2c-management - Manny Teodoro

Watching the Watchers 💻

About that Food & Water Watch Affordability Report... The advocacy group Food & Water Watch recently published a report on residential water costs and affordability and launched a media campaign that got significant media

Shifting Currents in Leadership 📝

US Water Utility Executive Demographics, Education, and Career Paths Journal AWWA Manuel P. Teodoro, X.F. Hopp, Natalie L. Smith Top executive leaders influence the overall operation and performance of the utilities they lead. Breaking

Semi-dismal 💻

Biennial water & sewer affordability update, part 2 Economics is the study of tradeoffs. To have more of this, you have to sacrifice that. You can have A or B, but you can’t have

Wake-up Call 💻

Cyber attacks open a window for reform It finally happened. After years of isolated incidents, last month a wave of cyberattacks, likely of Iranian origin, struck U.S. water utilities. Almost all of the victims

Win – Win – Win 💻

Decoupling can improve conservation, revenue stability, and affordability all i’m offering you is the truth, nothing more It’s an El Niño summer, and water systems from Utah to Iowa to Florida are responding to

Variable Flow Irritates a Politician 💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. u can haz assistunce A tale of two memos EPA Office of Water recently released a memorandum outlining

A Matter of Taste 💻

Strengthening trust in tap water—and in government—means taking aesthetics seriously the ultimate consumer confidence indicator (Photo by Engin Akyurt) A great irony—and in some ways, a great tragedy—of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)

Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years 💻

A new book aims to shape the national conversation Now available from Palgrave Macmillan In December 2024, the La Follette School at UW-Madison and the Water & Health Advisory Council gathered researchers, regulators, water sector executives, and community

SDWA at 51: Justice and the Promise of Safe Drinking Water💻

sometimes justice demands different approaches to different contaminants On the fiftieth anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) in 2024, the Water & Health Advisory Council unveiled the Madison Declaration, which identifies five

Variable Flow Comes Limping After 💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. Don't Blame the Victim wazn't me Congress is considering PFAS liability exemptions for water and sewer systems under

Pondwater 💻

You shouldn’t recruit survey participants through social media—or trust studies that do Waters of the United States? Every couple of weeks a post hits my social media feeds asking me to participate in a

The Water-Dogecoin Paradox 💻

In an economy awash in capital, why does water want for investment? Cryptocurrencies turn code into gold, but water is the ultimate liquid asset. America’s water and sewer utilities need trillions of dollars of

PBS University Roundtable 🎦

Report Cards for Wisconsin’s Drinking Water Utilities Click image to watch video on YouTube - or look for it on PBS Wisconsin.

The Customer is Always Right 📰

Why complaints are actually good for a utility Water Environment & Technology Manuel P. Teodoro and Mark Holstad Abstract Customer complaints may feel like a burden, but they are often a powerful sign of

Insufferable 💻

Maybe engineers really are better at managing water utilities* if Hogwarts had an engineering school Does a utility leader’s education matter for the performance of his/her utility? Recently I wrote about the academic backgrounds of

Variable Flow Moves the Goalposts 💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. i can haz flouride? Fluoride follies Grand Rapids, Michigan began adding fluoride to its water in 1945 to

From Cap & Gown to Corner Office 💻

Exploring the diverse academic backgrounds of water’s top leaders School’s out for summer, so I finally have a bit more time to blog about… school.🙃 This post continues an occasional series on water utility

Report Card Roundup 💻

Early dispatches from the revolution It’s been a little over two months since the Wisconsin Waterworks Excellence Project (WWEP) released the first public report cards for 572 Badger State water utilities. The WWEP publishes

Toward Excellence 💻

Report cards for 570 Wisconsin water utilities strong marks for the Badger State’s capital city Back in 2019 I did something quite foolish: thinking out loud while testifying in a public hearing. When a

Variable Flow Moves Fast and Breaks Things💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. u needz bettur sooer purrmit Hooray? The US Supreme Court's handed sewer utilities a win last week in

Medium and Message by Mail🎓

A Field Experiment to Promote Low-Income Assistance Programs Public Administration Review, January 2025 Manuel P. TeodoroJean Smith Summary Direct mail can reduce learning burdens associated with assistance programs, increase awareness of those programs, and

The Slow Flow of Progress💻

Racial diversity in water leadership AI's idea of diverse water utility leaders. Creepy, I know. Long ignored, racial and ethnic diversity are now high priorities for the water sector.* Diversity is especially important in

Postcard Power💻

The water comms test kitchen serves up a low-tech triumph *chef's kiss* A couple years ago I had the opportunity to work with Jean Smith at the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) to

Variable Flow Shifts the Blame 💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. maybee you haz teh led pipez? It’s been a minute, I know. Water comms: moar science! Regular readers

Men & Women & Ramps & Ladders 💻

Gendered routes to water utilities’ top executive jobs different ways to the top for boys and girls Once an afterthought, workforce and leadership diversity is by now a subject of major attention in the

Women in Water’s Corner Offices 💻

Data on a thousand utilities’ CEOs tell a tale of uneven progress A decade ago, I published a national study of American water utility chief executive officers (CEOs) with data gathered in 2011. That

Variable Flow Rearranges the Deck Chairs 💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. Battle of Helm’s Deep-PFAS liability edition Let the suits commence When EPA announced their proposed Maximum Contaminant Limit (MCL)

Jackson Action 💻

A pricing strategy for safe, sustainable, affordable water Not to be confused with Action Jackson Last month JXN Water announced a simple and bold new strategy to finance sustainable, affordable water in Jackson, Mississippi.

Women, SNAP, and Bottled Water 💻

The gendered pattern of water consumption among federal food assistance participants My last post showed that there’s a gendered relationship between household income and bottled water consumption in the United States. For men, there

Women, Wages, and Bottled Water 💻

The gendered relationship between income and bottled water consumption Bottled water was something of a novelty in the U.S. back in the 1990s when I started working in the water sector. It was perceived

Variable Flow is Shocked. Shocked! 💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. i can haz clean river? Tribal ripple effects Since the late 1980s, tribal governments in the United States have

TAP Dance 💻

Lessons from six years of income-based water assistance in Philadelphia Six years ago, to great fanfare, Philadelphia Water launched a new approach to bill assistance for low-income water and sewer customers: the Tiered Assistance

Big Pipes, Little Pipes, and Bottles 💻

Customer perceptions of utility quality & premise plumbing both contribute to consumer choices about drinking water trustworthy tap? A central theme that emerges from The Profits of Distrust is that the choice to drink

Lighten the Load 💻

It’s hard to ask for help. Utilities should make it easier. Paperwork can be burdensome Water and sewer affordability is a complicated challenge that demands a multifaceted solution; to meet that challenge, I’ve developed

Profits of Distrust at Seminary Co-op Bookstore 🎦

A conversation with Sabina Shaikh, University of Chicago The burgeoning bottled water industry presents a paradox: Why do people choose expensive, environmentally destructive bottled water, rather than cheaper, sustainable, and more rigorously regulated tap