RCAP's Drop of Knowledge: Article Roundup #5

Drop of Knowledge is a monthly digital article from Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP.) The articles focus on topics like wastewater, drinking water, policy, and infrastructure in rural America. It contains how-to’s, tips, and guidance from more than 300 technical assistance providers (TAPs) across the country. Some featured articles are linked below:

• Pembroke Township Public Water System Training and Assistance for Drinking Water Operators
• Communicating About Lead in Drinking Water
• Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck – GIS Mapping
• Board Relationships: Navigating the Waters of Governance and Operations
• The Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC) Helps Island Community Retain Local Water System Ownership
• Big Changes for a Small Water System

Looking for something else? Find more articles and subscribe to A Drop of Knowledge.

RCAP's Drop of Knowledge: Article Roundup #3

Drop of Knowledge is a monthly digital article from Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP.) The articles focus on topics like wastewater, drinking water, policy, and infrastructure in rural America. It contains how-to’s, tips, and guidance from more than 300 technical assistance providers (TAPs) across the country. Some featured articles are linked below:

• Assessing Your Collection System with a Pipeline Camera System
• Water System Achieves Compliance In One Year With Communities Unlimited’s Assistance
• Administrative Professionals and Their Continuous Contributions to Water and Wastewater Systems
• Staff in Nebraska is Helping to Build a Sustainable, Resilient Utility Workforce
• System Vulnerability Assessments and Emergency Response Plans
• Effective Communication with the Community

Looking for something else? Find more articles and subscribe to A Drop of Knowledge.

Consumer Confidence Report Rule Revision Updates

Everyone has a right to know what is in their drinking water and where it comes from. That is why the original consumer confidence reports (CCR) rule was established in 1998 after amendments were made to the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1996. The goal of the reports is to provide community members with updated information about the state of their drinking water that is both accurate and accessible. These reports are also known as annual water quality reports and every community water supplier needs to submit one by July 1st each year. 

America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 later called for an amendment to the rule that would require the U.S. EPA to revise CCR regulations, allow electronic delivery of CCRs, and require large systems to deliver CCRs twice a year. The U.S. EPA is currently in the process of revising the Consumer Confidence Report Rule. After meeting with various stakeholders about improving the effectiveness of communicating drinking water information, they identified five areas that could use improvement: 

1. CCR understandability,
2. Reporting MCLs in numbers greater than or equal to 1.0,
3. Reporting period for including a Tier 3 Public Notice (PN) in the CCR,
4. Certification of CCR delivery and content by the CWS to the primacy agency, and
5. Electronic delivery of the CCR.

The U.S. EPA is anticipating that the final rule should be released by March 2024. Many resources and documents are available on the U.S. EPA website about how to comply with CCR requirements. 

Maintaining Customer Satisfaction

Maintaining customer satisfaction can go overlooked when operators are busy tending to the daily needs of their facility, however good customer relationships are an important component to any well run utility. Community trust improves cooperation under emergencies and helps customers to do their part in caring for their system. When changes to the utility are made such as a new infrastructure project or a long awaited rate adjustments, customers will more easily hop on board. Not to mention, an unhappy customer can lead to unnecessary public relations (PR) challenges.

In Hartsville, South Carolina one business owner watched for a month as a sinkhole slowly took over her car lot. The owner first called her Water and Sewer Authority in September reaching out about her growing concerns. She made five additional calls into October until finally contacting her local news channel for help. Swiftly after the news channel reached out to the Authority, workers were sent to fix the sinkhole.

In Darlington, South Carolina a pair of homeowners brought their sewer system into the public eye under equally pressing conditions. The city received unprecedented rainstorms in October leading to excess stormwater runoff. Under these conditions, many homeowners experienced sewage backups. Despite the city's ongoing efforts to manage overflows, the backups brought the system into an unwanted spot light. A Sanitary Sewer Overflow Response Plan can help for incidents such as these.

While we can do our best to avoid these incidents, accidents happen. When they do, good communication and listening skills can make a difficult situation much easier. How to Keep Customers Happy in Solution H2O encourages utilities to establish a good public presence prior to these events. When services are disrupted, the article encourages utility leaders to step forward and reassure customers that their complaints are being addressed. We also recommend the supervisor follow up with impacted customers after the issue has been resolved. Many of the negative articles we see published in local news can be avoided by following the tips suggested in the American Water Works Association's publication Trending in an Instant. 

