Please Note:
There are no more discounted rooms available at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. We have secured additional rooms at The Sheraton Denver Downtown, which is located 4 blocks away from the Grand Hyatt. This hotel is offering the discounted room rate of $199 per night (single/double) plus applicable taxes for NACWA Attendees. Reservations must be made by Friday, June 24th, while rooms are available, to receive the discounted rate. To ensure a hotel room, contact the hotel at 888.627.8045 or make your reservation online and be sure to identify yourself as a NACWA Attendee.

 

Plan now to join your colleagues from across the nation at Leadership Strategies for the Smart Utility, NACWA’s 2016 Utility Leadership Conference & 46th Annual Meeting, July 10-13, 2016, in Denver, Colorado.

Clean water utilities are moving beyond Clean Water Act compliance and proactively changing the regulatory landscape. They are embracing their roles as technology developers and incubators, job creators and economic engines within their communities. This ongoing transformation is leading to more complex treatment and resource recovery systems that utility managers and staff must operate and maintain. New sensors and monitoring technology are leading to data-rich environments that improve decision-making, but also potentially add to the required management skillset. With new skills needed and an increasingly connected and informed community, smart utilities are working to address the complex workforce, communications and financial challenges that can often accompany efforts to innovate.

Meet Changing Expectations

NACWA’s 2016 Utility Leadership Conference will explore not only how utilities are adapting their management approaches to meet the changing expectations of both their ratepayers and employees, but also how even more innovative management techniques will be needed as clean water agencies become increasingly complex and information becomes more widely available.  

Explore New Opportunities

Communication, in particular, has received significant attention over the last few years. Utilities that once preferred to remain anonymous, or were only in the media when bad news was reported, are now taking a proactive approach to communications, ranging from the most basic social media presence to sophisticated city-wide information and outreach campaigns. As some utilities have learned recently, when it comes to communications utilities often find themselves “damned if they do and damned if they don’t”, but this has only underscored the importance of strong and proactive engagement with the community.

From an organizational perspective, long-standing concerns about succession planning and generation gap differences remain. Expertise in the information technology (IT) field, in particular, will present unique challenges in the future. The trend toward the smart utility of the future is, however, also presenting new opportunities to tap into ‘home-grown leaders’ and further engage employees from across the generational spectrum.

Our host utility, the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District, will provide a tour of its Robert W. Hite Treatment Facility. In preparation for new nutrient limits, the Metro District is working to identify cost-effective solutions, including the potential recovery and reuse of phosphorus. A highlight of the tour will include Metro District’s findings thus far and a tour of the pilot-scale Airprex® Biosolids Optimization and Phosphorus Recovery process currently being evaluated.

 

 

Sunday, July 10

  • Standing Committee Meetings
  • Welcoming Reception
  • Women's Water Network Dinner


Monday, July 11

  • Standing Committee Meetings
  • Awards Ceremony & Reception


Tuesday, July 12

  • Plenary Session
  • Standing Committee Meetings
  • Board of Directors Meeting
  • President's Reception


Wednesday, July 13

  • Plenary Session