of the piping infrastructure in America is over 50 years old, and the condition may be unclear (unless you dig it up, you don’t know much).  But piping projects are hard to fund, because no one sees the pipe, only the failures.  As time goes on, the condition continues to deteriorate.

Much of the reason that water utility infrastructure is not expected to increase is that revenues are not expected to climb significantly to allow for the expansion of capital funding despite historically low borrowing rates and lowered costs of construction.  The reason:  many public sector utilities, which accounts for many of the larger systems, have been caught in one or more of several traps:  deferring capital to pay current expenses without raising rates, revenue losses from defaults on housing, use of utility fees to overcome ad valorem tax losses in the general fund, or political pressure to reduce rates.  All four cases can be crippling to the utility because it not only removes revenues today, but likely will result in a continuing practice in the future.

The good news in the revenues are rising, and that unemployment is down nationally despite the loss of 276,000 state and local jobs in 2011.  But since governments tend to lag the private sector in recovery, and we now have 34 straight months the private sector adding jobs, governments should start to see improved conditions in 2013.  Salaries are up, revenues are up a little and jobs are being filled, but what does this mean to infrastructure? The question is why the projections are for no increase in spending.  Water and sewer utilities owned by governments, are caught in the middle of the political process which lacks leadership.  These utilities are set up as enterprise funds, whereby revenues are gained from provision of a measurable service.  As a result they are designed to be operated more like a business, than a government.  But if your utility funds are altered through the political process, this can frustrate the efforts to run an efficient and effective business-like organization, which may mean the status quo, which is not investments in infrastructure beyond absolutely essential and emergency measures.  The question is where is the leadership to reverse this trend?  Unfortunately the political leadership focus is on elections, 2 to 4 years out, not the 20 or 30 year life of the utility’s assets.  As a result, short term benefits sacrifice long-term needs.

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If you are a person who wants to be a leader, you also need to think about the long-term impacts of your plans/policies and actions.  How will they be perceived 10 or 20 years out?  How will your decisions impact the course of the organization?  For utilities how has your tenure added value to the utility, whether that value is treatment capacity, public health protection or reliability of the system.  And how is it measure, since monetary value is not the only means to add value. Keep in mind no one remembers the guy who did not raise rates, only the person who did not plan to replace the infrastructure that failed. That’s a legacy leadership issue.  One thing many people do not understand is that while we live in the moment, it is how people view our actions afterwards.  It is why it is so easy to see leadership after the fact, but sometimes very difficult during the event.  The question is, how to we overcome the restrictions caused by the 2008 recession?  That’s where leadership comes to play.

SUSTAINABILITY THROUGHOUT TIME – BUT NOW WHAT?

January 10, 2013
communciations, Environment, finance, groundwater, infrastructure, Leadership, management, Marketing water, planning, sustainability, Uncategorized, water supplies
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I was cruising through Glacier Bay National Park when I wrote this blog.  It was just one of those inspirational momentsl  If you have never seen it, you should, especially as a water professional.  The entire park is a testament to the power of water and the result of changes in climate cycles that affect the hydrologic cycle.  I will post video of the journey separately, but suffice it to say that the inherent beauty of the place is difficult to describe.  Needless to say with a large concentration of glaciers in the area (most retreating), there is copious amounts of water (for now).  The Pacific Glacier has retreated 65 miles, yes MILES, in 300 years in part because of changes in oceanic moisture and evaporation.  The native people, Tlingets, moved and survived based on glacier flows end ebbs.  But that’s not my point.  Seeing this much water leads to an entirely different perspective, one that is helped by Brian Fagan’s book, Elixir which outlines the history of civilizations as they were affected by harnessing of water, or the lack of ability to do so.  Same thing applies to the Tlingets here.

Historically the key was to rely on surface waters where they were consistent, to manage water locally and carefully for the benefit of all, and when surface waters were not consistent enough to be reliable year after year, quanats, shallow wells and other mechanisms were used to extract water from glacial till or adjacent to rivers (riverbank filtration or infiltration galleries in today’s vernacular).  Or people moved or died out. The ancient people did not have the ability to dig too deep, but were creative in means to manage available supplies.

Contrast this to today where over the last 50 years we have been able to extract water from ever expanding, generally deeper sources, but to what end?  Certainly we have “managed “ surface waters, by building dams, diversions and offstream reservoirs.  These supply half the potable water use in the United States and Canada as well as a lot of irrigation.  But groundwater has been an increasing component.  Fagan makes the point that deep groundwater sources are rarely sustainable for any period of time, and that many in the past have recognized this limitation.  But have we?

