Running a water utility today means managing a crisis you can never fully see coming.
Heather Collins, Director of Treatment Operations at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and President of the American Water Works Association, knows that pressure firsthand.
Water utilities aren't just keeping taps running — they're simultaneously building long-term capital plans, responding to natural disasters, monitoring emerging contaminants, standing up cybersecurity programs, and developing new treatment processes, often all at once and with the same budget.
Collins describes it as compounding pressure: each new challenge layers on top of the last, with no corresponding increase in resources. The AWWA's Beyond the Replacement Era report puts a price tag on that reality — an estimated $90.2 billion in annual investment needed against a current spend of just $33.6 billion.
For systems like Metropolitan, the gap isn't abstract — it shows up every day in the choices between what's urgent and what's critical.
This is what running America's water systems actually looks like — and why the status quo can no longer hold.
Episode at https://bit.ly/2trillion4water
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