April 2015
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The Power of Water . . . Making the Advocacy Case in Washington, DC

Next week many of NACWA's members will be coming into town for Water Week and its anchor event the National Water Policy Forum, Fly-In & Expo. Thanks to the vision of NACWA and its Board of Directors, Water Week has become a premier collaborative event with numerous state and regional associations representing the water sector and with NACWA, the Water Environment Federation, the Water Environment Research Foundation and WateReuse, joining forces and voices on the Policy Forum and Fly-In to jointly elevate clean water issues to the top of the federal priority list.

This is no easy task. The political landscape is increasingly contentious. Saturated social and earned media markets create a cacophony of seeming priorities. Simply put, it is harder than ever to get the attention of our national leaders. On top of it all, many of the Clean Water Act issues now are highly technical and often impact only a subset of the utility community, and are now being fought at the state and regional level, or in the courtrooms on a case-by-case basis.

These trends offer an enormous challenge — and of course an unmatched opportunity! — to develop an overarching vision and strategy into which the full array of the most complex issues can be effectively addressed. With the right message and the right advocacy posture, NACWA remains poised to inspire unified action and successful results on both an association-wide and sector-wide basis.

As I contemplate my last couple of months at NACWA, I can remember how we (then the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies or AMSA) helped shape the "newborn" Clean Water Act (CWA) in the 1970s and 1980s. Fly-ins to DC weren't scheduled annual events; they occurred because we needed action on a specific part of the Act, from technical issues to funding. These visits were sporadic but everyone understood the stakes – environmental, social and economic.

It's easy to look back over any career that has spanned decades in a specific industry and to think of the formative part of one's career as the "Glory Days". And occasionally I do think back on the early years of building the infrastructure, networks, and knowledge needed to ensure the CWA's success as the "Glory Days," but this is simply not the case. I believe we are in the Glory Days now and here's why: with nearly 45 years of utility leadership experience and sophistication working under the Clean Water Act, it is NACWA's utility leaders who are in the catbird's seat to shift the paradigm.

We are already witnessing the beginnings of this shift. Despite a growing array of regional and site-specific issues — drought and reuse, blending, sanitary sewer overflows, nutrients, ammonia and whole effluent toxicity, to name but a few — we are hearing a new refrain of ones that impact utilities across-the-board.

These include regulatory accretion and over-reach that can both hamper innovation and siphon money from needed infrastructure repair or other priority projects. The issue of affordability/financial capability has bubbled to the top as the gap between the haves and have-nots expands just as service rates must climb higher and higher to meet ever-increasing Clean Water Act program costs. Also, we are just starting to see federal and state authorities realizing they must trust utility leaders as co-regulators and fellow public servants. This is evidenced by the federal embrace of Integrated Planning and the Utility of the Future initiatives — premised on the notion that utilities can do more if they have the authority to chart the path that is best for their communities.

This is the message of Water Week and the Policy Forum and Fly-In: We must be the masters of our own fate. We must demand as an industry to have decision-making authority over the prioritizing of projects, their schedules, and the type of investments we are making in order to yield the best results for our communities. The communities are paying the lion's share of the costs; their local officials should retain the lion's share of the decision-making authority over these investments.

The ask right now is different from decades ago. It is not for major new federal programs but for a new type of partnership. A partnership built on trust where municipalities can chart their own compliance paths (and beyond) for their communities. This new type of partnership has been earned over decades and now I call on you to come to DC and fight for what I believe can become the "Glory Days" for clean water.