Collaborating Effectively with Board Members

To protect public health and maintain reliable services, operators and board members, or other governing bodies, must collaborate effectively. This collaboration is essential to successfully establish and execute short-term and long-term system goals. In this blog post, we will discuss how to improve collaboration between board members and operators by distinguishing responsibilities between the two groups and providing communication tips for operators.

RESPONSIBILITIES

To work effectively in any team, each member must understand their own responsibilities and how those responsibilities are distinguished from the responsibilities of others. The primary role of board members is to ensure the system provides reliable and compliant services by setting policies and goals, maintaining finances, and communicating important utility information to customers. Their responsibilities include:

Management: Board members are in charge of hiring, retaining, and contracting qualified workers. They must set policies (pg. 9) and goals that allow the utility to operate efficiently and legally. Evaluating these goals regularly will ensure that the system can maintain a desired level of service, protect source water, apply appropriate asset management programs, and keep customers informed. Boards should operate ethically and make sure records are retained properly. To do all of this, each board member should facilitate active participation in decision making while acting as a good team member for the utility. They must also acquire the required knowledge to fulfill these duties.

Financing: Decision makers must maintain budgets, monitor spending, and ensure that the system will have enough money to meet both present and future needs. When necessary, boards are in charge of acquiring the funds to finance infrastructure projects and other activities required by the system. Any major contracts must also be approved and properly recorded by the board.

Communication: Board members must keep customers informed on ongoing projects, system services, and potential emergencies. They should act as the liaison between the system's staff and the community. Additional responsibilities include maintaining transparent communication to the public through open meetings that have been scheduled with appropriate public notice and an organized agenda. By publishing meeting minutes and key decisions, customers can remain informed and provide additional input.

After board members have established the financial and managerial policies for the system, it is the operator’s responsibility to implement and enforce those policies. Operators must develop, update, and execute maintenance plans and standard operating procedures (SOPs) that meet board policies and regulatory compliance. These procedures will help staff facilitate daily operations, monitor the system, and maintain detailed records of the system’s status as well as any financial expenditures. Operators must also maintain, monitor, and replace existing assets. While both operators and board members should possess a sufficient education to manage the facility, operators must do so by upholding their certification license. In addition to these tasks, it’s important for operators to keep board members informed of system updates and needs.

COMMUNICATION

To effectively collaborate and communicate as a team, board members and operators should attend regularly scheduled meetings. The Nevada Bureau of Health Protection Services recommends board members schedule these meetings on the same day once every month. During meetings customers can discuss concerns with board members, board member can inform customers of changes to the system, and operators can provide updates to their board. Successful meetings should always be conducted to comply with the region’s Open Meeting Laws and to follow a pre-written, detailed agenda.

Before any meeting the board’s secretary should collaborate with operators and other board members to produce a clearly written agenda that will include discussion topics, action items, and time for public comment. This is the time where operators can schedule to bring forth concerns, needs, and system updates. The Environmental Finance Center hosted an excellent webinar in 2016 on successful communication with board members. The webinar describes what topics and details are important to discuss at meetings and what are not. The webinar also demonstrates how policies are made and updated during these meetings. The following figure was taken from this webinar:

When an operators bring up concerns, requests for funding, or updates on the system, they should do so with the following strategies:

Presenting the Update or Issue:

• Present information using organized data, figures, records, and supporting documents. Bringing in photos or physical examples (ex. A recently replaced pipe) can be even more effective.
• Tailor presentations to the audience. New board members may need more background information. Think about the board’s perspective to address potential questions and concerns early on.
• To communicate finance information and rate increases check out these resources:
  • Communicating Finance and Rate Information to Your Board
  • Quick Messages and Selling Points on Raising Rates and Financial Performance for your Board and Public Presentations
• If operators are investigating a potentially serious problem, but don’t yet have all of the details, inform the board any ways. Board members should be aware of serious issues early on.

Proposing Solutions to Challenges:

• Provide reasonable options to resolve system issues and clearly explain the risks involved in not taking action. Describe how the proposed solution will resolve the issue.
• When the solution involves replacing new equipment, explain estimated life cycle costs in addition to upfront costs. Identify where the funding to finance the solution will come from and where that will leave the system financially afterword.
• Understand how proposed solutions and projects will affect other funding needs in the community. Explain how the solution will benefit the community as a whole.
• Offer the board a non-technical explanation of why the proposed solution is required so they can relay this information to customers.

