Water - Manny Teodoro

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 investment—a state

Report Card Roundup 💻

Early dispatches from the revolutionIt’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 school-style

Toward Excellence 💻

Report cards for 570 Wisconsin water utilitiesstrong marks for the Badger State’s capital cityBack in 2019 I did something quite foolish: thinking out loud while testifying in a public hearing. When a New Jersey

Profits of Distrust: The Comic 📖

Healthier water makes a healthier RepublicWhen writing The Profits of Distrust, Samantha Zuhlke, David Switzer and I wanted to craft a book that had the theoretical depth and empirical rigor of an academic text,

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 of this blog know

Men & Women & Ramps & Ladders 💻

Gendered routes to water utilities’ top executive jobsdifferent ways to the top for boys and girlsOnce an afterthought, workforce and leadership diversity is by now a subject of major attention in the water sector.

Women in Water’s Corner Offices 💻

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

Good, Bad, and Ugly 💻

Affordability in America, 2023 | Part 3(Featured image above by Bruno Guerrero.)little known fact: the Dollars Trilogy films were utility management allegoriesHigher prices don’t necessarily create affordability problems. Across the United States, water and sewer

Pricing Predicament 💻

Affordability in America, 2023 | Part 2How you distribute the load matters.An odd thing about water compared with most other things we buy is that residential water demand represents qualitatively different uses of water

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 editionLet the suits commenceWhen EPA announced their proposed Maximum Contaminant Limit (MCL) for PFAS a

Tariff Trends 💻

Affordability in America, 2023 | Part 1Prices at Der Rathskeller are up, tooIt’s not your imagination—water and sewer service really are more expensive than they used to be. But figuring out how much more expensive can

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 effectsSince the late 1980s, tribal governments in the United States have had the option

TAP Dance 💻

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

Big Pipes, Little Pipes, and Bottles 💻

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

Variable Flow Gets Clawed Back 💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome to Variable Flow.*coming for your COVID leftoversCongress giveth, Congress taketh awayThe debt ceiling drama that recently roiled D.C. culminated in the Fiscal Responsibility

Pillars of Affordability💻

Strategic guidance for water sector leadersOver the past several months I’ve written a series advancing five pillars of affordability: broad principles to guide affordability policy for leaders of America’s water and sewer utilities. These

Lien On Me 💻

The fifth pillar of affordability is Delinquency ManagementAn epic battle of good & evil at the water meterThis is the final in a series of posts outlining five pillars of affordability strategy for water

Lighten the Load 💻

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

Towels, not tuxedos 💻

How much assistance should each customer get?When things get hot, coverage matters more than fitCustomer assistance programs (CAPs) form the fourth pillar of affordability strategy. Previous posts described the first three pillars of affordability—quality,

Bill Assistance on Walden Pond 💻

The fourth pillar of affordability is income-qualified assistanceUtility bills were very affordable in Thoreau's day! But then, he also died from tuberculosis....in which I lay out a framework for water utilities that want to

Broken politics, broken pipes 💻

Sustainable solutions for Jackson, Mississippinot a sustainable solutionNational attention is back on drinking water utilities, and once again for all the wrong reasons. As readers of this blog surely know by now, flooding triggered

Of Bills and Balance Sheets 💻

The third pillar of affordability is Rate Design“Affordable” means different things in different contextsThis post is the third in a series outlining five pillars of affordability strategy for water and sewer utilities. None of

The Donut Budget 💻

The second pillar of affordability is EfficiencyOne of these matters more than the otherThis post is the second in a series outlining five pillars of affordability strategy for water and sewer utilities. Together, these pillars

Defensive Spending 💻

The first pillar of affordability is QualityGotta count the bottles and the billsSo long as water and sewer services operate on a fee-for-service basis, ensuring that these critical services are affordable will remain a

Frame Game 2: Back to the Data 💻

Gendered and partisan responses to proposed rate increases[An absurdly busy couple of months has kept me away from the blogosphere—sorry. Will try to get back into a regular groove now]Winning public support for investments

The Frame Game 💻

The science of talking about water rate increasesIt’s not about the water tower—it’s about what’s insideStrictly from a value standpoint, it’s hard to imagine anything that provides more bang for the buck than well-built

The Revolution Will Not be Legislated 💻

Notes on the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Part IIIWater professionals of America, unite!Late last year Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, authorizing $63.3 billion