Clean Water Current

(July 22, 2020) – NACWA will host the final installment of its three-part webinar series next Tuesday, July 28, from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. EST. Next week’s session will be moderated by Yvonne Forrest, Director, Houston Water in Houston, TX and will feature the following speakers:

George Hawkins
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Moonshot LLC

Tanya McCoy Carretti
Vice President
Arcadis

Steve Straus
President
Glumac

Jeff Theerman
Vice President
Brown and Caldwell

Cindy Wallis-Lage
President, Water Business
Black & Veatch

Thomas Brzezinski
Chief Business Development Officer
Wade Trim

To register, please click here. For questions on this webinar or future NACWA offerings, please contact David Zielonka, NACWA’s Manager of Media and Communications.

NACWA held the second of its three part webinar series, Partnerships to Reduce the Impacts from COVID-19 on the Water Sector this past Thursday, July 16.

This second installment of the webinar series was moderated by Leisa Thompson, NACWA Board Member and General Manager of Metropolitan Council Environmental Services in St. Paul, MN and featured speakers from Suez North America, XPV Water Partners, AECOM, CDM Smith, Concentric Municipal Advisors and Galardi Rothstein.

Like the first session in this series, this installment focused on the ways private sector partnerships can not only help utilities blunt some of the difficulties resulting from COVID-19, but increase capacity and efficiency going forward.

To kick things off, Nadine Leslie, CEO of Suez North America, shared how her company handled the crisis internally, prioritizing the health and safety of the workforce and emphasizing  solutions that technology could bring, from treatment and recycling of water to managing customer relations.

Next, Debra Coy of XPV Water Partners focused on what her firm does best and emphasized how investment opportunities could still be taken advantage of during the crisis. She highlighted the technologies of several companies that are doing an array of activities to help utilities in the U.S. and internationally, including smart manhole cover technology and Covid-19 surveillance in wastewater samples.

Douglas Varner, Senior Vice President at CDM Smith, then focused on personnel impacts during the pandemic, from how to best operationalize Work from Home (WFH) policies to Return to Work (RTW) timelines. Beverley Stinson, Executive Vice President of AECOM, shared insights on the impacts to the water sector in terms of project delays as well as a surge of creative leadership programs spurred by the pandemic such as one-on-one Zoom mentorship programs.

To close things out, Eric Rothstein, of Galardi Rothstein Group, and J. Anthony Beard, of Concentric Municipal Advisors, gave a shared presentation on  financing strategies for utilities during this turbulent time – highlighting a recent NACWA advocacy document they developed on these issues for how the federal government can help provide funding and flexible financing options to water and wastewater agencies.

If you missed the webinar, you can view the slides here or watch a recording here.