Maybe not so much.  A couple years ago I was at a conference out west.  The session I was speaking at involved sustainable groundwater, a major issue for AWWA, ASCE, NGWA and the utilities and agricultural folks around the world.  One of the speakers was a geologist with the State of Utah.  Her paper concerned the issues with decreasing groundwater levels in the St. George and Cedar City, areas in southwestern Utah, where population growth is a major issue.  Her point was that despite the State efforts, they had significant drawdowns across the area.  Keep in mind that the USGS (Reilly, et al, 2009) had identified southwestern Utah as one of many areas across the US where long term decreasing groundwater levels.  My paper was a similar issue for Florida, so I stopped partway into my paper and asked her a question:  has any hydrogeologist or engineer trying to permit water in the area ever said the water supply was not sustainable?”  The room got really quiet.  She looked at me and said, “well, no.”  In fact the audience chimed in that they had never heard this from their consultants either.  The discussion was informative and interesting.  Not sure I really finished my presentation because of the discussion.

To be fair, consultants are paid to solve problems, and for water supplies, this means finding groundwater and surface water limited areas like Utah when their clients request it.  So you don’t expect to pay your consultant to find “no water.”  But where does that lead us?  The concept of sustainable yield from confined aquifer systems is based on step drawdown tests.  Ignoring the details, what this constitutes is a series of short term tests of the amount of drawdown that occurs at different pumping levels. AWWA’s manual on Groundwater can give you the details, but the results are short-term and modeling long-term results requires a series of assumptions based on the step drawdown test.  This is that had been submitted in support of permits in Utah (and many other places).  As discussed in the conference session, clearly there is something wrong with this method of modeling and calculation because, well, the results did not match the reality.  The drawdowns increased despite modeling and step drawdown tests showing the demands were sustainable.  Clearly wrong.  Competing interests, the need to cast a wider net, and many other issues are often not considered.  The results play out throughout the world.  Confined aquifers are often not sustainable, a potential problem for much of agriculture in the farm belt of the US.  Are we headed the same direction as ancient people?

The good news is that these same hydrogeologists and engineers have the ability to help solve the sustainability problem.  We need a new definition for “safe yield.”  We need a better means to estimate leakance in aquifers.  A project I did with injection wells indicated that leakance was overestimated by a factor of 1000 to 10,000, which would drastically alter the results of any model.  More work needs to be undertaken here.  The overdraw of confined groundwater is a potential long-term catastrophe waiting to happen.  And the consequences are significant.  The question is can we adapt?

But when we start to look at resource limitations, who stands up and says, this type of withdrawal is not the right answer.  We need another one.  Where is that leadership moment?

Leadership Part 4

December 29, 2012
communciations, infrastructure, Leadership, management, Marketing water, sustainability, water sewer management
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In the theme of the past posts, I have two stories about a young man in North Carolina 30 years ago.  He was an engineer by education, but wanted to get into management.  So he got a master‘s degree in public administration and after working for a utility for several years, got an opportunity to manage one of the many very small towns in North Carolina.  Now he, like me, was not from North Carolina, but from a northern state, so imaging the reception 30 years ago in a small eastern North Carolina.  His workforce was not educated, and the town workforce lacked any specific skills according to the mayor, although the field supervisor was a skilled equipment operator and had completed high school.  Now you can imagine the suspicion this “young whipper-snapper” had on a community that did not want all that education and did not “want to become Raleigh,” as if there was some horrible stigma attached to that fine city.  And his assignment – fix the infrastructure.

Now many utility directors reading this post will relate to this issue.  It seems that the town was losing half the water pumped out of the groundwater in the leaking pipelines and over half the water mains were 30+ year old galvanized pipes that were laid near and far to reach specific properties.  All were 2 inches and smaller which obviously did not provide fire protection.  Areas of the town were skipped.  Sewer was lacking in some areas and there were a series of stormwater issues to address.  Of course there was no money as the town’s fiscal condition was poor, so the solution was to train the crew to lay the piping needed.  So the story goes like this.  The crew had never installed push-on PVC piping and did not believe it would stay together under pressure.  They had never installed valves or other appurtenances, not manholes and pipe on grade.  Cement finishing was an issue.  So the day came to start work.

