Water Sector Reform #4: Human Capital

With a major federal investment in water infrastructure possibly on the horizon, the United States has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leverage that money into a structural transformation of America’s water sector. This is the fourth in a series of five posts outlining broad proposals to reform the management, governance, and regulation of U.S. drinking water, sewer, and stormwater systems. The first proposed reform was consolidation of water utilities; the second was an overhaul of financial regulation; the third was investment in information technology.

My fourth proposal is to invest in water sector human capital through workforce development and streamlining labor markets.

Working for Water

The U.S. water sector’s workforce challenge has been evident for a long time; as early as 2005 observers identified a slow-rolling retirement tsunami washing over utility organizations and recognized that the supply of workers was insufficient to meet the nation’s needs. In many ways, the water sector’s workforce issues mirror those of the wider public sector workforce. But addressing water workforce challenges isn’t just about quantity, it’s about quality.

Once upon a time, water system operations was a semi-skilled job. If you had a strong back, could turn a wrench, and operate a backhoe, you could probably do it. Until recently, a water operator could get by with limited reading comprehension and little to no aptitude for math or science.

But highly-skilled operators are in short supply and human capital isn’t evenly distributed. Training up a utility operator takes a lot of time, and in rural or remote parts of the US it can be especially hard to find an adequate supply of educated workers who can be trained to operate water systems.

Human capital & utility performance

Labor availability has measurable effects on effects on water quality. A few years ago David Switzer and I analyzed the relationship between SDWA compliance and the availability of skilled workers in a labor market. We found a strong relationship between labor force education and utility performance.

We also found that larger organizations are more effective in leveraging human capital than small ones. The reason is pretty clear: if you’re a smart, ambitious person interested in a water career, a small utility is at best a stepping stone, at worst a dead-end job. There may be only a handful of employees and the only opportunity for advancement is to wait for another operator to leave—or to leave yourself. So small systems struggle to attract and retain good employees. I heard directly from one utility manager that systems sometimes deliberately choose not to invest in training because they fear that a well-trained employee will leave. It’s a kind of strategic mediocrity.

Licensing labyrinth

Making matters worse, each state has different training and licensing regimes for water operators. There are separate licensing systems for water and sewer. There are separate licensing programs for treatment, distribution, and collection systems. Sometimes states set up reciprocal licensing agreements, but it’s a confusing and frustrating patchwork. All those rules are sand in the gears of the labor market and discourage smart, ambitious people from entering or building careers in the water sector.

Human capital investment

We need to grow the supply of human capital, and we need to streamline the labor market. So proposal number four is to invest in workforce development, and create national certification standards for operators.

This isn’t a particularly new idea—it’s a revival of an old one. Discussions of the 1972 Clean Water Act tend to focus on the pollution controls in Titles III and IV (for obvious reasons). But importantly, the Clean Water Act included a huge federal investment in research and training. In the 1960s environmental engineering was in its infancy as a field, and when Congress passed the Clean Water Act it wasn’t exactly sure how to make the nation’s waters fishable-and-swimmable.* So Uncle Sam built human capital for the water sector as it was building physical infrastructure. It’s telling that Title I of the Clean Water Act was an investment in people, and Title II was an investment in pipes.

Folks in the water sector sometimes refer to the generation of water professionals who emerged in the 1970s and 80s as the “Class of 72,” recognizing that in many ways the field of environmental engineering came of age due to that federal investment. We need a similar investment today to build the next generation of water professionals. We need careful, data-driven research on effective utility management, leadership, and organizations. We need rigorous degree and certificate programs to funnel talent into the water sector. America’s land grant universities (like Texas A&M!) are great institutional venues for these efforts, but there are other good models out there, too.

Freeing the market

Labor markets—like most other markets—work best when buyers and sellers can exchange freely. Along with investments in research and training, we need to harmonize, liberalize, and streamline licensing regimes for water and sewer operations. Instead of a crazy patchwork of training programs and licensing requirements, let’s establish national standards and a national accreditation system for both individuals and training institutions. Organizations like ANSI and AWWA have processes in place to craft water technology standards; the same model could be applied to licensing and certification. With national training and licensing standards in effect, a smart, ambitious person could enter the water sector with the prospect of building a career that could take her anywhere.

*Political scientists call that “speculative augmentation,” which is a polite way of saying “Congress has no idea what to do, so it’s going to kick the problem to experts and hope they can figure it out.” In the case of environmental regulation, it’s worked out reasonably well.

© 2019 Manny P. Teodoro