Balancing Priorities as a Small Water Utility | WWD Weekly Digest
Aug. 25, 2022
Between day-to-day work, current and new regulations, and aging infrastructure, small utilities have many competing priorities. So how can we balance them better?
The vast majority of water and wastewater utilities in the United States are considered “small” by the U.S. EPA’s definition. And for those small utilities, the number of major priorities on their plate in the past couple years has doubled or even tripled. And with impending regulations adding new priorities to the plate, balancing them all is really hard.
Manny Teodoro, associate professor of public affairs at the Lafollette School for the University of Wisconsin, explains why competing priorities create challenges for small utilities. And he also shares a perspective on utility capacity — both physical and non-physical — that could be a means to solving small utility woes.