The supervisor dug the trench with a backhoe and the young man joined the crew in the field.  He was trying to instruct them on the specifics of laying pipe from the surface.  After all he was the town manager.  It was a struggle, and conditions in a trench are not the best as working space is limited.  Finally realizing the need to show the crew how the pipe pushed together and sequence of tightening bolts needed to go, he hopped into the trench.  He worked with them for days, and the crew became very effective at installing pipe in all circumstances.  Even after the young man moved to a larger town, the crews finished the pipe replacement effort.  The leadership moment?  As the supervisor noted later, the instant he hopped in the trench.  The struggle wasn’t so much not understanding as not believing.  When the young man showed the crew that what he was telling them worked, that by jumping in the trench and working with them he appreciated and understood their efforts, when he treated them with respect in demonstrating the skills the crew needed, they bought the vision.  It was easy after that and they we successful.  Lesson 1:  Show the crew what you want, and believe in them and they will be successful

The same young man later demonstrated his willingness to protect the crew from interference form outside.  So this story goes that they were installing a water main of a given street.  The mayor called and demand a water break get fixed.  Coincidently it was 20 feet from where they were working.  The town manager said no, they would continue working.  You can imagine the broohah brewing up here.  Especially when two days later another leak occurred, but the new main was nearly complete.  And the fourth day, a third leak.  Conferences with commissioners, phone calls, etc form the fanned flames.  But the crew kept working.  No demands were conveyed to them.  Keep working.  The water main was complete the following Monday, placed into service and all service connected to the new line by 5 pm.  The manager was asked to explain his decision at the Tuesday Commission meeting.  He brought in a four foot piece of service line from where the first leak occurred. It contained 22 clamps, meaning the town personnel had “fixed” the line 22 time, over 80 hours of work, in the past.  The leak actually occurred between two to the clamps and could not have been fixed.  Replacement was the only option.  Leadership moment number 2:  the crew knew they had been shielded from criticism, since the manager took all of it.  All the commissioners decided that in the future, such issues would be left to the purview of the manager.  Not that during the week of construction his life wasn’t miserable.  Lesson 2.  Sometimes leadership is difficult.

Leadership Part 3 Examples?

December 24, 2012
Climate, Environment, finance, funding, infrastructure, Leadership, management, Marketing water, planning, sustainability, Uncategorized, water sewer management, water supplies
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Leadership Part 3

One of the themes in the prior two posts on leadership was that leaders are defined by a vision, the people who follow the leader and the ability to market the vision.  We often fail on the marketing end, especially in dealing with water and sewer infrastructure issues.  We know the infrastructure is in poor condition and that billions, perhaps trillions are needed to upgrade the system to serve our needs.  But pipes are hidden and parks are far more glamorous, so guess what gets funded?  At least until a failure occurs.

I teach an elected officials class for water/wastewater issues.  The all acknowledge that a failure o f the utility system is a huge issue and the electorate and elected officials are often looking for “the cause” or someone who is responsible.  In other words, someone to fire.  It is every utility director’s nightmare, and a nightmare for many elected officials as well.  Yet a 4 hour outage in a year is a 99.96% success rate.  My students would be raising hell with the dean and president if I failed them for only 99.96% correct answers.  And rightly so.  Why are utilities any different?  Public health sure, but the systems can fail, and the condition that many are in warrants far more attention to potential to fail unless we can market to the public the need to invest.  Yet how many city managers, elected officials and finance director acknowledge any accountability for failures?  The investigation into the Walkerton Ontario failure indicated that the employees who falsified records, the governing body, the water advisory body and other officials all the way to the province had culpability in the failure of the system that made half the town sick and killed a number of residents.  Utility folks need to market the need to protect public health better, to make the public understand.

Marketing is a difficult skill set.  I can tell you sales in not one of my skills.  Common among engineers who tend to be more technical in nature, letting the data guide us.  Even so, we have successes.  Think about the City of Los Angeles.  The only reason large numbers of people can live in LA is the aqueducts that were started back in 1900s by William Mulholland under the guidance of Mayor Fred Eaton.  The vision was to grow LA but the limitation was water supplies.  The aqueducts sparked water wars (think Chinatown, the movie), and developed through the 1930s.  Hetch Hetchy, over 100 miles east, was established as San Francisco’s water supply back in 1913 as well.  The reservoir system continues to supply San Francisco today.  Denver Water acquired and/or constructed reservoirs and tunnels to the west side of the Rockies for water supplies prior to 1940, realizing that sustained growth in the Denver area was not available east of the Rockies. .  Pinellas County and Orange County California started projects to reuse treated wastewater for irrigation of private yards, and aquifer recharge in the 1970s to sustain their supplies.  Sustainability of water supplies, management of water sources including wastewater and stormwater as a part of an integrated program and sustaining the financial and infrastructure condition of the utility are the long-term priorities.  We need to find those visionary projects and people today.

So here’s the assignment.  Let’s find where those leaders are today, and identify what makes them a leader.