Other Tips:

• When operators don't know the answer to questions from the board, it’s best to offer to investigate the answer later rather than guess. Waiting to provide an accurate answer limits confusion and unnecessary conflict.
• Board members are often unfamiliar with the daily operations of the utility. It can help improve collaboration to offer tours of the facility that demonstrate operating requirements and updated conditions of the plant. Alternatively, operators can invite board members to attend training classes and conferences. The Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) also offers water and wastewater guides for the non-operator that can act as a starting point for this technical knowledge.
• Keep the lines of communication open. When board members can communicate their opinions openly it will lead to reciprocation and more effective problem solving.
• Compromise!

When collaboration becomes difficult, remember that both operators and boards have the same goal: protecting public health and ensuring the longevity of the system. While board members can face different pressures than operators, they still want to maintain this goal. Elizabeth Dietzmann with the Kansas Rural Water Association has written two excellent articles for operators on How to Manage a Micromanaging Board and How to Manage a Problem Rural Water Board Member. The latter addresses “No Show” members, “Blabbermouths”, the “Angry Bird”, and other problem members.

Remember that communication doesn’t have to be limited to monthly meetings. Operators can provide weekly email updates or use phone calls to inform boards of important issues. For additional resources on board responsibilities check out RCAP’s Big Guide for Small Systems: A Resource for Board Members. As operators maintain their own continuing education requirements, they can also encourage board members to attend any upcoming RCAP board training that will help them brush up on their job duties and stay up to date on the industry.

Getting Started With ArcGIS Story Maps

Interested in a new way to tell your water system stories? Do you want to reach out to a diverse audience using maps and data in order to help them visualize and more completely understand the issues? Then a Story Map might be just the ticket.

In the past year or so, we at WaterOperator.org have collected examples of how ESRI's Story Maps are being used by water utilities, agencies, states and local governments. Here are few of our favorites:

This Story Map from Cobb County, GA answers the age-old question, "Where do we get our drinking water from?"

And this one from Clarkstown, NY uses all sorts of graphics, 3-D visualizations and maps to illustrate how it maintains its vast MS4 stormwater system. 

The USEPA has also been using this new tool to collect case studies and utility stories for its Drought Response and Recovery Project for Water Utilities. 

The state of California Division of Drinking Water is using Story Maps to present lead sampling results for its public schools, updated monthly to reflect additional samples they receive. 

And here is an example of a tribal Story Map that shows how the Samish Indian Nation is building resilience for the future impact of climate change in Washington State. 

For even more inspiring examples, Esri hosts a website of contest-winning Story Maps and a Gallery of Story Maps using creative approaches and best practices in a wide range of subjects and industries. 

Story Maps are a great way to combine maps with text, images, videos and more to create impactful stories to leverage support for your water system and to communicate effectively with your audience. Story Maps are part of ArcGIS Online, Esri's cloud-based mapping and GIS platform, and you can register for a free ArcGIS public account here.

Ready to get started? The Learn ArcGIS website has this series of three 30-60 minute lessons, and/or you can watch the video below, and/or read this recent blog post on How to Make a Story Map. 

The Importance of Customer Outreach

Laying the Foundation for a Successful Rate Approval Process

It’s a problem faced by nearly every small system: your existing budget won’t cover the cost of new capital projects or even routine O&M. Raising water rates is no simple task, but there are strategies you can use to gain community buy-in.

We’ll share more tips for rate-specific communication in a later post. For now, let’s talk about what you can do to lay the groundwork. It is hard to ask customers for more money if they do not know and understand the value that you provide. The first step to gaining public support of a rate increase is to gain that support for your operations as a whole. 

Here are a few easy ways to boost your public image and set the stage for an effective push for a rate increase: 

• Stop being invisible. Bad news—line breaks, sewer spills, etc.—have a way of getting out. If that is all your customers know about you, they won’t be eager to see their water bills go up. Sharing good news and helping the public and media put bad news in context will foster greater trust in your system and staff.
• Keep them informed. Whether you’re responding to an emergency or conducting routine repairs that interrupt customer’s daily lives, you can keep the customer on your side by communicating with them often. Tell them what has happened, what you plan to do, and how they can get answers to their questions. 
• Know your product. It’s not the water. It’s the service you offer customers so they can go about daily life. They will remember their interactions with your employees and how you helped them when you bring up a rate increase later.  
• Heed the warning signs. Watch how your customers react to what you say and do. It’s much harder to mend broken relationships than to maintain them.
• Show your appreciation. Consider hosting customer appreciation days or sending holiday cards to strengthen relationships with your customers. 

To find documents with more great tips, visit WaterOperator.org's online resource library.