Public clean water utilities face a paradox: the services they provide are essential to every person, business, and community they serve, yet they are largely taken for granted.

The systems that deliver wastewater and stormwater services are largely invisible and underground, and they take away something we don’t want rather than delivering something we actively seek out. When these systems do make the news, it’s almost always because something has gone wrong.

This disconnect between the value of clean water services and the public’s understanding of them has real consequences for the customers and communities utilities serve. When the public doesn’t understand the benefits of the services they depend on or why investment is necessary, it becomes harder to secure the funding needed to maintain reliable service, address aging infrastructure, keep rates affordable, or attract the workforce that keeps systems running.

Cognizant of these challenges, the Board of Directors of the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) recognized the need to rethink and reshape the narrative around the public clean water sector – both at the local level and the national level. This need led to NACWA undertaking a comprehensive strategic communications initiative to help the sector communicate more clearly, consistently, and effectively with the communities they serve – and through those efforts to elevate the profile and trust of clean water utilities with their customers and communities.

This is the first time a national water sector organization has undertaken such a significant investment in communications resources. More broadly, this represents the first step in NACWA’s larger effort to raise the priority of water on a national scale and also to elevate communications to the same level as our legislative, regulatory and legal advocacy.